Ice and Empty Spaces - 16woodsequ (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Steve hadn't expected to wake up after crashing the Valkyrie.

It's my choice. That’s what he’d told Peggy, and he’d meant it. He’d been prepared for his choice. He hadn’t liked it, but he'd known what he was doing taking down that plane, and he hadn't expected to wake up.

And then he woke up.

The air is wrong. He can't put his finger on why, but it’s the first thing he notices, even before he opens his eyes. When he does, he finds himself in a beige-yellow room, a fan spinning slowly in the corner. There’s something wrong about the room. His skin crawls, his muscles tensing as he sits up. It looks like he's in a hospital room. He'd been laying on top of the bedsheets, a radio droning in the corner.

There's no immediate threat, but something is wrong. The room is wrong, too clean, too private, too much.

And the baseball game playing on the radio. It’s tugging at his memory (it's perfect now, just like everything else), and it's wrong.

He doesn’t even have time to process the fact that his eyes are open. He shouldn't have survived. He felt himself die. He shouldn't even be awake and the wireless is playing the game like it’s live, but it can't be because he'd been there. Years ago (lifetimes), with Bucky.

The thought briefly sends him spiralling as he looks around the too perfect room. Bucky who fell. Bucky who's gone, lost to the freezing snow and ice— the engines are melting the ice and the water is so cold it hurts and he can't breathe

His heartbeat has already spiked by the time the lady comes into the room.

"You're in a recovery room in New York City." Wrong.

He scans her and everything about her is wrong. Her hair, her clothes, everything is just slightly off, ringing alarm bells of wrongwrongwrong in his brain. It sets his teeth on edge. It makes him distrust everything about the too perfect room he’d woken up in.

"Where am I really?"

He notes how she tenses when he stands up. She gets flustered when he mentions the game, refusing to give him a straight answer.

His first thought is Hydra. He'd last been fighting Schmidt in a Hydra plane. Of the people who could have found him after the crash, and then lied to him about it, it would be them.

That’s not good. His chest tightens as he flicks his eyes around the room, taking stock of his situation. His suit is gone. His shield is gone. (His shirt says SSR though, where did they get the shirt?) His thoughts fly with urgency. He needs to assess the situation, figure out what they want (the serum, always the serum), find his shield, and escape.

He can hear the woman's heartbeat pick up as he advances on her.

"Who are you?" he demands, not happy playing this game with her. His voice echoes weirdly in the room, something not quite right about the size of it. Or the walls themselves?

In front of him, the woman’s eyes widen just slightly before the door behind her bursts open. Two men dressed in black rush in.

Steve tenses at the guards. His eyes dart back and forth between the two as he reassesses and tries to come up with a split-second plan. The rules to whatever game he's woken up in have changed and he still doesn’t know what the rules are.

A corner of his brain that has yet to come to terms with the fact that he’s even alive curls up in panic, spitting out only one helpful line.

Get away, get away. Get away.

Fighting his way out of whichever Hydra base he'd found himself in isn't the best plan. It isn't even a good plan actually, given how he has nothing to fight with. But it wouldn't be the first time he’s had to fight his way out of a corner, and though they’d taken his suit and shield, they'd given him shoes.

As staticky as his mind feels, he’s used to pushing through that on missions. It only takes a moment for the part of his brain that’s still functioning to assess the threat levels and the potential weapons in the room. The odds it comes back with aren’t great, and it basically just reaffirms the tiny part of himself that he allows to panic (three against one in a room too small, he needs to get out).

The men step towards him, one hand by their hip holsters, and paradoxically, one arm raised as if they are, for some reason, trying to placate him. Not only that, but one of them seems to be trying to shield the woman—as if Steve is the dangerous one and they aren’t here to subdue him for whatever Hydra has planned now.

He doesn’t have time to analyse their behaviour, only use it against them. The man with the woman is distracted and Steve goes for him first. He moves lightning fast as he grabs him and heaves him towards the other guard. The guards trip and go down like a ton of bricks, grunting as they collapse into the opposite wall.

Steve is already scanning back to the woman and the door behind her when that thought process gets derailed because the very wall itself collapses under the weight of the two guards.

Steve doesn't have time to be shocked before he redirects himself to the newly formed hole. The men groan on the floor as he leaps out and the woman shouts after him as he turns back to try to get his bearings. It’s then that he realises the room isn’t even a real room. It’s fake, like a movie set.

His breath catches for half-a-second, panic trying to grip his throat at the undeniable reality that everything is wrong and he doesn’t know where he is and he has to get out right now. (And he’s alive. How is he alive? How did Hydra find him—?)

There's a set of double doors across from the fake room and he goes for them.

Get out get out get out—

As he runs, he can hear the woman calling for more guards, her voice projecting over some sort of radio. The repetition of 'Code Thirteen' echoes numbly in his ears, almost drowned out by the sound of his own frantic heartbeat.

Getoutgetoutgetout—

There are dozens of Hydra soldiers waiting in the hall outside the doors, and his heart stutters at the sight of them. He knows he only has a few moments before the element of surprise wears off and they start to open fire and he doesn’t have his shield.

His shoes skid as he turns, desperate to get away from them. He isn’t in a bunker like he’d been expecting and his eyes are drawn to the windows next to him that show an outside world. A way out.

Shouts echo down the hall after him but no shots ring out. He’s not sure why they haven’t tried to shoot him yet, but he’s not complaining. His eyes catch on a door that looks like it might lead outside and he makes a break for it. There’s a soldier guarding the exit but he takes him down with a few quick punches, his breath coming out in gasps as he shoves his way through the doors.

He flinches as sunlight hits his eyes. He’s practiced at shaking that off thanks to the serum and he wastes no time in sprinting full tilt away from the building. As he runs, he expects to find more soldiers waiting for him, ready to fight and drag him back inside.

Instead, he finds actual civilians. People in unfamiliar clothing stare at him like he’s the weirdest thing they have seen today. For a second he’s taken off guard, his legs continuing to run automatically while his brain stutters to a halt. His eyes dart around jerkily, part of him wondering if maybe Hydra had built a more elaborate set than he’d first thought.

Is he in an Axis country? Everything is… wrong. The cars, the air, the buildings, the people—

But he doesn't have time. His brain slams back on in full force as he remembers the agents behind him and the pressing need to get away. His breath squeezes in his chest as he runs and tries to figure out what his game plan is.

He needs to get away, that much is clear. He needs a safe place to regroup. Plan. Maybe even find a way to contact the Commandos or Peggy. That thought sends him off, remembering her voice over the radio. She probably thinks he's dead, because he was but she will know what to do and why everything is wrong wrong wrong.

His feet pound on the pavement as he continues to run, but he doesn't get far. The wrongness just keeps getting worse. Everything around him is so bright and loud but bits and pieces almost look like Time Square and— he— what—?

Something dangerously close to hysteria spikes in his chest and he stumbles to a halt in the middle of a giant city square. He stares in mute incomprehension at everything around him because he literally has no idea what he’s even looking at, let alone what he’s doing, or where to go, or what is going on.

The streets are packed, bright lights flashing and colourful scenes flowing across the billboards like water. The cars look sleeker and smoother than what he’s used to but there’s a part of his brain that insists there’s something familiar about these streets.

Something he can almost see, but can’t quite get the right angle. Like trying to decipher a badly developed photograph.

Tires screech behind him and doors slam as black cars pull up and box him in. Steve whips around, his heart-rate skyrocketing in response. He’s trapped, weaponless and alone and lost and— and everything looks wrong and he's alive.

"At ease soldier!"

Steve spins around at the sharp voice, his heart in his throat and his nerves on a hair-trigger.

Behind him, a coloured man with an eyepatch stands stiffly, watching him coolly.

Panic flutters in Steve’s chest as the man walks forward, his brain helpfully reminding him that he’s surrounded and he has no idea what is happening anymore and— He shoves it down, holding onto his resolve with the last shreds of his sanity.

He can’t afford to look like he’s falling apart. Not when he doesn’t know if this is Hydra or not. He can handle this. He can handle this. He just needs a moment.

In front of him, the man is calm and confident, and a small part of the soldier in Steve recognises and is desperate for the commanding air he exudes. Around him, the soldiers and the cars blur into the background. Steve is only vaguely aware of their attempts at crowd control as the man begins to speak to him.

"Look I'm sorry about that little show back there but…" The man pauses and Steve becomes aware of how quickly he's breathing, his chest moving noticeably. "We thought it best to break it to you slowly."

Steve tries to control his breathing (or at least make it a little less obvious) as a dozen possibilities flash in his head. Something sick and foreboding settles in his stomach.

"Break what?" he asks, because there's nothing else to say, and because he's desperate for answers. Even though the part of him that is busy quietly panicking in the back of his mind is completely terrified of what he might find.

The man looks at him for a second, as if debating his next words, before he opens his mouth. "You've been asleep Cap." He pauses again before continuing. "For almost seventy years."

There’s a moment of silence, the whole world growing distant as Steve tries to process that.

It's… almost as if Steve is watching himself from the outside, the sounds around him morphing into simple noise and the light filtering through to him second-hand. On the outside, his breathing slows for a second, as a small rational part of his brain is satisfied, finally having an explanation for the intense wrongness surrounding him.

But then the rest catches up and a cold sweat breaks out over his body, his breath catches.

Seventy years.

He can’t even— he can’t even comprehend that— What does that mean? He— He gives an aborted shake of his head because no. Just no. He accepted death and now they're telling him— Now he's supposed to believe—

The man's expression doesn't change and Steve drags in a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

Seventy years. Seventy years. It's too much to even think about. Not even an hour ago he'd been on a plane making deathrow plans with Peggy and now— His brain freezes in horror as something occurs to him, the realisation rising out of the murky depths of everything else. Peggy isn't here. He’d just been talking to her but it's been seventy years now and Peggy isn't here which probably means—

"You gonna be okay?"

No. No, he's not going to be okay because, because...

But he can’t say that. He can’t— He’s alone here, if what the man had said is true. And he doesn't trust the man. Not yet. Not after the fake room and soldiers. The ones still surrounding him.

He can't afford to fall apart here, not when he suddenly has to find his footing in a foreign world he knows nothing about. A small autopilot part of his mind kicks in and pushes away his mind-numbing shock long enough to form coherent sentences, something innocent, something safe—

"Yeah, I just— I had a date."

A wave of sadness crashes down on him at his admission, and he presses his lips together, his throat constricting as the first wave of grief hits him. His mind scrambles to come to grips with what he’d just learned, acutely aware that he’s being watched. He’d— seventy years—

He swallows and clenches his jaw. When he’d taken the plane down he hadn’t… he hadn’t been expecting to make it home but now— now it’s been seventy years, and home is unrecognisable and he’d— He’d… lost.

First, he’d lost Bucky, and now… now everyone. If this man is to be believed, and this isn't some sort of drug-induced dream or final throes of death then—

He'd lost everything.

The world blurs around him and his head spins. His breathing is too fast again and he thinks he might be shaking, but he can’t even concentrate on controlling it because—

The man is speaking again, his voice rising above the cacophony. Steve’s brain latches onto his words, desperate for something to ground itself amid the sudden storm he’d been thrown into.

"I know this is quite a shock," the man says smoothly as he gestures towards one of the black cars behind him. "But if you come with us, we can help you."

At the offer, the world snaps back into focus, Steve’s senses kick up a notch as he tries to stabilise himself. Everything becomes too loud and too bright. He’s hyper-aware of the soldiers and the cars surrounding him, their presence crawling on his skin like ants as he straightens his shoulders defensively.

In front of him, the man remains standing, watching him with a patient, calm gaze. As he stares back, Steve slowly comes to the realisation of how little choice he has right now.

This man might be Hydra, or he might not be, but either way, he did help set up that fake room. For all Steve knows, getting into that car with him might be a death sentence. But it’s been seventy years.

He believes that, looking around the square that might be Time Square.

He has nowhere else to go. He doesn't even know where to start. He's completely lost in this new world. He knows no one, he has no friends, no allies, and no shield.

Steve can feel a familiar panic claw at his chest, but he shoves it down. He holds onto a cold, numb acceptance by the skin of his teeth.

Does it really matter what he chooses now? He wasn't supposed to wake up. He’d accepted that going down. There had been fear and pain, but he’d known it was the only way to save his home. To be ripped from such a headspace and thrust into this bustling, flashing, alien world… He feels like he’s still dead.

In the end, he’s a soldier (because that’s the easiest thing to be right now, and he’s pretty sure he would crack open as anything else.) This… is simply his next mission.

He blinks and drags that stoic discipline towards himself with more desperation than he’d like to admit.

Everything is too big, too much to deal with right now, but he can deal with missions. He can handle that, one step at a time. He knows that whoever this eyepatch-man is, he is his only option right now. So… that’s what he will do.

And, if it turns out poorly, well… He grits his teeth and steps towards the man.

He’s fought his way out of corners before, and if he can’t… he feels like a deadman walking anyway.

oOo

They get into the car.

Steve sits in the back, facing the man who introduces himself as Nick Fury, director of SHIELD. The inside of the car is dark and the seats are cold underneath him, the leather stiff and expensive.

Before the car has a chance to start, Fury reaches over his shoulder and pulls on a strap with a metal buckle connected to the wall of the car. Steve watches bewildered as he pulls it down and towards himself, attaching it into the seat next to him with a click. That done, he sits back and seems to look expectantly at Steve, leaving him feeling like he's missing out on something.

"Do you know what a seat belt is?" Fury asks, after a moment.

Steve only blinks tiredly at him. Fury shifts, the strap moving with him.

"We'll have to check when those were invented," he mutters before gesturing to a similar strap sitting next to Steve's shoulder. "It's a safety device," he explains. "Legally everyone has to wear one now."

Steve tries to come up with a response to that, but can't think of anything to say.

What do you say when you've barely spent ten minutes in the future and are already being bombarded by just how much you've missed? Instead, he reaches over and pulls on the strap, a little unsure at how much force he should apply. It slides out of a slot in the car wall. He manages not to break it and he attempts to pull it across his body like he'd seen the director do.

"You click it into the buckle here," Fury explains, demonstrating with his own seat belt.

Steve supposes it’s a bit like a safety harness in a plane, although he’s never seen one in a car before. It takes some fumbling before Steve is finally able to secure his seat belt. The buckle engages with a satisfying click.

He sits back, feeling drained.

Fury knocks on the tinted glass behind him and the car starts moving. The windows of the rest of the car are tinted black too, dulling the world outside into a grey washed out landscape. Steve finds he doesn’t really mind.

Numbness is beginning to take over again. As the car moves smoothly under him he can’t help feeling vaguely like he's floating. His eyes glance blankly over the moving scenery past the windows and he tries not to pay too much attention to the view outside. The little he does see only adds to the anxiety twisting in his stomach.

Seventy years. How is he even supposed to—?

Across from him, Fury leans forward, and Steve pulls his eyes toward him, doing his best to focus.

"You've been staying at a SHIELD facility in New York," Fury tells him. "We're on our way to another one now."

"SHIELD?" Steve asks, exhausted.

"It stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division,” Fury rattles off. “It's an organisation that grew out of the SSR.” He looks up at Steve, his gaze watchful. "It was founded by Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark, and Agent Margret Carter after the war ended."

The emotional response to those names is too complex to deal with, so Steve just nods. Each name hits his stomach like a rock, and the rest is swallowed up by the casual reference to the end of the war. Of course. It must have ended. Years ago now.

There's only one question he can manage.

“Did we win?”

“Yes.”

Relief. Exhaustion. Steve closes his eyes and turns his head towards the window. The cityscape rushes by. Grey and empty.

A small part of him wants to ask Fury what happened to Peggy after all these years. If SHIELD has him, and if Peggy had founded SHIELD… then he would have expected Peggy to have been the one to wake him up.

Except. Except it has been seventy years. He doesn’t need to do the math to know that there’s likely only one reason why Peggy—or Howard, or anybody that he'd known back then—aren’t here. And that isn't a reason he is prepared to hear out loud right now.

Instead, he sits and listens (and tries not to look like his whole world is falling apart, simply by waking up) as Fury outlines what is going to happen to him.

"The doctors said that you should be fully recovered," he says. "But they want to do a full check-up now that you're awake."

Steve nods. Fury seems to give him an analytical look, as if he expected a verbal response, but Steve feels too numb to care at this point.

"After that,” Fury continues. “We'll show you where you can stay.” His gaze appears to soften into something almost gentle for a brief second. "Over the next little while we'll work on getting you caught up, Captain. Figure out what to do next."

Steve nods again, his stomach churning as he turns his head to stare blankly out the window. Part of him feels a little relief at the fact that there is actually a plan for him to follow right now, but the rest of him still feels swamped by everything that has just been dumped on him. He swallows and doesn’t bother to tell Fury that he really has no idea what he wants to do next.

If he’s being honest… he's never really known.

He hadn’t expected this. He'd spent his whole life as a poor, sick kid who didn’t have much of a chance at seeing his 30th birthday.

He can still remember when he had been eleven, sick with whooping cough and overhearing the doctor take his Ma aside and gravely explain to her that her son probably wasn't going to live out the year. Let alone see adulthood.

It’s hard to have long-term goals with that sort of knowledge.

A hysterical sort of giggle bubbles up in his throat and he grits his teeth, pushing it down.

The doctor wasn't even wrong, he thinks sardonically, biting the inside of his cheek. Even after the serum I still managed to get myself killed before thirty.

Except he hadn't. He'd accepted he was going to die, he thought he died, and he hadn't. And he can't think of the words to explain to Fury that he had never expected to live this long. He was never going to be the one who was going to outlive anybody. And yet… here he is.

So no. He doesn’t know what he wants to do next.

Anything he could have possibly done after the war has probably been erased by time. If his encounter with the seat belt has taught him anything it is that he is completely lost in this new world. Any of the people who would have made it worth it have disappeared too.

He clenches his jaw and swallows, continuing to gaze blindly at the tinted window. Washed-out buildings glide past the moving car. Inside, the seat belt cuts into his neck.

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

The doctor check-up is... overwhelming to say the least.

They arrive at a nondescript brick building and Steve gets the impression that they enter through the backway as Fury leads him inside. There are two doctors and one nurse in the room that Fury escorts him to, two men and a woman, all dressed in white coats, and all of them looking inexplicably happy to see him.

"Hello Captain Rogers," the woman says, stepping forward to greet him with a handshake. "My name is Doctor Lee, and these are my colleagues, Doctor Adams, and Nurse Shamoon." She indicates an older man with white hair and a younger brown-skinned man.

"How do you do?" Steve returns politely, accepting the handshake with a small blink of surprise.

He’d been expecting the woman to be a nurse, like his mother, but obviously he had been mistaken. His eyes flick over the other staff in the room, and he wonders why SHIELD had felt the need to give him three.

In front of him, Doctor Lee holds his handshake and seems to smile at him for a beat too long, before finally directing him to a hospital bed further back in the room.

Once seated, Steve breathes in and rubs his hands along his pants uneasily, watching the doctors flutter around the room. They all remain professional when they look at him, but they move around him as if they can't quite believe he's real. The overall effect leaves him feeling a little too much like some kind of zoo animal.

"Okay, Captain." Doctor Lee is still smiling politely at him as she sits on a rolling stool to his left. "We'll start with some basic questions and move on from there," She pulls out a clipboard and grabs what looks like a ballpoint pen.

Steve’s eyes widen slightly at the sight, and he tracks the pen in her hand with a small sense of wonder. He's only ever seen a ballpoint pen a few times before, the writing tool having only recently been introduced into the war effort. Howard had had one, but the majority of the pens had been used by pilots because they worked better at high altitudes than fountain pens.

Steve had never had the chance to actually use one before, and it feels strange to see one so casually now.

"Captain?"

He blinks and glances back at the doctor who is looking at him expectantly. "Sorry, what?" He swallows back a wave of embarrassment, all thoughts of pens forced from his mind.

Doctor Lee smiles gently and Steve’s fingers dig into his knees. "I asked if you would prefer if Director Fury stayed or left," she repeats.

"Oh, um." He winces internally at the filler word, his mind flashing back to the countless hours of elocution lessons he'd sat through once he'd begun touring as Captain America. Pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth he glances up to the door where Fury is leaning, his arms folded.

He rubs his hand against his knee in indecision. He doesn't really know Fury, and he doesn't know how much he can trust the man, but he doesn't particularly want to be alone in here either. Fury is literally the only person he knows right now, and he isn't quite sure he can handle being left alone in a room full of strangers.

"He can stay," he decides. Then, realising that Fury is the director of a seemingly large organisation he adds, "If he can, if he has nothing else to..." He trails off and presses his lips together, sitting rigidly on the table, his guts squirming with awkwardness.

Doctor Lee nods and smiles. "Of course," she says and motions for Fury to close the door. "Alright," she says in the new, relative privacy, picking up her clipboard. "Let's get started."

SHIELD, as Doctor Lee explains, already has Steve's medical records from the army. "But we'll ask you everything again, just for our own records," she tells him, her pen poised over her clipboard.

At Steve's nod, she begins. "State your full name please."

Steve settles back, preparing himself for a familiar ritual. "Steven Grant Rogers."

Doctor Lee scribbles that down and he privately thinks she could have already had that one filled out. She moves to the next question.

"Age?" She glances up at him. "Minus the years in the ice of course."

His heart skips a beat and Steve swallows trying not to claw at his knees. It hadn’t occurred to him to count those years until she had said something. He breathes in.

"Twenty-six."

Behind Doctor Lee, further back in the room, one of the other doctors, Doctor Adams he believes, startles athis response. He inclines his head slightly towards Nurse Shamoon.

"I didn't realise he was so young.” Steve hears him mutter under his breath.

Steve fights to keep his eyes from darting towards the two men. As of right now, he's pretty sure they don't think he heard them, since most people forget about the super-hearing aspect of the serum. He doesn’t exactly like to advertise that particular side-effect. It had saved his life more than once during the war.

He breathes in and stares at Doctor Lee, trying to focus on her instead of the fact that he doesn’t really feel that young right now.

"Blood type?" is the next question, and he takes in a steadying breath.

"O," he replies.

Doctor Lee looks up at him and seems to be waiting for something. Whatever it is, he can’t fathom, and he stares back at her in growing confusion.

"Positive or negative?" she asks finally, her pen hovering over her paper.

The question makes no sense and Steve's tongue curls in his mouth, his eyes darting around the room. "I… don't know what you mean," he says.

Doctor Lee's expression flickers for a moment but she relaxes quickly enough. "No matter," she says with a reassuring smile. "We have to take a blood sample anyway. We'll find out then."

Steve nods at her, trying to pull his lips into an accepting smile. He presses his hands on his knees and continues to sit with his shoulders straight and stiff. He can’t even begin to imagine what with words ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ could possibly have to do with blood, and he really really hopes that the technique for getting blood samples hasn’t drastically changed over the last seventy years.

In front of him, Doctor Lee shifts in her seat and glances back down towards her clipboard. "Any allergies?"

He shakes his head. Not anymore.

"Okay." Doctor Lee relaxes and smiles at him, the wide grin causing Steve to abruptly realise that no one else in the room is smiling. His skin crawls and his fingers dig into his knees.

"The next part–” She doesn’t stop smiling, and he wishes she would, the sight of her cheery expression seems far away and way too close at the same time. "–has to do with how you’re feeling today." She switches out the papers on her clipboard and looks up at him, her pen once again at the ready.

"Are you in any pain right now?"

"No," Steve replies reflexively, before he even has a chance to confirm that he indeed isn’t in any pain. (For a moment he remembers the excruciating pain the crash, from only hours ago, but he shoves it down, ignoring the twinge in his leg.)

He isn’t in pain, but it doesn’t exactly matter much. Ever since the serum, he’s found it hard to catalogue pain, or at least, properly register it. Too many times he’d found himself ignoring that sort of thing, because even if he is in pain, he knows from experience that pain medication won’t work and he'll heal fast enough that it usually isn’t worth mentioning.

Not that Bucky had agreed much with that sentiment.

He nearly gasps at the abrupt reminder of his friend— his dead friend, and he tenses, trying to shield his reaction and force his thoughts away. Around him, the lights in the room seem to get brighter, and his hearing sharpens until he can hear the overlapping cacophony of the heartbeats next to him.

His own heartbeat picks up at the overstimulation while he battles with his brain. Trying not to fall into a spiral of painful memories because Bucky died two weeks ago. It’s still fresh. It still hurts and he still forgets about it. Expects to look up and find Bucky on his left, sporting a cheeky grin.

But Bucky isn’t here. No one is. Steve lets out a slow breath, trying to suppress the sudden urge to vomit, or flee the room.

"Any nausea or dizziness?" Doctor Lee asks him. He almost flinches at the volume of her voice, but he latches onto her words in an effort to stabilise himself.

"No ma’am," he replies tightly, busy trying to get his senses under control.

He discounts the bout of vertigo that he experienced upon finding out that he had woken up 70 years in the future. The doctors are trying to determine if he is sick from the ice, and his dizziness then had nothing to do with the ice.

Doctor Lee writes down his response as he breathes in slowly and concentrates on the feel of the fabric of his pants beneath his fingers. As he focuses, his other senses ease off slightly, and he relaxes a little as he finally manages to tune-out the storm of heartbeats around him.

He breathes out. Super-hearing has its uses, but it’s often overwhelming.

Doctor Lee is smiling at him again and Steve tries to focus on her. "You'll have to forgive us, Captain," she says pleasantly. "We've never treated a patient who’s been frozen like you before, and with your serum thrown into the mix, it's difficult to know what to expect."

He tries to offer her his own smile in return, his face feeling brittle as it moves. "The army doctors felt the same way," he reassures, before pressing his lips together, his chest squeezing as he suddenly remembers that all those doctors are probably dead now.

Doctor Lee beams at him, not appearing to notice his mood shift. "Well,” she says easily. “For now, we'll continue with the rest of the check-up and keep a close eye on you for the next few days. Let us know if you have any concerns." At his nod, she goes back to her clipboard. "How is your appetite?"

He shifts, unsure how to answer. He hasn't exactly had a chance to eat yet. "I don't know."

Doctor Lee nods sagely, casting him a glance before looking at her board. "Do you feel hungry or thirsty right now?"

He licks his lips and— the water hits his face with a sharp slap. It's freezing and he coughs trying to push himself up. His ribs scream at him as he shifts and his shivering is making it difficult to move. His fingers are already numb. He breathes harsh clouds into the air and another wave of water splashes over him, setting off a coughing fit as he chokes—

"No," he says firmly, pulling himself squarely back to the present. His hands have migrated from his knees to the bed sheets next to him, and he pushes down on the mattress, trying to stay present.

Doctor Lee nods distractedly as she writes something on her clipboard. "Okay, we're not sure how your body will react to eating or drinking after so long in the ice," she says before glancing up to make sure he’s following her. "SHIELD had you on a feeding tube before you showed signs of waking up. Start with simple foods and work your way up. If you have any problems, let us know immediately.”

"Okay," he agrees, trying to keep his voice even as another host of problems opens up to him at her words. Special diet or not, Steve is suddenly reminded that he doesn’t even know if he can afford food. He’s been dead for years; he doubts he has any money and he has no idea how to go about getting some now.

His chest feels tight and Steve glances at Fury, still standing like a shadow by the door. Fury had said that he could stay somewhere with SHIELD for now, so hopefully food is covered in that. He swallows and notes that Fury hadn't mentioned a fee for the doctors either, he'd simply said they were SHIELD's. Perhaps SHIELD has other resources that he can use.

"Your metabolism is faster now, because of the serum correct?" Doctor Lee inquires, drawing his attention back to her as she flips back through several pages on her clipboard.

"Yes, ma'am," he responds. About four times faster actually, meaning that even though he'd been given double rations during the war, he'd realistically been surviving on half of what he needed. He was given extra D-rations every day to tide him over and he'd managed it. Being hungry isn’t a new thing for him.

Doctor Lee nods at his response before moving on to the next question. "How have you been sleeping?" He blinks at her and it dawns on him that she’s obviously checking off some sort of list of required questions, because he has yet to have slept since he's woken up.

He settles back. "Fine," he replies, neglecting to mention the fact that in the weeks between Bucky's death and his own, he'd probably slept no more than a few hours a night, sometimes not at all.

It's fine, he thinks, pressing his lips together. The serum makes it easier to go longer without sleep. Sort of.

He very carefully does not think about the fact that just because he can go longer without sleep, does not mean he should. In his experience, the serum likes a solid five or more hours of sleep a night (although he could function with less). And if he stays awake for much longer than a week at a time without sleep, then, well... last time he'd woken up with Bucky's pissed off face inches from his because apparently, he'd passed out in a snow drift.

"Nightmares?"

"No," he replies slowly, suddenly glad that he hasn’t had a chance to sleep yet and disprove his claim. Technically he has yet to have had any here, which means he isn’t lying, and he doesn’t have to admit to anything he doesn’t want to.

Nightmares aren’t a big deal anyways. Everyone has them even if nobody will say so. It’s just one of the things you quietly don't mention when the soldier next to you jerks awake, or walks around for days with bags the size of quarters under his eyes.

Doctor Lee nods at his response and looks over her paper. "Okay, well, we're not sure how your sleep will be affected by your time in the ice.” His skin crawls every time she mentions the ice. He doesn’t want to think about it, but she keeps bringing it up. He represses a shiver.

“So, for now, we recommend trying to stick to a sleep schedule." Doctor Lee glances up at him to make sure he's listening. "Even if you don't fall asleep right away, it's important to go to bed and get up around the same time. That way your brain can learn what time it needs to go to sleep."

"Okay," he agrees, although he privately balks at the idea. Sleep hasn't been coming easily lately.

Doctor Lee moves on and they shift gears to Steve's physical exam. Doctor Lee pulls out yet another sheet of paper for her clipboard, and the other doctors finally join in as they pull out equipment and direct Steve over to a scale by the back wall.

"Two hundred and twenty pounds," Doctor Adams recites to her.

It’s the same as Steve had weighed before, and it feels… wrong to him that he could go in and out of the ice with nearly no physical evidence whatsoever.

They measure him, and for a second it doesn’t feel as though the body he’s standing in is actually his. His focus pulls back as though part of him is still in the ice somewhere— or perhaps still five foot four and asthmatic, getting measured before the serum.

Steve follows numbly as they lead him back to the bed and give him a thermometer to stick under his tongue. Or, well, he assumes it's a thermometer. This one seems to be automated somehow, and it beeps unexpectedly when it's finished.

Doctor Adams checks his throat and ears next, (and what do you know, otoscopes haven't changed much in 70 years) before he shines a small penlight in his eyes.

“Your pupil response seems to be normal,” he assures. “Any vision problems?"

Steve shakes his head.

At the front of the room, Doctor Lee marks something down on her clipboard and Doctor Adams shifts forward, removing the stethoscope from around his neck. "Next I need to listen to your heart and lungs," he says. "It'd be best if you took off your shirt for this so I can—"

Steve is already tugging up his shirt before Doctor Adams can even finish his sentence. He's far too familiar with this procedure to be bothered. And right now, automatic reactions are the only thing holding him together. Besides, it's not like it’s the first time he's sat shirtless in front of a room full of strangers.

Of course, last time, he’d been a lot smaller.

As he lifts the shirt he becomes consciously aware for the first time of his dog tags. The familiar chain jingles around his neck as he pulls the shirt off, the metal warm against his skin.

Something eases in his chest at the sound and he breathes in, the tags familiar, and his. He reaches up and removes them gently, clutching the tags carefully in his fist so that they won’t be in the way. He sets the shirt on the bed next to him, but he hangs onto the tags, the thought of losing them setting off bursts of anxiety in his stomach.

Once he’s ready, Doctor Adams leans in. The metal is sharp and cold as it touches his chest and Steve tenses uncomfortably.

He holds himself still with gritted teeth while the doctor listens to his heart, lungs and stomach with his stethoscope, which, thankfully, doesn't look too different from the ones that Steve is used to. After instructing him to breathe deeply a few times, Doctor Adams leans back and nods in satisfaction before telling him that he can put his shirt back on.

Steve has no idea how his pulse doesn't raise an eyebrow, but he doesn't argue.

Steve replaces the tags first, and they jingle sharply as they resettle around his neck. As he moves to grab his shirt, his eyes catch on the red imprint his tags had left in his palm. He blinks and rubs his hand on his legs, trying to smooth it away. He hadn’t realised he’d been gripping them so tightly.

Next, the doctors pull out what seems to be a modern version of a blood pressure cuff, and Steve stares at it as they wrap it around his arm. Unlike the pump ones he’s used to, this one appears to be electric, and it shrinks automatically to the width of his arm at the press of a button.

Silence settles over them as all the doctors stare intently at a box attached to the cuff, and Steve mentally recites his rank and number in an effort to remain calm while he waits for whatever they’re looking for. Finally, the cuff beeps and depressurizes, and Doctor Lee scribbles down some numbers on her clipboard.

"Looking good," she says, looking up at him with a smile.

Steve tries to return it and hopes he isn't grimacing. It’s at this point that he fully realises that he really wants to leave. He does not want to be here, being poked and prodded at by doctors as they try to figure out if he’s resurrected properly.

Get it together, Rogers.

All the foreign tech floating around is making him antsy. So when Nurse Shamoon sits down next to him holding a small square shaped device, Steve can’t help eying him a little warily.

"Okay," Nurse Shamoon says, addressing Steve for the first time, his voice coloured slightly by a Middle Eastern accent. "Right now, we're going to test your hemoglobin and blood sugar levels, so I'm going to need your hand."

Steve chews on the inside of his cheek and eyes the foreign equipment beside the nurse before slowly extending his hand. The quicker they get this over with, the quicker he can get out of here, or, at least… he hopes.

In front of him, Nurse Shamoon smiles and Steve tries to relax. "Thank you,” he says, resting Steve's arm on the table and ripping open a white packet. Almost instantly, the strong scent of alcohol fills the room and Steve's nostrils twitch.

"This is an alcohol wipe," Nurse Shamoon explains as he manipulates Steve's hand so that he can scrub the side of his middle finger with the cold cloth. Steve watches the procedure with slight apprehension but he’s glad Shamoon is explaining what’s happening. The SSR doctors would often forget to do that.

Next Nurse Shamoon picks up a small square device. "This is a lancet," he tells Steve. "We'll use this to prick your finger and then we'll use this—" He gestures to the machine on the table, "—to measure your blood levels."

Steve swallows dryly and nods. As grateful as he is for the explanation, he can’t help feeling achingly lost as he watches everything. The lancet doesn’t look familiar at all. Steve finds his free hand pressing into his thigh, his shoulders stiff as he waits for Nurse Shamoon to continue.

The prick is swift and sharp, and a small drop of blood beads up to the surface of his skin. Nurse Shamoon squeezes his finger and wipes away the first several drops of blood with a square of gauze before finally grabbing some sort of plastic tab from the device on the table and letting his blood collect in the tip.

Steve follows his movements intently. Once his blood is collected, Nurse Shamoon clicks the tab into the device on the table, and folds up a square of gauze to press to his finger.

The device on the table beeps and Steve is tense to the point where he almost flinches. His eyes are wide as he watches Shamoon remove the tab and throw it and the lancet into a small yellow container on the table marked Biohazard. That done, he pulls out a small circular band-aid and turns back to Steve.

Steve doesn’t need the bandage. But he lets Shamoon put it on with no protest, eyeing it thoughtfully. It's actually pretty familiar.

"Blood levels are good." Doctor Lee reports suddenly because apparently, the machine on the table can tell her that sort of thing. Shamoon leans back, and Steve finds his hands suddenly cold without the other man holding them. He swallows and clenches his fists, trying to focus on the next procedure the doctors want to try.

"Now we're going to take a blood sample," Shamoon tells him as Doctor Adams comes over with several empty vials.

At least giving blood samples is familiar for Steve. The army had taken several from him after his transformation, and the procedure doesn’t seem to have changed much over the last seventy years.

There’s at least eight vials to fill, which seems excessive but then again, he has no idea what new tests there are now. Steve goes back to mentally reciting his rank and number as he waits for it to finish.

He gets a pressure bandage for his elbow for his trouble. Steve knows from experience that the bandage is nearly pointless, because of how small the wound is and how quickly he heals, but he doesn’t say anything.

Of course, during the war, he’d often refused bandages for wounds like these, since there was no sense in wasting their meagre supplies on a wound that wouldn't be there in less than a couple hours. SHIELD seems to have plenty resources though and the war is theoretically over so—

His brain gives a mental lurch and he has to fight to keep from physically jerking as he realises that he actually doesn’t know what had happened with the war. They won. That's all he knows. He doesn't even have a date.

Steve clenches his jaw and tries to breathe in evenly, his hands pressing into his legs again. He’d been too distracted by everything before to wonder about the war, but now he glances up to where Fury is waiting by the door and presses his lips together. When this is all over, he’s going to need to get some things clarified.

"Okay next–" Steve breathes in and tries to remind himself to be patient as he looks over to Nurse Shamoon. He needs to be cleared from medical if he wants to get out of here. He needs to cooperate. "--we need to update your vaccines,” Shamoon says. “You've had a few before, right?"

"Yes sir," Steve replies, his mind flashing back to his medical record. "Smallpox, diphtheria, and tetanus. Oh, and the army gave me one for yellow fever, whooping cough, cholera, typhus, typhoid and influenza."

The influenza vaccine had been brand new. An exciting innovation to hopefully prevent another flu pandemic.

Everyone seems to pause at his response, although Steve has no idea why, and Shamoon stares at him for a second too long before Doctor Adams finally nods.

"Oh right, smallpox," he says, drawing Steve’s attention to him. "We don't do that one anymore."

He blinks, his mouth falling open slightly in shock. "What?" he says, his mind reeling. Next to him, Nurse Shamoon lets out a chuckle and motions for Doctor Adams to hand him several small vials.

"Smallpox was eradicated worldwide in... the 80s I believe?" he says, and Steve blinks open-mouthed at him.

Of all the things he’d expected from the future, he hadn't even imagined— He’d never thought— "Really?" he breathes, and Shamoon nods proudly.

"Yup,” he says, his face breaking out into a genuine smile. “And we have several new vaccines now. We can give them all today."

"Wow.” For the first time that day, Steve actually feels like smiling. He sits up slightly, his shoulders suddenly feeling lighter. “That would be great,” he says, and he means it.

It doesn't matter that he probably can't get sick now because of the serum. If the modern world had developed ways to prevent even more diseases, he’s not about to say no.

"Good," Shamoon says. “We have enough vaccines that we’ll need to use both your arms and legs.” He gestures at his pants. “I’ll pull the curtain so you can get undressed, and I can get you a gown if you want, but we’ll have to move it anyways when we give the shots, so it’s really up to you.”

“I’m fine,” Steve says quickly, before his eyes flick over to where Doctor Lee is standing.

He’s used to having no privacy from doctors and he wants to get out of here as quickly as possible, so he’d rather not deal with the hassle of a gown. But he’s glad that Nurse Shamoon is willing to pull the curtain and give him some semblance of privacy.

The curtain rattles as it gets pulled across and Shamoon steps out, letting Steve change without anyone watching him. He folds his clothes up nimbly, instinctively lining them up like he had during military training, before his hand pauses uncertainly over his dog tags. After a moment of debate he decides to leave them on. They shouldn’t get in the way, and the thought of losing them still sets him on edge, so he’d rather not risk it.

Once he’s ready, Doctor Adams and Nurse Shamoon come through the curtain carrying various small vials and packages. They leave the curtain drawn, which Steve is grateful for, since he doesn't really feel like being 3/4's naked in front of Fury and Doctor Lee. But it leaves him feeling cramped, both men encroaching on his space.

"Alright," Shamoon sits down on the stool, his knee brushing Steve's as Doctor Adams finishes arranging the vials on the table. "We have about ten different needles to give you today. You should feel a slight poke."

'Slight poke' is doctor speak for 'we're-going-to-poke-you-with-a-needle-and-it-will-hurt', but Steve doesn't mind. After getting poked by dozens of needles inside a metal casket, a single small needle doesn’t seem like much. Especially since these needles are tiny compared to what he's used to.

"You shouldn't have any adverse reactions to the vaccines," Nurse Shamoon reassures him as he begins the first injections. "But if you have any concerns, just let us know."

Next to him, Doctor Adams stays standing over them, a sudden scowl on his face. "And they don't cause awe-tism," he mutters sourly, before beginning to prep the next vial. Steve blinks in confusion at him, but doesn't say anything. Whatever awe-tism is, it seems to be a touchy subject.

The doctors don’t seem to mind his silence. Over the next few minutes, Shamoon administers almost a dozen different vaccines, explaining each one before he injects it. Apparently, people can now vaccinate against measles, mumps, rubella, haemophilus influenzae type b (or Hib), hepatitis A and B, chicken pox, pneumococcal, rotavirus, and polio.

"You have a polio vaccine?" Steve sputters. "That's amazing!"

Both Doctor Adams and Doctor Shamoon light up with twin grins of pride, and Steve gets the impression that they are both genuinely pleased by his reaction.

He can’t help feeling like grinning too. He can still remember the polio epidemics that appeared every summer and how some kids just never came back to class because they'd gotten sick. His Ma had always gotten a pinched look about her whenever she looked at him during polio season and he was forbidden from public pools. He knew that they had both been terrified that he'd come down with the illness.

Somehow, polio had been the one thing that he'd managed not to catch, and now they have a vaccine for it.

"When did they make it?" he asks, while Doctor Adams prepares the last of the needles.

"The 50's I think," he responds lightly, casually referring to a whole decade that Steve hadn't even thought of, let alone lived through like he should have.

"Polio outbreaks are way down too," Nurse Shamoon informs him helpfully, distracting him away from the thought of seven missed decades.

His hand touches the next injection spot on Steve's leg and his skin prickles. It's practice from poking and prodding in the army that keeps Steve still. The touching doesn't bother him except— Except he's practically naked and Dr. Adams is still standing over him and every touch raises goosebumps on his skin.

He's cold but his armpits are starting to sweat. His muscles are tense and sore, making the needles hurt more. He hopes no one notices.

Nurse Shamoon wipes his skin with an alcohol wipe, cold tingling Steve's skin. "I went to a conference on it recently,” he continues. “I think we had under 700 cases of polio in 2011."

He looks at Steve's shocked face for a moment and adds as an afterthought, "Worldwide."

"Worldwide?" Steve echoes in disbelief, that bit of information succeeding in distracting him from the year two thousand and eleven.

Doctor Adams nods happily, handing Nurse Shamoon another vial. "Yup. We're working towards eradicating the disease worldwide."

That is... almost incomprehensible. Steve nods dazedly at them, trying to wrap his mind around it. "That's incredible," he murmurs as Nurse Shamoon finishes up with the last vaccine, influenza again, because apparently you need a new one every year.

Steve is left reeling at what he’s just been told, and he sits stunned as the doctors gather their things and leave the curtained area so that he can get dressed. He gives his head a shake and hurries to slip his clothes back on. His injection sites pulse with low-grade pain and he steps out from behind the curtain, eyes flicking to the door.

He doesn’t sit back down. By now he’s practically itching to leave, so it’s a relief that Doctor Lee seems to think he can.

"Your vaccine sites might be sore for a few days," she warns, following him as he tries to keep from walking too fast towards the door where Fury is waiting. "If you're in pain try using a heat pack or taking an ad-ville or tie-le-nol."

He doesn't know what an ‘ad-ville’ or ‘tie-le-nol’ is, but he assumes it's some kind of medicine, presumably a painkiller. He nods absentmindedly at her and doesn't bother to mention that he metabolises painkillers too fast for them to be useful now.

She’d said they had his files. Shouldn’t she know that anyway?

"Some of your vaccines need multiple injections," Doctor Lee continues, delaying his escape for a moment longer. "So we'll be seeing you again soon to finish those up, as well as to check on how you're doing."

She smiles at him again and his stomach clenches as he has to physically force himself to stay in the room. "You have a clean bill of health for now though,” she tells him.

"Thank you, ma’am." He dips his head politely and finally turns to follow Fury out of the room.

The needle sites in his arms and legs burn with a familiar soreness and the spot on his chest where Dr. Adams had put the stethoscope still feels cold. He knows he should be grateful, but he can’t get out of there fast enough.

Even if outside the clinic doesn't feel much safer.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Fury seems to be watching him out of the corner of his eye but Steve finds he barely has the energy to keep his exhaustion off his face as Fury leads him to an elevator.

Thankfully, he’s been in elevators before, not many, but enough to recognize the lift. Of course, this one doesn't look much like the kind of elevator he's used to. Most of the ones he'd been in had wooden panelling and yellow lighting. This one is silver and industrial looking.

"Administrations floor," Fury says, leaning against the bar lining the wall.

"Confirmed," a female voice replies out of nowhere.

Steve tenses, his eyes darting around the cabin. The elevator doors close and the lift starts moving. Apparently, people don't even need to press buttons anymore and elevator operators are automatic.

Steve swallows nervously and falls into parade rest, clasping his hands behind his back, a little lower than regulation. He doesn't want to seem too tense, he just needs something to do.

This feels familiar; standing so he looks like the perfect soldier. Usually he did it when he had to meet with Command, but now he does it so Fury won’t take him back to those doctors for having a nervous breakdown.

"We're heading to my office," Fury provides as the lift continues moving upwards. "We'll be meeting with the Deputy Director of SHIELD, Maria Hill."

"Yes sir," Steve replies evenly, his eyes flickering to Fury before training back on the silver metal doors. His hands tighten behind his back as stress gnaws away at his stomach. He wishes he could be numb again, but right now all he feels is slightly ill.

They reach Fury's office, the room furnished in shades of grey and steel blue, the apparent colour scheme of the future. A bank of windows lines the back of the room behind Fury's desk, and Steve can see the New York landscape stretch out in front of him. He glances away from the foreign view and his eyes land on the strange equipment on Fury's desk.

One is a black frame of glass on a stand, like an immensely thin television, completely unlike the few he’d seen in fancy shops in Manhattan. A panel of buttons sit under the screen and he has just enough time to register a strange oval device next to the buttons before Fury directs him to one of the soft looking chairs in front of the desk.

Steve is just about seated when the door opens and a woman walks in carrying a folder. She is wearing a very form-fitting uniform with SHIELD's logo on the sleeve. It looks more like a costume one of the USO girls would wear than a uniform, but he’s aware he has no reference for fashion now. Her hair is done up in an unfamiliar but not completely foreign hairstyle and he rises quickly to greet her.

"Captain Rogers." Fury gestures to the woman. "This is Deputy Director Maria Hill."

Hill extends her hand for a handshake, so Steve returns it. "How do you do?" he asks politely.

"Good, thank you," Hill replies briskly, before walking around him and sitting down in the chair next to him. He sits as well and Fury leans back on the desk in front of them, making him feel slightly enclosed. Steve rubs his hands against his knees, his palms tacky with sweat.

"Alright, Captain Rogers," Hill starts and he turns to look at her. "Fury and I, along with the rest of SHIELD, will be helping you settle in now that you've awoken." She places the folder on her lap and clasps her hands on top of it. "Over the next little while, we'll work on getting you caught up on the history you missed and hopefully reintegrate you into society."

Steve's mouth feels dry and he swallows reflexively.

"Do you have any questions?" Hill prompts gently, leaning towards him invitingly.

Steve's eyes flicker from her to Fury and back again. "I was wondering..." He rolls his shoulders and tries to relax his tense posture. "I was hoping you could tell me what happened with the war?"

Hill blinks at him and seems to share some sort of look with Fury before turning to Steve. "Of course," she replies. "We'll prepare a file for you to look at later, but for now we can give you the basic details."

Steve nods gratefully and licks his lips nervously.

Hill shifts in her seat to get more comfortable. "Your plane went down at the beginning of March," she begins, "Hydra fell along with it and Germany surrendered in May 1945."

Steve opens his mouth in shock, but doesn't say anything. It feels... strange to think that the end of the war had been so close. The whole thing doesn’t quite seem real and he almost feels cheated, like the end of the war had just barely been snatched away from him.

"Japan surrendered in September of that year," Hill continues as he tries to process everything. "And the war ended officially on September 2nd, 1945."

Steve breathes in carefully, making sure to keep his breaths even. His tongue presses into the roof of his mouth and he very deliberately folds his hands in his lap to hide the slight tremor there. It feels... overwhelming to know that the end of the war had been so close. If he and Bucky could have just lasted a little longer... His eyes burn and he breathes in again.

"Do you have any other questions?" Hill asks.

He does. He wants to ask about Peggy, Howard, the other Commandos—how had they fared, losing two members of the team in such a short time period? Had they survived to the end of the war? He wants to ask about the black machines on Fury's desk, he wants to ask how they found him in the ice after all those years—

"What year is it?" he asks suddenly, realising that he'd never been told.

"It's 2012," Hill replies, shooting Fury another look and the world warps a little, like she’s speaking underwater.

"Ah, I—" Steve swallows against the lump in his throat. I need a moment. I need to be alone I need somewhere safe— He looks to where Fury is still leaning against his desk.

"You said you'd show me somewhere I could stay?" he asks, trying not to sound desperate.

Fury nods. "This facility has basic living quarters," he explains. "Hill can show you to one and you can stay temporarily until we can move you to a more secure location where you can recuperate."

That’s too many words. All Steve cares about is getting somewhere not here. "I'd like that now please," he requests, hoping he doesn't sound too abrupt.

"Of course." Hill stands up, clutching her folder. "If you have any other questions, let me or Fury know."

"Thank you," he says gratefully, trying to swallow down the tight feeling in his chest as he follows Hill to the door. His finger tips are damp as he wipes them on his pants and he breathes in carefully.

Just another mission, he reminds himself desperately. Just another mission.

oOo

They have to use the elevator again and this time he carefully does not jump at the strange voice responding to Hill's floor request.

"This is for you," Hill says as they ride the lift downwards, indicating the folder in her hands. "It's the floor plan of the building, along with the levels you have access to. The rest is your schedule for the next few days."

"Thank you." Steve takes the folder. The bandage on his elbow tugs uncomfortably at his skin when he bends his arm to hold it to his chest. He doesn't open it, worried his hands might start shaking if he tries to use any fine-motor skills.

"Resident quarters are on floor 2," Hill continues, she glances at her wrist and Steve realises she must be wearing some sort of watch. Usually he can hear the ticking of nearby watches and clocks—whether he wants to or not—and it's jarring not to be able to do so now, especially in such a small space. His fingers clench on the folder in his hands.

He can feel his heart pounding. He doesn’t think it’s stopped this whole time. He feels like his head is exploding. His lungs are full of water. He can’t—

The door to the elevator opens and he follows Hill out.

"It's around three o'clock right now," Hill explains. "The doctors want you to be careful with your diet, correct?"

Steve nods and doesn't bother wondering how she knows that.

"You probably don't want to deal with the cafeteria just yet—that's on floor one by the way—but I could bring you something to eat at five?"

The thought of dealing with the hustle and bustle and noise of a cafeteria nearly makes him shiver. "That would be great," he replies, hoping it doesn’t sound breathless. His fingers tighten further on his folder.

Hill stops in front of a grey door that has the number 8 sitting above what seems to be a peephole. Steve glances over it curiously while Hill pulls out a set of keys from her pocket. Peepholes in doors had been a fairly new idea growing up, and none of his apartments had ever had any.

Hill unlocks the door and gestures for him to enter. He steps into a cool-toned room, his eyes flicking over the plain walls. The whole space feels militaristic, which, in a way, he’s used to. But that doesn't make the aesthetic particularly comforting. The walls are painted a cool grey and there are a total of four fixtures in the room.

To his left, against the wall, is a bed, neatly made up with white and grey bedding. The bed's headboard consists of two shelves, one of which holds a ticking clock. Directly across from him is a simple white door that must lead to a closet of some sort, and to his right is a beige desk and chair. The only other feature of the room is a window that sits directly above the desk, its view obscured by a pair of light grey curtains.

Do they not use colour in the future? No. He remembers the chaotic street he’d run into.

"Okay, so I'll give you the tour," Hill says, stepping into the room. "Here's the light switch and thermostat." She points at a modern looking switch and a grey panel on the wall.

Hill flips up the panel and reveals a small screen and several buttons. "This is the current temperature," she says, tapping a number on the screen. "You can change the temperature with these buttons." Hill then points to a second set of arrows. "This is for air-conditioning."

Steve nods silently; already feeling overwhelmed. None of his previous apartments had air conditioning. Usually he and Bucky would go to the cinema to get a reprieve from the heat. And he’d always heated his apartments with coal furnaces, not buttons on a wall.

Blinking that aside, he clasps his file a little closer to his chest and follows Hill as she makes her way to the bed.

"There's clothes and extra bedding in here," she says, indicating a set of drawers built into the base of the bed he hadn't noticed before. "You’ll learn how to buy and shop for things soon, but until then, just let us know if you need anything," she continues.

It's obvious SHIELD has done some preparation for him, but they keep bringing up things he hasn't had time to realise yet. The idea that he doesn’t know how to buy his own stuff anymore leaves him feeling empty and lost. How different could things be? Steve swallows dryly, feeling disconnected from his body as he follows Hill to the closet door.

"This," she pulls open the door, "is the bathroom."

Steve starts in surprise and his eyes widen as he takes in the white tiled room in front of him. It hadn't even occurred to him that he would have a private bathroom in his room. The flat he'd grown up in hadn't had a 'bathroom' per se. There had been a closet-like toilet to use, and as for a bath, he and his Ma had painstakingly heated and filled a metal tub each week and bathed in that.

When he’d moved in with Bucky they’d shared a bathroom with the rest of the floor. The water was heated by the furnace in the basem*nt, the only heated water in the building. Baths were quick and efficient affairs, the lukewarm water never lasting long enough.

Of course, he knew that people could have private bathrooms, but that was something rich people had, not… not him.

This bathroom is nothing like the cramped one he'd grown up with. There’s a porcelain sink and counter with a cabinet mirror above it. Across from the sink is a white porcelain tub, complete with a white shower curtain. Further into the room sits a modest toilet, again, white. A small white mat is spread out on the floor and a white towel hangs on a rack next to the toilet.

The whole room is completely spotless and it leaves him feeling afraid to touch anything.

"The light switch is here," Hill says, flicking the switch next to the door and the small room illuminates. "This is the switch for the fan." She points to a second switch on the wall.

Hill must have sensed his confusion because she flicks the switch on, causing a low roar to fill the room. After a few seconds, she flicks it off. "You use it when you shower and it ventilates the room," she explains and Steve nods dazedly.

Moving on, Hill gestures to the sink and indicates the drawers. “There’s toiletries inside.” Steve barely hears her because he’s busy noticing that the sink has a cold and hot tap. This apartment has hot water. He’d never— he would have never been able to afford that before.

How… how is he going to afford it now?

"Here are the taps for the tub," Hill continues, crouching down by the tub, completely oblivious to his dilemma as he follows her cautiously into the room. She turns the closest tap and water begins to pour into the tub.

"This one gives you cold water," she says, looking back at him, "and this one gives you hot."

All at once Steve feels like a child and he nearly bristles because it’s almost true. He doubts Hill gives this thorough of a tour to other residents. She probably doesn’t have to give tours at all, because everyone would be expected to know how to recognise a light switch (which do look different, much to his chagrin) or use a bathtub.

Embarrassment tries to morph into anger and Steve keeps a steel clamp on it as Hill indicates a small lever on the spout.

"If you want to shower, pull this," she says as she pulls the lever and the water stops pouring out of the faucet and begins to fall from the showerhead.

Steve watches her movements while part of him rankles unhappily at his ignorance. He shouldn’t need someone to explain how to use the shower.

Hill shuts the water off and then pushes the lever down, letting the water drain. She shows him the plug and continues to explain the tub in great detail, including how to use the shower curtain so the water doesn’t splash out.

Steve’s cheeks redden. He knows how to use a shower curtain.

Hill stands up, placing her hands authoritatively on her hips as she glances around. "There’s a laundry bag in the drawers under the sink. When you need to do laundry, let us know. Any questions?"

Steve is still reeling from the onslaught of information that had just been dumped on him. But even through his confusion, he can tell that Hill is obviously military personnel, intent on getting this over with as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

She's also a director of SHIELD.

He doubts that her job usually consists of babysitting freshly thawed super soldiers and showing them how to work basic appliances.

That, plus the fact that he really just needs a moment to process everything right now, causes him to shake his head tiredly at her as he very consciously loosens his grip on the folder in his arms. He's thankful that Hill showed him how to use his room, but now he really needs her to leave.

He steps out of the bathroom hoping that Hill will follow, and she does, turning off the light behind her and pulling the door closed.

"Okay, well." She glances around the room and back at him. "I'll be back to eat with you at five, let me know if you need anything."

She pulls the room keys out of her pocket and sets them on the bed’s headboard before giving him one last hesitant smile. Her expression is tight as though she herself isn’t quite sure how to handle the situation. Her shoes tap sharply against the floor as she lets herself out of the room.

Steve follows behind and closes the door, leaning his forehead against it for a moment as he breathes out shakily. A lump rises in his throat and he swallows against the instinct to gag. His chest feels tight as he turns around to survey the room behind him. The ticking clock on the bed is the only sound. He can’t even hear the city outside.

He’s alone now. That’s what he wanted right?

Breathing as deeply as possible, Steve’s fingers flex and he becomes aware again of the file Hill had given him. His mind latches onto it and he marches stiffly over to the desk, placing it down on the empty surface. His hands brush absentmindedly over the small creases that his grip had left in the paper.

He goes to open it, ready to treat it like mission intel, but his hand shakes as he lifts the cover and he snatches it back instantly. His nails dig into his palm as he clenches his fist.

He chews on the inside of his lip, the steady tick-tick of the clock loud in his ears as he moves to the window, slowly pulling back the edge of the curtain. White light spills into the room and industrial glass and steel buildings stare back at him, miles and years and decades away from anything that he’s used to.

He drops the curtain, stepping away from the window as if burned.

His hand rubs against his thigh nervously and he glances at the clock because the ticking seems to be getting louder. The time reads 3:34, and he can't help thinking that despite how much he wanted to be alone just minutes ago, he's essentially trapped in this room until Hill returns for supper.

"Okay," Steve says shakily, breathing in determinedly and looking around for something to distract himself.

The desk has drawers and he edges over and pulls one open. The top left drawer has a collection of pens, pencils and erasers. The pens all look like the ballpoint one that Doctor Lee had used, except they don't seem to have a tip to write with.

Confused, Steve reaches down to grab one and examines it. His eyebrows pull together in concentration as he fiddles with it. How is one supposed to write if there isn’t even a tip? He accidentally presses down on the top of the pen and he almost drops the thing when it goes down with a sharp click-click.

Suddenly now there’s a ball-point tip and he tests it on the pad of his thumb. The ink rolls on surprisingly smooth and he rubs at it before carefully pushing down on the top of the pen once more. The pen clicks again and the tip is hidden from view.

Steve’s mouth twitches grimly, a corner of his mind ready to lash out at the fact that he didn’t know how to use a pen. He sets his jaw and clicks it a few more times to get used to it before putting it back and checking the next drawer. It holds sheets of white paper and he thumbs through them restlessly before moving on.

The rest of the drawers are empty. The insides smell new and old with disuse all at the same time.

Steve chews at his lips and one of his hands creeps up to rub at the dog tags hidden beneath his shirt. It feels wrong that nothing in this room belongs to him. What had happened to his stuff? Where is his shield? That had been in the plane with him, but now it's nowhere to be found. All he has are these tags—

Steve breathes in sharply and loosens his fingers from where they're digging into his shirt. He forces himself to scan the room uneasily. The bathroom proves to be a good target for the next part of his sweep and he walks over to investigate.

Hill had said that there were toiletries in the drawers under the sink, and there are. But they feel scripted, if objects could be scripted.

Upon opening the drawer, Steve discovers exactly two towels, two hand towels and two washcloths, all white. Under the towels he finds a drawstring canvas bag, also in white, with LAUNDRY written across it in large black lettering. It is becoming apparent that SHIELD’s guest rooms, as with anything military in nature, are strictly regulated.

The bandage on his finger catches as he closes the drawer and he pulls it off irritably, the finger poke from Nurse Shamoon nowhere to be seen. He pulls off the bandage on his elbow for good measure, leaving behind an angry red mark where the tape had chafed against his skin.

He throws them away and turns to the second drawer. It’s less straightforward than the first. Inside are the promised toiletries and Steve can't help but feel overwhelmed by the sheer modernness of them. Everything looks new and slightly alien in a way that makes his skin itch.

He sees something he recognizes and reaches for it.

It's a box of toothpaste. He feels something akin to hysteria creep up in his throat at the thought that somehow—after seventy years—Colgate toothpaste has stayed the same. Of course, the box is different and the design for the toothpaste cap has changed and the tube is bigger, but he recognizes it.

He shakily puts the opened box back and leans his hands against the counter, crouching slightly as he breathes in deeply for a moment. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to think too much on the fact that he's getting emotional over a tube of toothpaste.

Toothpaste he didn't even use. He'd always used baking soda.

Clenching his jaw, Steve opens his eyes and stands, reaching for the next box in the drawer. It's a bar of white soap, the scent sharp to his advanced senses. There's no soap dish that he can find, so he keeps the soap in its box and places it on the counter next to the tap, before examining the next item.

It's a toothbrush encased in an unfamiliar plastic package. The toothbrush is more colourful and sculpted than the ones he used in the war. Once he manages to remove the packaging, he finds that the bristles are softer as well.

He's at loss as to what to do with the packaging. It doesn't look very reusable, and even if it was, he’s fairly certain he won't be needing it any time soon.

But living in poverty—and then off of war rations—has deeply ingrained the need to skimp and save everything. He can't quite fathom just throwing something away without first trying to repurpose it. Eventually, he replaces the toothbrush back in its packaging and sets it on the counter next to the soap.

Besides the toothbrush and toothpaste, he finds a comb and a box of dental floss. The fact that it's in a box at all is bewildering, as he’s only ever seen floss in little round glass containers. That, plus the fact that floss had been too expensive for most people to bother with, leaves him feeling disorientated when confronted with the small plastic box.

Leave it, he thinks, putting it down like he can put it out of mind.

Instead he reaches for the mysterious white bottle nestled near the back of the drawer. It's labelled SHAMPOO + CONDITIONER in black lettering and he nearly drops the thing in surprise.

He'd never bought liquid shampoo before in his life, it had been too expensive. If he wanted to clean his hair he used soap, or maybe shampoo powder. In the army, soap and delousing powder had been his main source of cleanliness. All things considered he had not been expecting to find an entire bottle of the liquid stuff sitting in his bathroom. Then again, he has a private bathroom now, so what does he know?

The bottle is different from the ones he'd seen in drug stores and the Barnes family bathroom. Those had been made out of glass. This bottle is made out of plastic and when he presses down on the cap, a small opening appears, hitting him with a foreign, vaguely botanical, definitely synthetic smell.

He doesn’t really know what to do with the “conditioner” part of the bottle. He’d heard of conditioner creams when working with the USO girls, but he’d never seen them combined with shampoo before.

He closes the lid and replaces the bottle before reaching for another, narrower bottle. It’s labelled SHAVING CREAM in bold black letters and he’s finally completely lost with this item.

It's not that he can't shave. Army regulations and the persona of Captain America had dictated that Steve Rogers be clean shaven at all times, but he'd always used shaving soaps. Besides, all the brushless shaving creams that he'd had in the army had come in tubes, not strange metal cans.

The can has a cap, and he pulls it off to reveal some sort of nozzle. It looks a bit like the mosquito spray the army used. That was for the Japan front, so Steve had never used them personally, he’d only seen them in Howard’s lab sometimes.

He stares at it. Very slowly placing the plastic cap on the counter before cautiously pressing down on the nozzle of the can.

White foam squirts out in an unexpected burst and this time he really does drop the thing, the metal of the can clattering loudly as it hits the tile floor. Steve flinches, his breath catching.

He freezes, standing absolutely still for a few moments, his hand on his chest. His whole body trembles as he waits for his heart to calm down. Feeling foolish, he carefully reaches down and grabs the fallen can. He replaces the lid, moving almost robotically as he very deliberately returns the shaving cream to the drawer.

Still breathing rhythmically and focusing entirely on the immediate here-and-now, he retrieves one of the white washcloths from the other drawer and wets it before wiping up the shaving foam that had gotten sprayed on the floor. That done, he very carefully wrings out the damp cloth and leaves it to dry.

He breathes out again and avoids looking in the mirror.

If he's being honest with himself, he’s had it up to here with new and modern devices today. But he also needs to know what’s in this room that’s supposed to be his. He feels so untethered, especially after that fake room. He has no idea what else to do.

With that in mind, he reaches determinedly for the next bottle in the drawer. It's neatly labelled AFTERSHAVE in big bold black letters.

He’s beginning to think that someone has gone and simplified all the labels specifically for him. It’s a bit insulting.

The next thing is a small white plastic rectangle, handily labelled DEODORANT. It’s a stick, or at least he assumes it is. It’s bigger than the sticks of deodorant he’d seen sold at the druggist. When he could afford deodorant, he bought the liquid or cream stuff and tried to make it last as long as possible. Most of the time his budget couldn’t stretch that far though, and he didn’t bother, only using his supply when applying for a job or trying to seem presentable. It hardly mattered, most men he knew didn't wear it.

Bucky used it more than him. Going on dates with carefully styled hair and a lilt in his step—

No.

Shaking his head, Steve replaces the deodorant and reaches for the last thing in the drawer. It's another package, labelled Gillette, which thankfully is another brand that he recognises.

That’s only slightly helpful since the razor the package holds is completely foreign. His brow furls as he examines the strange thing. He assumes it's a razor because it's in a Gillette package, but otherwise he's completely lost. He takes it out, turning it over in his hand.

The handle of the thing is sculpted to fit his hand in a way that his double-edge safety razor never did. That's not even mentioning the strange layering of blades that seems to be happening. Steve honestly has no idea how one is supposed to sharpen or replace the blades of this razor. Further investigation of the drawer fails to unearth either a strop to sharpen the razor with or replacement blades.

Disgruntled, he replaces the razor in the packaging and closes the drawer before doing one, final sweep of the bathroom. He lingers for a moment on the toilet paper. It feels thick, soft and expensive, making him feel even more out of place.

As long as SHIELD’s paying for it, he thinks as he turns off the light and steps back out into his room.

The empty space is just as unsettling as before. The ticking clock seems to echo off the sombre walls. The light is dim thanks to the covered window and Steve picks restlessly at the fabric of his pants as his eyes dart back and forth around the room.

He can feel his pulse increasing before he catches sight of the drawers under his bed. He tries not to rush as he crosses the room and kneels down to investigate.

There are two drawers arranged lengthwise along the bottom of the bed and Steve pulls on the drawer nearest to him. Inside is extra bedding, all in white and grey like everything else in this room. He’s beginning to despair at seeing any other colour.

The next drawer contains several changes of clothes. He counts five shirts in different neutral colours. He also has four pairs of pants, several pairs of underwear and a bunch of socks. Near the back of the drawer, he finds a grey pullover.

It's almost more clothes than he'd ever owned at one time. Everything is neatly folded and exactly his size, confirming his suspicion. This isn’t just some basic guest room setup.

Someone had come in here and set up this empty dead room with him in mind. Everything about the room, from the relabeled toiletries to the perfectly sized shirts had been put in here for him and— and his hands are shaking again.

His vision narrows and he lets the sweater fall from his fingers as the room swims in front of him. He draws in a shaky breath and then another because he can't seem to get the air in all the way. A rushing in his ears drowns out the ticking clock and Steve's heart gives a painful spasm in his chest causing his breath to hitch.

Maybe the doctors missed something, maybe the serum wore off in the ice. Because right now his heart feels like it's about to die and he can't breathe, and the serum was supposed to fix all that.

He gasps and folds forwards, clutching at his chest. He can't afford this right now, he can't risk being incapacitated when he needs to finished the perimeter check—

No no no- Not a perimeter check because the war is over. And it's been over for seventy years and all Steve has to show for it is a pair of dog tags and a room full of perfectly tailored things that aren't his—

“Breathe Stevie.” Bucky is kneeling in front of him, his right hand resting on Steve’s chest while he guides Steve's shaking left hand to press against his own chest.

Tears gather at the corner of Steve’s eyes as he wheezes and clutches frantically at Bucky’s hand.

“I got’cha Stevie, just breathe with me.”

A sob escapes Steve’s lips and everything comes crashing down at once. Something breaks inside him and he can feel himself come undone as he’s wracked by full body shudders. He doesn’t bother trying to wipe his face as tears blur his vision and his breath hitches erratically.

Bucky is dead and so is Peggy and everyone else and the war is over and Steve is alone in this stupid grey room in a world that he’d never expected to be in because he thought he was going to die and—

Breathe Stevie, Bucky whispers, and it sounds like a prayer.

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

By the time Steve calms down enough to see straight, the clock reads 4:24 and he's exhausted.

Hill's coming at 5, he thinks tiredly as he pushes himself off the floor, grateful that he had at least been able to get in control of himself before she came back. He runs a hand over his face and walks shakily to the bathroom.

He flicks on the light and catches sight of himself in the mirror as he enters. His eyes are puffy and red and he looks about three inches from collapsing.

Perfect, he thinks sarcastically as he reaches habitually for the cold water tap.

He cups his hands and goes to splash the water on his face, hoping to deal with some of the puffiness and redness before Hill gets back.

And that’s about as far as he gets.

The second his hand touches the water he knows something is wrong, but by then it’s too late and he’s already following through with the rest of the motion. Cold water hits his face and he reels back and—

—spits it out, only to be hit immediately with another wave of icy water. He coughs and twists his head, trying to drag himself away. His clothes are soaked, making him shiver violently and his fingers—even the broken ones—are too numb to feel anything.

His vision flits in and out of focus and he shakes his head, trying to clear the water and blood from his eyes. The plane around him groans ominously, the sound only drowned out by his own desperate panting.

Something creaks, the sound sharp and piercing in his ears. The floor pitches forward and he finds himself flailing helplessly as he slides close to the nose of the plane. The water is deeper now and it rushes up his nose, causing him to cough and spit as it burns. His fingers slip clumsily on the metal around him and he realises that he can barely feel his arms.

He’d been hoping to stay unconscious. He’d been hoping not to feel this part, but the universe is never so kind—

Steve stumbles back against the wall, his shoulders connecting painfully as his hands swipe at his mouth and nose in a desperate attempt to clear phantom water. His breath bursts out in painful gasps and he squeezes his eyes shut against the bathroom's piercing lights. His heart stutters painfully in his chest and he curls in on himself, his hands grasping shakily at the wall behind him.

"Okay," he rasps, sinking into a crouch and placing his head on his knees. He wraps his arms around his head and tries to regulate his breathing. "Okay, so we're— not gonna do that again."

Breathe Stevie.

Thankfully, for time’s sake at least, he manages not to lose it completely and after a few minutes of steady breathing, he raises his head and opens his eyes.

The tap is still running and he stands shakily to turn it off. His hands tremble as he turns on the hot water tap (a distant part of him still marvelling that he does, in fact, have hot water) and he tries to breathe evenly as he waits for it to warm up.

The water is probably too hot by the time he actually uses it to wash his face, but he doesn’t want to risk having another episode and the warm water actually feels nice on his face.

At least I’m not too messed up not to be able to handle plain water, a distant bitter part of his mind pipes up.

He shakes his head, pushing away the thought and trying to focus entirely on getting ready to deal with Hill as he dries his face and then roots around in his drawer for the comb that he’d seen. His hair is slightly damp with sweat and it sticks up in odd places before he manages to wrangle it into something presentable.

His shakiness seems to settle deep into his bones as he exits the bathroom and his breath feels thin and inadequate. He shivers abruptly and his eyes catch on the sweater lying haphazardly next to the still open drawer under his bed.

He goes for it gratefully, snatching it up and pushing the drawer closed with his foot. The sweater is soft and grey (along with nearly everything else in this world apparently) and he pulls it on, running his hands through his newly dishevelled hair.

Another shiver runs through him and he remembers the thermostat thing that Hill had mentioned. Upon investigation, the little screen reads 73° and he honestly has no idea if that’s a good temperature or not. Coal stoves weren’t typically that accurate.

Whether 73° is a decent temperature or not, he still feels cold, and he debates upping the temperature for a while before finally deciding against it.

Fury hadn’t mentioned anything about rent or if he will be expected to repay SHIELD later somehow, and he thinks it best not to push his luck before he knows exactly what he’s getting into. Also, everyone at SHIELD knows about him and the ice. They’re going to think he’s cracked if he starts blasting the heater.

Steve tugs on the sleeves of his sweater and paces away from the thermostat. The ticking clock helpfully indicates that it’s almost five and he tries not to feel impatient. He wonders absentmindedly if he’s allowed to leave his room or if another team of SHIELD agents will descend on his position like last time.

His muscles are still tense and shaky from his anxious trouble, which is not at all a pleasant combination. He runs his hand through his hair, breathing forcefully through his teeth. His eyes land on the folder, laying where he’d left it on the desk, and he goes over to it, any distraction from his current situation welcome at this point.

The chair rolls out smoothly from the desk as he sits and flips open the file. It holds only three or four pages and the lack of content is disappointing. One of the pages helpfully displays a map of the building, showing the four levels and what seems to be a list of services on each floor, his own personal clearance indicated for each one.

Level One: Lobby

Access Level: Cleared

Resources:

• Reception
• Medical
• Cafeteria

Level Two: Residency

Access Level: Cleared

Resources:

• Living Quarters and services

Level Three

Access Level: Denied

Level Four: Administrations

Access Level: Conditional

Resources:

• Administrative Offices

The building isn’t very big and Steve concludes that this must be one of many SHIELD buildings if SHIELD is really the large organisation that Fury says it is. He flips back to the map of the building, subconsciously memorising entrances and exits, catching himself only when he starts calculating sightlines.

Thankfully, he doesn’t have much time to think about that slip up (the war is over, the war is over) because a knock sounds at the door.

A quick glance at the clock declares it to be 5 o’clock exactly and he stands up from the desk, stretching out his back a little as he goes to let Hill in. First he uses the peephole to check if it’s her because he can, and because it soothes something in his brain.

Hill flashes him a brief smile when he opens the door, and she lifts a covered tray in greeting. Steve steps aside and follows Hill as she makes her way over to the desk.

“Oh, you’ve been looking at the folder,” she notes and Steve moves to clear the space for her.

“Yes,” he replies simply, setting the folder aside.

“Did you have any questions?” Hill asks as she sets the tray on the desk. She lifts the lid, revealing a large covered bowl, two bread rolls, a pat of butter and a bottle of water. “Go ahead and eat,” she says as she sets the lid down. “I’ll take the tray back with me when you’re done.”

“Oh.” Steve glances around and feels slightly awkward.

There’s only one chair in the room, meaning that Hill has nothing to do but stand and watch him until he’s finished. His manners training doesn't like sitting when she isn’t, but she doesn’t seem bothered. Swallowing, he sits at the desk and hopes he doesn’t look too confused as he figures out how to open the plastic lid on the bowl. The smell of chicken soup wafts up to him and his heart gets heavy with nostalgia.

He and Bucky had dreamed of Ma Barnes’ chicken soup during the war. It was a family recipe, full of thick broth and hearty vegetables. It had nursed him through many a cold.

It occurs to him with sudden horrible clarity that he’s never— never going to eat that again.

Steve blinks rapidly. His throat swells shut and he has to swallow several times to suppress the abrupt urge to vomit.

He reaches out and pulls out a spoon from where it’s cocooned in a napkin (along with a fork and knife for some reason) and begins to eat. The soup is thick with chicken and noodles but it doesn’t taste like Winnifred’s.

“I hope that’s enough food,” Hill says after a moment. “If you need more, just let me know.”

Steve, who is not about to send Hill, the deputy director of SHIELD, on another trip back and forth to the cafeteria, says nothing and eats another spoonful.

Hill leans against the wall across from him. “Did you have any questions?” she asks again.

Swallowing his spoonful, Steve glances at the folder. “It says I have ‘conditional access’ to level four?”

Hill nods. “Yes, you have access to level four on the condition that you’re accompanied by another agent who has access to that level. Feel free to access level one whenever you want.”

Steve nods and takes another bite of his soup. It’s warm and tastes better than the rations he’d been living off of for the last two years. While it doesn’t fill the void he wants it to, the food eases some of the shakiness in his muscles and warms him up. He relaxes slightly. As much as he can anyways, with Hill watching him.

He reaches over and cracks the seal on his water bottle, before taking a drink. He’d never actually bought bottled water before and it tastes slightly odd. Still, he drinks thirstily, thankful that the water is only pleasantly cool, rather than icy cold.

The silence is awkward with Hill just standing there, so Steve casts his mind about for something to say.

His tags shift against his chest as he leans in to take another bite and he recalls his desire to find the rest of his stuff.

“I was wondering if you could tell me what happened to my shield and suit,” he asks, his eyes lingering on Hill. He doesn't ask about his other possessions. He can only imagine what had happened to them after he died.

His heart squeezes. He really has nothing. His art supplies, his mother's recipe cards, his father's dress shoes… All gone.

Hill gives him a small smile, pulling him from his depressing thoughts. “Your shield was found with you, and it, along with your suit, are currently in SHIELD custody.”

Steve swallows, the soup a little harder to get down. “Is there any way I could get them back?”

Hill has a gentle but firm smile on her face and his eyes dim at the sight, already knowing the answer before she says it.

“Unfortunately,” she explains calmly. “Both your shield and suit were SSR property and as such, are now SHIELD property. Unless you decide to work for SHIELD they will be staying in our hands.”

Steve’s hand tightens on his spoon and he feels something sharp curl in his stomach. “What about the other things?” he asks a little desperately. “I had a compass with me and a knife in my belt. Those weren’t the SSR’s, those are mine.”

Hill gives him another closed-lipped smile, her eyes filled with pity. Steve’s free hand starts digging into his thigh. “I’ll see what I can do,” she says finally.

“Thank you,” he replies tightly before going back to his soup, hoping his voice doesn’t sound too strained around the edges.

Steve rips into his dinner roll and dips it in his soup. He’s nearly finished before he remembers another question he had. He glances up at Hill and rubs his free hand against his pant leg.

“I was wondering… what kind of rent this place has.”

Hill actually looks surprised for a second before she relaxes and gives him a reassuring smile.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” she says pleasantly. “For now, SHIELD will provide for your living expenses and we’ll be sure to bring you up to date on your own finances. We have someone for you to meet with once you’re more caught up.”

Relief sweeps through him and he gives her a brief smile in return before going back to his soup. It’s reassuring to know that he’s not expected to pay for anything SHIELD is providing. But the idea of trying to be financially literate in the… in the twenty-first century is overwhelming.

Once he’s finished the last of his soup, he packs up quickly, deciding to keep the water bottle, seeing as SHIELD has neglected to give him any sort of cup for the bathroom.

“I’ll come around for breakfast at 9 tomorrow,” Hill says as she leaves, tray in hand. “Would you like to eat in here or the cafeteria?”

“Cafeteria,” he says immediately. As strange as he’s sure it’s going to be, he’d rather brave that than have another awkward meal in here.

Something flickers in Hill’s face, but she gives him one last smile and then leaves.

The clock is ticking again.

Steve glares at it and pushes away the growing temptation to just break the thing. Clocks hadn’t been a problem during the war. He hadn’t been around them long enough for that, and a part of him realises that it’s not entirely the sound of the clock that’s bothering him—it’s the silence.

He’d spent the last two years of his life living in constant close quarters and before that, he’d lived with paper-thin apartment walls. He’s used to hearing the sounds of other living people and every tick of the clock in the empty room highlights exactly that, the emptiness.

He runs his hand along his pants restlessly as he makes his way over to his bed, his eyes still on the clock. His limbs have a deadened sort of exhausted feel to them, the kind that makes him feel like he’s walking through molasses. Like he’s been marching for days. Part of him can seriously see the appeal of just collapsing on the bed and passing out.

But the clock only reads 5:30, and the advice of the doctors and their ‘sleep schedule’ comes back to him as he stares at it. Either, he can decide to go to bed at five-thirty every night, or, he can find something else to do until the time reaches a decent hour.

He rubs his hand through his hair irritably and glances around the sparse room. Now he almost wishes that Hill had stayed, regardless of how awkward it would have been. At least then he would have something to do.

Hill is a leader of a large organisation, he reminds himself sharply. She has other things to do besides babysit recently resurrected soldiers.

For lack of anything better to do, and since he doesn’t have to pay for hot water, he decides to take a shower.

SHIELD hasn’t provided him with pajamas as far as he can tell (not that he’d used pajamas in the last two years anyway) but there’s a pair of pants that seem to be made from the same material as his sweater. He grabs that and brings it into the bathroom with him.

The bathroom is just as bright and alien as it was before. He closes and locks the door before carefully grabbing the soap and the bottle marked SHAMPOO + CONDITIONER that SHIELD had provided.

He sets them on the inside rim of the tub, adding one of the white washcloths to his pile before pausing to hover his hands briefly over the taps for the tub. He turns on the hot one first.

Water begins to pour from the faucet and he waits several minutes to make sure it’s warm before he pulls the lever that Hill had shown him. The flow of water shifts to the showerhead and he quickly pulls the curtain across, making sure to keep the plastic layer on the inside because he does know how to use a shower, thank you very much.

Steam is beginning to fill the bathroom and he belatedly remembers the fan that Hill had mentioned. He flicks the switch and a muffled roar fills the room. He tilts his head up to stare at the square device in the ceiling where the sound seems to be coming from, not exactly sure how it’s a fan, before moving on.

He strips down efficiently, leaving his clothes in a neat pile by the toilet. He keeps his dog tags on. It’s the only thing SHIELD had let him keep and the weight of the chain is comforting and familiar compared to the rest of the world right now.

The hot water is scalding to the touch and he risks adding cold water to it by tiny increments. The end result is less melt-the-skin-from-your-bones and more almost-melt-the-skin-from-your-bones, but it’s good enough.

Steve lets out a shuddery breath as he steps in and ducks under the spray. This is probably the hottest shower he’s ever had in his life and the steady beat of the water on his shoulders and back is nearly hypnotic.

Eventually he gives himself a shake, reaching for the shampoo bottle.

He’s never used liquid shampoo before and he’s not quite sure about the added conditioner either, but SHIELD seems to think it is necessary. Popping the lid open, he cautiously measures out a small dollop of the creamy substance into his hand before replacing the bottle and beginning to scrub the soap into his hair.

The feeling is pleasant, and part of him wishes to slow down and relax into the whole experience. Unfortunately, the rest of him, the soldier part, screams that he’s wasting time.

I have nothing else to do, he thinks pointedly, glaring into space as he works the soap into an impressive lather. I have nothing else to do and SHIELD is paying for the hot water. I might as well enjoy it.

Despite this, Steve finds himself rinsing his hair and reaching for the soap bar in no time at all and he sighs a little as he falls into the efficient routine he’d developed while in the army.

In the army, showers—real showers, not dips in a river or a stint in the mobile shower trucks—had been a rare luxury and were generally short and lukewarm at best. Back then— Steve’s hands stall for a second as he remembers that back then equals seventy years ago. A cold chill runs through him despite the heat of the shower.

He shivers and focuses on scrubbing himself clean. In the army, mud and blood and who knew what else had a tendency of working its way into every crevice of his skin. It left him and everyone else with the unpleasant feeling of never quite being clean.

With this in mind, Steve carefully cleans all the problem spots, the folds of his ears, between his fingers and toes, the back of his neck, and so on, working his way down from his head to his toes. He pulls off all the remaining band-aids to discard. His injection sites are still sore and he can feel every one of them as he moves.

He spends a good few minutes very thoroughly cleaning under his fingernails, trying not to think too much about the colour blood gets after it dries and how, somehow, there always seems to be some left behind—

Actually, his fingernails are getting a little long, and Steve raises his hand to inspect them. He realises that SHIELD had neglected to provide him with anything to trim his nails. His mouth tightens into a thin line as he rinses his cloth and wrings it out. He could probably ask Hill for something, but it feels… frustrating and wrong that he can’t just go and get it himself.

I wouldn’t even know where to buy it, he muses a little bitterly as he shuts the water off and steps out onto the mat. Even if I were allowed outside.

He shivers and grabs his towel, drying himself with quick efficient strokes, before dressing quickly and rooting around for his comb. The mirror has fogged up despite the fan and he swipes at it the best he can before grabbing the comb and carefully parting his hair. His face looks pale and washed-out next to the grey of his sweater.

He puts the comb away and reaches for the toothbrush and toothpaste, figuring he might as well get this part of his bedtime ritual over with.

As a habit learned during the war, he squeezes the bare minimum of paste onto his brush before going to clean his teeth. The toothpaste tastes…different. He’s not sure how to describe it. The box says it’s mint toothpaste, which is the kind the army provided, but it just tastes a little off.

Making a face he leans down and spits in the sink. He hasn’t brought his water bottle into the bathroom, so he waits carefully for the hot water to warm up before cupping his hands under the faucet and rinsing his mouth.

Steve eyes the strange razor as he replaces the toiletries. He decides that he doesn’t need to attempt shaving just yet. He doubts SHIELD would be very happy with him if he accidentally cuts a gash in his face, no matter how quickly it heals.

He grabs his used clothes and steps outside.

The bare floor is cold against his feet and he can feel the chill of his wet hair as he makes his way to the bed. He folds and puts away his clothes with military precision and pulls on a pair of socks from his drawer, wishing he’d thought to grab them earlier.

He glances at the clock.

5:57.

oOo

Steve paces.

Eight steps one way, six the other. Eight again. Six.

He trails his hand along the wall beside him and tries to block out the ticking clock.

Eight, then six. Eight, then six.

He spins and begins marching counter clockwise, feeling more and more agitated as he goes. He’d tried to keep himself occupied, he really had. He’d sat at his desk for ages, going over his schedule and memorising the SHIELD map. Then, when he got desperate, he began planning more and more outlandish raids with it.

What would he do if he and the Commandos had to infiltrate the building? Again. This time without explosives. Again. This time no shield.

He’d tried to draw, pulling out the sheets of paper SHIELD had left him, but the images wouldn’t come. He’d sat and stared at the blank pages, fiddling with the ballpoint pen that felt strange in his hand.

At one point, his anxious fiddling had accidentally taken the pen apart and then he’d spent the next several minutes searching for the missing spring in order to put it back together again.

He’d tried looking out the window again but there hadn’t been anything to see besides the building next door. He’d thoroughly debated the pros and cons of leaving his room.

On the one hand, he is going crazy in here. On the other hand, he can’t help feeling that if he left, some SHIELD agent with a decorative smile would show up to gently but firmly guide him back to his quarters. No matter what Hill had said about his access levels.

So, he paces.

At least, when he’s pacing, he can fall into a sort of numb, semi-lucid state and not have to think so much. He wishes he’d thought to ask Hill about Peggy. Or the Commandos. Or the Barneses. He’d never even got to see them before he and Bucky died.

His stomach growls, reminding him supper had mostly been soup and he grits his teeth.

Finally, when he can’t stand it anymore, he gives up and goes to bed. The clock reads 9:42 and that better be good enough for the doctors and their ‘sleep schedule’. He’ll have to try to go to sleep around that time for the foreseeable future.

If he can get to sleep that is.

Sleep doesn’t seem to be in the neighbourhood and Steve grinds his teeth in frustration as he stares up at his darkened ceiling. He’s exhausted and drained and hungry and bored. He would seriously do anything right now to pass out and not have to think for a few hours, but his brain refuses to shut off.

The ticking clock practically drives nails into his ears and he can’t seem to get comfortable. The bed is so soft it feels like it’s swallowing him. Every time he manages to almost drift off he wakes a second later, his heart pounding and his chest tight with panic.

Which is stupid. What kind of person gets upset when a bed’s too soft? He rolls over irritably and jams his head under the pillow, trying to drown out the sound of the blasted clock.

It’s too dark to see, so he doesn’t actually know what time it is when he gives in and drags his pillow and blanket off the bed and onto the floor. The floor is cold and hard and familiar. He shuts his eyes miserably as he tries once again to fall asleep, his hands pressed firmly against his ears.

But with sleep comes dreams

Monty’s distraction blows up without a hitch and Steve darts towards the building in a half-crouch. Behind him, he can hear Bucky at his six and Gabe not far behind. They reach the door and he signals them to stop.

He listens intently for a second but doesn’t hear anything besides the background noises of war and Monty’s enthusiastic pyrotechnics. He gives Gabe and Bucky a nod before raising his shield and kicking in the door.

Inside is exactly what they’d expected, long winding corridors that stretch out in front of them in mind numbing grey and silver. Somehow, the walls feel familiar, although he’s pretty sure he’s never been here in his life. His brow furls as he turns to signal the others to spread out.

There’s nobody behind him. Instead, he finds himself staring at a blank wall.

His heart drops and he spins around frantically, scanning the area for his friends or the door out. “Guys?”

He reaches for the radio on his belt.

It isn’t there.

He stumbles back and crouches against the chilly metal wall, his heart pounding as his eyes dart about the space. Okay okay. New plan. Find the others. Get out.

With that mission in mind, he starts forward, his shield tight in his grasp and his breath thin in his chest. The corridor seems to go on for ages, the sound of his footsteps echoing faster and faster as he starts running.

He doesn’t so much find the door as slam into it. One minute he’s sprinting down the halls, calling frantically for his teammates, the next he trips and runs into a doorway.

This must be it. He can’t quite remember what it is that he’s looking for, except that he has to find it and all of the sudden he’s certain that it has to be in here.

The door is locked but it gives way under his weight. He stumbles into the room and the sudden silence is deafening. The room feels eerie, like it’s not quite real. The walls are grey, the bed is grey, the desk is grey. A pair of curtains flutter next to an open window and the light that filters in is grey.

It gives everything a hollow, disconnected feeling. Outside the window is an impenetrable fog of white and grey.

His heart flutters uneasily in his chest as he takes a step forward. He slips, his pulse skyrocketing as the world pitches forward. He lands hard and he grits his teeth as he tries to get up again, his hands stinging and burning as they scramble against the frozen floor.

He’s lost his shield somewhere in the fall and his head darts up as he hears something.

Ticking.

A bomb?

He has to get to it, he has to stop it. If he could just move—

There’s a door in the wall ahead of him, white instead of grey and he struggles to drag himself over. His numb hands slip on the icy floor as his feet refuse to catch on the frozen surface.

The ticking gets louder and faster as he scrambles for the doorknob, the metal bitterly cold against his fingers. His breath fogs the air in front of him as he claws at the lock.

There isn’t time! He has to get it open, he has to—

He yanks the door open and everything stills for one single second before he’s met by a towering, freezing wall of cascading water.

Steve gasps awake and coughs, his limbs flailing and tangling in his bedding as his teeth chatter. His breath catches and he jerks his head to the side and coughs, sluggishly trying to get away from water that’s no longer crashing down on him.

Sucking in a loud, frantic breath he curls up and squeezes his eyes shut. He presses his hands to his chest. They feel frozen, even through his sweater. He shivers, grimacing against the soreness in his muscles. His sweater is drenched in sweat, chilling him to the bone.

His dog tags shift against his chest, and he pulls them out, clutching them tightly in his hand. The metal is warm and solid, and he latches on to it like an anchor as he tries to breathe past the imagined water in his lungs.

Several minutes pass as he sits like that, his eyes closed and hands clenched. He grits his teeth to keep from shivering. His breathing gradually begins to calm, the pounding in his ears quieting down.

The clock is still ticking.

Steve lurches up from the floor in blind frustration. The blanket falls from around him as he snatches the stupid thing from the headboard. His feet are cold against the floor as he stands there, panting and staring at the vague shape in the dark. His hands shake with the urge to simply give in and hurl it against the wall.

He pulls in another breath through his teeth and forces himself to relax his grip on the clock. If he breaks the clock then he won’t know what time it is, and that would be a worse torture than having to listen to its mind-numbing ticking.

Probably.

And he’d have to explain to SHIELD that he’d broken their clock. That he doesn’t want to do.

He rubs wearily at his eyes with one arm and stumbles over to the bathroom. Flicking the light on, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He looks exhausted, his face pale and sweaty, making him look sickly.

Great.

He glances down at the clock. 3:17 A.M.

Great.

He sets the clock on the bathroom counter with deliberate care, shutting the door as he leaves. Tension he hadn’t realised he’d been carrying bleeds from his shoulders as the infernal ticking becomes nearly inaudible from behind the door.

He catches sight of his makeshift bed and lets out a sigh, rubbing tiredly at his face as he takes in the mess of blankets on the floor. It’s only three o’clock in the morning and Hill won’t be here for hours yet. He should try to get some sleep. But he still feels shaky and cold from his dream and doesn’t really feel inclined to risk a repeat.

Ten to three, he tries to reason, thinking back to the time he’d gone to bed. That’s basically five hours. I can run on that.

He tries not to think too hard about the fact that he doesn’t know what time he’d actually fallen asleep. The doctors had said that it didn’t matter if he’s actually sleeping anyways, as long as he goes to bed at the same time, that is all that matters.

So what? I’m just going to wake up at three a.m. from now on? the rational side of him questions. Steve scowls and pulls off his sweat-damp sweater. Goosebumps cover his arms, the skin actually painful with cold. He hastily kicks the bedding away to pull out a dry shirt from the drawer, leaving the used clothes in an uncharacteristic pile on the bed.

Then he scoops up the blanket and wraps it around himself before reaching down to pull open the other drawer from under his bed. Inside sits the extra bedding SHIELD had provided and he grabs the grey blanket. He probably should have done this earlier but hadn’t thought of it.

Dragging the whole mess over to the corner of his room, he hunkers down and pulls the blankets around himself like a cocoon, trying to contain as much warmth inside as possible. He leans back, body limp with exhaustion.

His eyes glaze over slightly. He doesn’t move, staring blankly ahead as he lets himself zone out, waiting for the sun to rise.

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

When Hill knocks at his door for breakfast, Steve’s already fully dressed and his room is back in order. His bed is made up impeccably and the extra blanket stowed away. The clock is back in place because he doesn’t feel like explaining to Hill why he’s keeping his clock in the bathroom.

Hill leads them to the elevator and Steve can feel his room key inside his pocket as he walks. Hill had given him two keys for his room and he had cracked a humourless smile once he’d realised.

To whom, exactly, is he supposed to give his second key to?

“Oh sure,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes sarcastically. “Just put your key under a brick, it’s not like literally anyone can trip over it and find it.”

“Shut up,” Steve responds, giving Bucky a shove. “At least that way they won’t break down the door.”

“Lobby,” Hill says.

Steve blinks.

“Confirmed,” the elevator says.

oOo

The cafeteria, Steve finds, is sleek and silver, but not all too different from ones he’d been to before. Small mercies.

“Okay,” Hill says as she and Steve grab their trays. “With your metabolism it’s important for you to get the right amount of calories throughout the day.”

Steve is well aware of what his own body needs. He’s lived in it for two years. But Hill gives him an anxious look, making him wonder if she's realised yesterday's supper had come up short.

Hill begins to fill her own tray and points out the various breakfast foods. “Just start with what you think won’t upset your stomach,” she says as she reaches for something that Steve swears is a bagel.

It’s jarring seeing one just sitting there with a dozen others in a regular cafeteria. He’d had them before, but only because he’d been introduced to them through Bucky’s Jewish heritage. He would eat them on Friday’s at Bucky’s house after school, because Bucky couldn’t play on Saturday and Steve couldn’t on Sunday.

There were always bagels on Fridays. Bucky’s Ma would buy a dozen for 18 cents from the Jewish bakery around the corner, and she would top one with lox and cream cheese for him to eat. It had always been a special treat for him and he hadn’t expected to see them here, seemingly mass-produced for everyone to grab.

It’s just one of the many things that are different. Eyeing the spread, his hands tighten on his breakfast tray. Everything is in little cups and trays and while he’s able to recognize at least half of the foods there, the whole system feels a little overwhelming.

Behind him, more SHIELD agents are beginning to enter and disperse throughout the room and his spine squirms at the feeling of so many eyes on him. Giving himself a shake, Steve begins filling his tray, focusing mostly on grabbing food and not worrying about their calorie count.

It’s been a long time since he’s chosen his own food instead of eating the carefully prepared rations the military provided.

He goes for the bagels first because that’s something he’s had before. There seems to be several varieties of bagels, which is new to him, and he grabs one with little black specs on the top and one with what seems like raisins in the dough. He wonders what Ma Barnes would think of these.

He gives his head a slight shake and moves on, finding some little containers of cream cheese by the bagels, which he takes. Disappointingly, he doesn’t see any lox. He moves further along in the line, eyeing the rows of small containers of food. There are little bowls of cut up fruit and cups of brown stuff that Hill tells him is chocolate pudding. He grabs several and does the same with yogurt, which is something he hasn’t had before.

He feels like he’s grabbing way more than everyone else and it makes him feel greedy even though he knows he needs it. When he can’t make himself grab any more he turns to go. Hill stops him and places several plastic bottles on his tray without asking and Steve tries not to feel like a child getting coached by his mother.

“They’re liquid supplements,” Hill explains, as they sit down at one of the tables. “A bit like milkshakes I guess, but they usually have stuff added like protein and fibre.”

He nods mutely, grabbing his spoon before peeling open a cup of yogurt.

Yogurt, he finds, tastes pretty good. He’d managed to grab several different flavours and he decides he likes the strawberry one the best. The bagels are the best part of his meal, but Steve has a hard time enjoying them because it feels like every time a new SHIELD agent walks into the room, their conversation drops and they stare at him for a solid ten seconds.

Two ladies walk into the cafeteria and both their eyes widen at the sight of him. As they continue to the serving area, they whisper to each other, throwing not-so subtle glances his way.

“Is that him?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Steve hunches his shoulders and grabs one of the bottles Hill had chosen for him, trying to close his ears to the hushed conversation.

Across from him, Hill sips serenely from a plastic coffee mug before she sets it down with a loud clunk on the table. Steve jumps, and Hill smiles at him apologetically, but Steve notices that suddenly everyone in the cafeteria is studiously focused on anything else but their table.

His shoulders lower by a few fractions and he breathes in.

“So,” Hill says as she spreads cream cheese on her own bagel. “There’s a few things on the docket today.”

Steve takes a drink from his bottle. The flavour is decent at least, and a much needed change from army rations.

“We’ve got you scheduled to see Dr. Faustus,” Hill tells him, biting into her bagel and chewing. “It’s just a standard psych evaluation. He’ll help us know how to best help you.”

Steve swallows uneasily, the chilled bottle in his hand suddenly too cold. He puts it back on his tray and wipes his hands on his pants. It’s not the first time he’s had a psych evaluation. The army did them during recruitment to try to weed out people more likely to have nervous breakdowns.

He has absolutely no idea what a psych evaluation in the future will be like. What happens if he doesn’t pass?

“You’re scheduled to see him in the afternoon,” Hill continues over his silence. “Before that we’ve got someone who can start working with you on what you need to learn. We’re still compiling something more in-depth for you, but this should cover some basics to get you started.”

Steve nods, his hands sweaty against his thigh. He can’t imagine trying to catch up on everything he’s missed. He doesn’t know anything. It’s like he’d been dropped onto a blank canvas. He has no reference whatsoever for what the world is supposed to look like.

Well, besides the anxiety-inducing speed chase through New York. That isn’t something he wants to think about right now and he focuses back on his tray. His appetite is gone, but he knows that Hill is monitoring his intake. He absolutely does not want to go back to see the doctors.

He can force down the rest of his food. He’s had worse.

After breakfast, Hill hands him off to a different agent, Brock Rumlow. Steve would have preferred if Hill had stayed, even though he knows she’s much too busy. Rumlow looks more like he should be running missions, not explaining modern basics, and the expression on his face when he thinks Steve isn’t looking shows he feels the same.

“This is a computer.” He starts his first lesson in an office room, leaning over Steve’s shoulder to show him how to use the screen thing he’d seen in Fury’s office (named after mathematicians apparently.)

Steve is seated at the head of a large table, his back to a wide bank of windows looking down on the street below. The windows behind him make him feel vulnerable and his skin itches for more cover. Steve absolutely hates having Rumlow behind him, standing over him, but it seems to be the best way to teach him how to use a computer, so he squares his shoulders and deals with it.

“I’m sp’osed to show you the basics,” Rumlow continues, before quickly pointing out the ‘keyboard’ and the ‘mouse’. “It’s pretty simple once you get used to it.”

It rapidly becomes clear to Steve that Rumlow is not specifically trained in computers or how to teach someone about one. He shows Steve how to turn one on but he can feel the man’s surprise and impatience when he realises how much knowledge Steve is lacking about this seemingly basic piece of technology.

“The keyboard is the same as a typewriter’s, right?” Rumlow says. “You just type to get the letters.”

Steve had used a typewriter at one of his jobs before the war, but already he can see that his keyboard has a bunch of other buttons which Rumlow doesn’t explain. It doesn’t help that some of the keys are in different spots and the pressure needed to type is entirely different.

He bites the inside of his lip, feeling clumsy and slow as he feels it out.

“The mouse controls the cursor,” Rumlow continues, reaching around him to demonstrate. Steve’s shoulders hunch in to give him space. He fights back a shudder, swallowing uncomfortably. On the screen, a tiny white arrow moves and Steve wonders why it’s called a cursor.

“You click the buttons to select stuff.” Rumlow leans back and points at a small picture on the screen. “Try clicking there.”

Steve does, his cursor movements hesitant and jerky compared to Rumlow’s confident example. Rumlow then remembers to tell him which button on the mouse to click and also that this particular icon needs a double-click to get it started.

“Faster than that,” he says after Steve's second attempt.

The screen is finally showing the right thing and Rumlow breathes out loudly, sitting down next to him. He scooches his chair closer and leans over Steve’s elbow.

“This is goo-gle. You can search anything you want here and get all sorts of answers. Oh, I guess I should explain the internet first. Actually, we can google it as an example.”

Their session continues like that, with Rumlow laboriously explaining what he must feel is basic information while Steve stumbles along, trying to keep up.

Still he can see the benefit. ‘Google’ is vast and once he gets the hang of it, he can see it being very helpful trying to figure out this new century. Rumlow also shows him something called ‘YouTube’ (the names of the internet are all so weird), and they watch a ten minute instructional video on how to use a phone. Or at least, what the future calls a phone.

Rumlow then pulls out a similar phone and tells him it’s his to use.

Steve wishes this session wasn’t so fast-paced. He’d love to pause and ask how on earth phones changed from the ones he knew to this square screen, but he doubts Rumlow knows the complete answer and there isn’t time for him to ‘google’ it.

His fingers are sweaty as he slides them over the glass screen. A ‘touchscreen’ the video had said. The phone text is tiny and part of him is afraid of breaking it if he holds it, so it stays on the table as Rumlow explains all the different ‘apps’ it has and how to call and ‘text’.

‘Texting’ involves typing again, but this time with only his thumbs, or pointer finger in his case, since he doesn’t pick up his phone. Rumlow rolls his eyes at his hesitation but puts his number in his phone and then begins the long process of getting him an ‘e-mail’ account.

It takes a while to come up with an entirely unique username, which Rumlow is not surprised about. Apparently Steve Rogers and Captain Rogers are fairly popular names for ‘fan’ accounts. Steve isn’t sure how he feels about that.

It's been hours and it’s hard to focus on the constant instruction. He can feel his eyes getting tired after squinting for so long at the bright phone screen.

Rumlow calls the device a phone, but Steve finds it helps not to think of it that way. Phones were dial up devices set in walls or booths with specific talking and listening portions. This isn’t that. Also, a personal phone was a much greater expense than Steve could afford.

Rumlow hasn't mentioned having to pay for this phone. Maybe it’s free like his room and board. He hopes so. It looks expensive.

It’s basically a tiny computer that can also call and send mail, Steve thinks dazedly as he watches Rumlow scroll through the settings and show him how to set a password.

“We’ll just set it as your birthday,” he says with a bland, near-condescending smile. “Something easy.”

Steve tries not to think about how far away 1918 is from 2012. His doctor’s voice comes back to him. Minus the years in the ice. He hadn’t calculated it before. Ninety-four. He’s technically ninety-four. What day is it? It had felt warm outside, maybe he’s actually ninety-five.

He blinks and realises he’d missed a good chunk of whatever Rumlow had said next.

By the time Rumlow is showing him how to charge his phone Steve has a headache. He’s hungry again and his mouth is dry. His brain feels overstuffed and full of cotton. He’s exhausted and thinking about the last few hours with Rumlow just makes him even more tired.

Finally Rumlow deems he knows enough for the day. “I’ll show you where your appointment is,” he says as Steve fills his pockets with his phone, charging cord and charging block.

Right. He still has his psych evaluation. Dread descends on his shoulders, making them slump. He is absolutely not in the right headspace for that right now.

Steve’s stomach churns with nausea and his head pounds. His tongue has become a lead brick in his mouth and he can’t even muster up a polite ‘thank you’ for the hours of instruction.

Doctor Faustus’ office is in the medical wing on the first floor. Steve feels no small amount of relief that he and Rumlow don’t run into any of his doctors from yesterday on the way. Steve already feels high strung after the hours of fighting with technology and his impending psych evaluation, he can’t deal with more of Doctor Lee’s wide smiles.

Rumlow leaves him to knock at the door and Steve stares at the brass nameplate.Doctor Johann Faustus. It’s a German name, his brain provides,Schmidt's name. Steve shakes his head with a jerk. No. He knows better than to judge a man by his name. The war is over.

He knocks, and when Steve enters he sees a large, burly man sitting behind a desk. He’s wearing a dark green suit instead of a white coat which instantly makes him feel a little better. Dr. Faustus has thick red hair and a beard and he smiles at Steve, standing up to greet him.

“Captain Rogers,” he says, his voice not loud or booming like Steve was expecting. Instead it’s smooth and modulated, calming. As he comes around his desk, Dr. Faustus grabs a cane and leans on it as he walks.

He holds out a hand and Steve steps forward automatically to shake it.

“Have a seat.” Dr. Faustus motions to a leather chair across from his desk. His office is neat and orderly. It’s still done up in the blacks, greys and blues of all SHIELD rooms Steve has been in, but his chair looks large and comfortable as he sits down behind his desk. The bookshelf behind him is full of thick leather-bound books and there’s a picture on the wall of him shaking hands with someone presumably important.

“Secretary Pierce,” Dr. Faustus says when he notices Steve looking. “Of the World Security Council.”

Steve nods as though he knows what that is.

“Well, Captain,” Dr. Faustus starts, folding his hands on his desk. The desktop is polished black glass, the deep green of his suit reflecting on it as he moves. “Seems to me you’ve been through quite a lot lately, haven’t you?”

Steve tries not to tense. He wishes he knew more about what this psych evaluation will mean. Hill had said it was to ‘help’ him, but he doesn’t know what that entails yet.

“Yes, Sir,” he says stiffly. He fights the urge to rub the headache pulsing at his temple. He’s so tired.

Dr. Faustus regards him for a moment before reaching for a stack of papers to his right. “I want to establish a few things before we get started,” he says, his voice deep and even as he sets the papers down in front of himself. “I’m here to help you, Captain. I know things back in your time might’ve been different but we’ve made great strides in the psychological field.”

Something about how he says ‘back in your time’ makes Steve want to bristle. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and stays silent as Dr. Faustus continues.

“We know a lot more about how the brain works and we have many more treatments and medications that make actual, tangible improvements for patients. Gone are the days of insulin shock therapy or lobotomies, Captain.”

Steve shifts uncomfortably in his seat. He’d heard of those procedures before. One of his neighbours, a nasty woman named Mrs. Wicker, had claimed he should be sent to an institution for his and Sarah’s own good. He’d come home in tears and Sarah had rolled up her sleeves and marched over to give the woman a piece of her mind. But afterwards she’d had to explain to Steve what people were talking about when those kinds of places were brought up.

The treatments she’d mentioned terrified him. They were supposed to help. They were supposed to make people better, but that didn't change how scary they were. As he grew up he’d been determined never to give anyone any reason to send him to one of those places. He was sick, not crazy or stupid.

Now he isn’t sick but he’s worried he might be labelled as crazy. He’s been in the future for barely more than a day but he’s certain if Dr. Faustus knew about his many nervous breakdowns the day before he’d suddenly find himself introduced to these new, mysterious ‘treatments’.

“I doubt medication would work on me,” Steve warns, before adding hastily. “Not that I think I need it.” Actually maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned that.

Dr. Faustus nods. “Of course,” he says mildly, giving no indication whatsoever if he believes Steve. “We’ll look into medication if we need to, but there are many other things we can do to help get you adjusted.”

He reaches forward to hand Steve one of the sheets of paper. “You can see for yourself,” he says. “Deinstitutionalisation began around the 50s and 60s. I guess you just missed it.”

Steve’s vision sways for a moment. He wasn’t supposed to miss the 50s. Or rather, he was, because he’d thought he was going to die. But now he’s here. In 2012.

Steve breathes in and glances down at the page. It’s from something called Wikipedia. Rumlow had shown him that website just an hour ago. Steve scans a few of the headers, ignoring the churning in his gut or how tense he has to hold himself so he doesn’t shake.

His eyes catch on one under the 20th Century header: Eugenics and Aktion T4.

The eugenics movement started in the late 19th century, but reached the height of its influence between the two world wars. One stated aim was to improve the health of the nation by ‘breeding out defects’, isolating people with disabilities and ensuring they could not procreate. Charles Darwin's son lobbied the British government to arrest people deemed as ‘unfit’, then segregate them in colonies or sterilise them.

His body grows tenser. His eyes jump ahead unwillingly.

In 1939, the Nazi regime began ‘Aktion T4’. Through this programme, psychiatric institutions for children and adults with disabilities were transformed into killing centres.

He’s sitting across from Erskine, asking him why he was chosen for the serum.

“So many people forget,” he says, world-weary. “That the first country the Nazis invaded was their own.”

Steve’s chest squeezes tight and he can’t bring himself to keep reading. He hadn’t reached the deinstitutionalising part of the article yet but he just nods vaguely and looks back up at Dr. Faustus. His damp fingers wrinkle the paper so he sets it down in his lap and wipes his hands on his pants.

Dr. Faustus’ eyes follow the entire movement and Steve’s skin prickles. It feels like Dr. Faustus can see right through him, and despite what he’d said, he’s cataloguing every sign of weakness to be used against Steve later.

And Steve can't seem to hide anything from him. Steve is exhausted. His stomach clenches with hunger and his brain pulses in pain, feeling slow and sluggish. He's in a terrible position right now and he knows it.

“With that out of the way,” Dr. Faustus says, a small smile on his face. “Let’s get started, why don’t we?”

The evaluation starts off as a verbal questionnaire, with some similar questions to the ones Dr. Lee had asked him yesterday.

“Do you have repeated, disturbing, and unwanted memories of a stressful experience?”

Steve almost scoffs at the question. He’d call war many more things than a ‘stressful experience’.

“Sometimes,” he says, aware that if he says no Dr. Faustus likely won’t believe him.

It’s the same for the question about repeated, disturbing dreams of a ‘stressful experience’. Steve has only been here for one night, but he’s already had one nightmare and he’s had plenty during the war.

The questionnaire continues. Dr. Faustus’ voice is smooth and non-judgmental even as his questions manage to find all the cracks in Steve’s shell. He becomes hyper-aware of the door behind him. He wants to leave. He wants to go hom—

“Have you suddenly felt or acted as if the stressful experience were actually happening again?”

Steve is reminded of the incident with the water in the bathroom and his fingers curl and dig into his knees. He sees Dr. Faustus notice and he’s forced to answer affirmatively. His armpits start sweating.

On it goes.

Do you feel very upset when something reminds you of the stressful experience? Yes, literally all the time. Of course he does, how else is he supposed to feel about the war, Bucky’s death, and his loss of seventy years? He doesn’t say all that though. No matter what Dr. Faustus had said about deinstitutionalisation, Steve isn’t willing to take any chances.

Do you have strong physical reactions when something reminds you of the stressful experience (for example, heart pounding, trouble breathing, sweating)? That’s happening to him right now. That’s been happening to him since he woke up. He has to admit to that one, he’s pretty sure Dr. Faustus can see it in real time.

Do you avoid memories, thoughts, or feelings related to the stressful experience? He hadn’t even realised that is something he’d been doing constantly until Dr. Faustus had mentioned it.

“Sometimes,” Steve says, because lying on the questionnaire isn’t going to help him if Dr. Faustus doesn’t believe his answers are realistic. He just hopes he can get a good balance of careful truths and cover ups.

Do you avoid external reminders of the stressful experience (for example, people, places, conversations, activities, objects, or situations)? He’s barely had a chance to do that, yet he knows he has. He still barely glances at the windows. The foreign landscape outside is too raw to take in.

Still, he replies with, “Not really,” because he needs to be careful what he says.

Do you have trouble remembering important parts of the stressful experience? He doesn’t even know. He hasn’t had time to think about the stuff that happened. Besides, his memory should be perfect now, thanks to the serum.

He tells Dr. Faustus no, but he’s not sure the man believes him.

Do you blame yourself or someone else for the stressful experience or what happened after it? He hates this question. He hates it. Because Bucky’s face flashes in front of him and his breath stutters before he can hide it and he has to answer yes.

Do you have strong negative feelings such as fear, horror, anger, guilt, or shame? It feels like that’s all he’s been feeling. But isn’t that… normal? He doesn’t explain that, he just nods and Dr. Faustus moves on.

Do you have a loss of interest in activities that you used to enjoy?

“I don’t know,” Steve replies honestly, because he’s been at war for two years and now he’s been here for two days. He hasn’t had time to do anything. Part of him wonders how this questionnaire is supposed to help him so quickly out of the ice. He hasn’t had time to figure out how he feels at all.

Do you feel distant or cut off from other people? “Yes,” Steve replies shortly. It would be foolish to lie about that. Everyone he knows is dead.

Do you have trouble experiencing positive feelings?

“No,” he says, clinging to the moment of joy he’d experienced when he’d learned about the polio vaccine. If the questionnaire is being given to him so soon, then he’s going to base it off of what he has experienced and not the creeping gloom he can feel lurking in the back of his mind.

Have you had irritable behaviour, angry outbursts, or acting aggressively? The blasted clock comes to mind and he grits his teeth before shrugging. “A little.”

But isn’t that normal? Or at least, to be expected? It’s only his second day! He’s been doing his best! How can he be asked to handle this all perfectly without a single slip up when it’s been seventy years and everything’s—

Irritability, his brain snaps, and he shuts down the thought loop before it can go any further. He breathes in. He just needs to get through this.

Do you take too many risks or do things that could cause you harm? “No,” he says and Dr. Faustus looks up at him.

“Even though you crashed the plane?”

What? Steve’s shoulders straighten in surprise and his eyes narrow. “Of course,” he says sharply.

Dr. Faustus looks unconvinced. "Even though you didn't try to escape?" he presses gently. "Some have wondered why you chose to go down with it instead of getting out when you could."

"When I could?" Steve repeats incredulously, a flush of real anger rising in his chest. “It was locked on autopilot. There were bombs on board. There was no choice but to drive it down. If I didn't it could've autocorrected its course. There wasn't time to find another solution.”

The casual questions leaves him feeling wrongfooted and shaky. What kind of history have people been learning about him? They hadn’t been there. They had no idea the cold realisation that had overtaken him when he’d realised what needed to be done. But he’d done it. He’d stared down death and saved his homeland and Dr. Faustus wants to know if he did it just to hurt himself?

“One couldn’t blame you,” Dr. Faustus says, as though Steve hadn’t said anything. “Wanting to end it all. Living through what you did is incredibly difficult. Especially with the death of Barnes a few weeks prior."

The words knock the air out of Steve. Bucky's death is still only a 'few weeks prior' for him.

"It would certainly be easier not having to deal with it all," Dr. Faustus continues, voice smooth as butter. "Suicide rates among veterans are very high.”

Steve swallows dryly, his head spinning. “That wasn’t what it was about at all,” he insists.

It really hadn’t been, but it’s like Dr. Faustus’ words are trying to worm their way into his brain and convince him otherwise. There hadn't been another way out. Even if he jumped out of the plane he'd have been lost somewhere in the arctic wilderness and then they never would've found his body. Right?

Suicide rates among veterans are very high.

Steve shuffles uneasily in his seat and feels the chain of his dog tags move under his shirt.

The brief feeling of familiarity is enough for him to square his shoulders and raise his chin. He doesn’t like how Dr. Faustus is being so insistent about this. He can’t explain it but there’s a look in the doctor’s eyes that makes him uncomfortable.

There’s a slight shift in Dr. Faustus’ expression and the look goes away. He nods easily with the same small smile as before and marks something on his paper before continuing as though the conversation hadn’t even happened.

Are you "superalert" or watchful or on guard?

The whiplash from the change of topics is enough to make Steve wonder if he’d somehow misread the conversation. He doesn’t know what else to do but answer the next question.

“Yes,” he replies reluctantly, thinking of his previous night. It’s hardly fair. If he had something to do besides pace in his room he might’ve fared better. His hands clasp tight in his lap and the paper under them crinkles loudly.

Do you feel jumpy or easily startled? He has to answer yes to that one too, because it’s basically the same question.

Are you having difficulty concentrating?

“A little,” he hedges, even though his brain is pounding and it hasn’t cleared any from the hours of tech work with Rumlow. He blinks, trying to keep Dr. Faustus in focus.

Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep?

It’s like this questionnaire had been made specifically for him. It makes him nervous, because no matter what he says to Dr. Faustus and no matter if the man believes his careful answers, Steve still knows the truth and things are shaping up to something being seriously wrong with him.

Once the questionnaire is over Dr. Faustus leaves Steve to sit in silence while he tallies up the results. Steve stares at the decorative plant on the edge of his desk and sweats.

“Well,” Dr. Faustus breaks the silence and folds his hands on his desk. “Based on this, I believe we have reasonable grounds for a PTSD diagnosis.”

Steve can feel himself growing tenser with worry.

“PTSD is hard to treat, but doable,” Dr. Faustus continues, his voice smooth as silk. “It’s best to be treated as early as possible, so we should get started right away.”

Steve’s hands feel rather numb and far away on his lap. He’s beginning to wish he’d read the rest of that deinstitutionalisation article. He licks his lips and forces himself to speak up. “What’s PTSD?”

Dr. Faustus smiles gently, like one would at a child and Steve cringes internally.

“That’s a new term for shell shock, as I believe you called it.”

Actually, that was the old name. The army doctors had referred to it as war neuroses or battle fatigue, but Steve understands what he means. Shell shock had affected a lot of soldiers coming home from the Great War. It had been exactly what the psych evals in the army had been trying to avoid.

His hands get clammy. His breaths become shallow. He thinks he failed the evaluation.

He hadn’t expected for the doctor to diagnose him so quickly. All of the sudden he has this condition looming over his head and it makes him anxious. He can’t be labelled a ‘Crazy Eight’ here. Deinstitutionalisation or not it’s very clear SHIELD wants him to be functional. Why else would they give him this exam on the second day?

“Are you sure?” he manages, his mouth dry. “I’m certain I can still work. I think I just need a little time. It’s been— things have been going pretty fast.”

Dr. Faustus nods sagely. “That’s understandable, Captain Rogers,” he says. Steve's eyes are having trouble focusing on him. His beard looks like a dark blood smear on his face.

“It’s unreasonable to expect you to catch up on everything all at once. You had your first lessons today, yes? That must have been overwhelming.”

He doesn’t wait for Steve to confirm or deny. Instead he opens a drawer and pulls out a file. “I think it’s best if you’re given some time and space to adjust. SHIELD has a perfect facility for you to use.”

The word facility feels rather similar to ‘institution’ and Steve watches Dr. Faustus warily as he opens his folder to show him the contents.

“It’s very private, very tranquil. We call it The Retreat. I think it’d be the ideal place to start your recovery.”

Steve stares down at a colour photograph of a lakeside log cabin in the woods. The bright colour surprises him even though it shouldn’t, after everything he’s seen. It takes him a second to formulate a response.

“Recovery? I don’t— I’m just a little lost. I’m just trying to get my bearings.” He can’t seem to stop stumbling over his words, no matter the elocution training he’d done as Captain America. He’s too strung out, too desperate.

I’m not crazy, he wants to say. I can still work, or fight, if that’s what you want.

But Dr. Faustus’ exam seems to say otherwise. This is all moving too fast. He hadn’t even been given a chance to figure out how to be normal and now he’s seemingly stuck with this diagnosis and a modern treatment plan he isn’t sure he can trust.

“This is the perfect place for that,” Dr. Faustus insists, tapping the file. “It should help give you time and space to adjust and learn what you missed. Once you’re fully adjusted we can bring you back and work on integrating you with SHIELD.”

Steve swallows nervously. He can’t argue that the time and space ‘The Retreat’ offers seems like a good idea. Even if the thought frightens him for reasons he can't quite name.

He glances down at the Wikipedia paper on his lap and breathes in. He’s hesitant to fight this and discover the future’s approach to involuntary commitment.

“I suppose,” he agrees reluctantly.

Dr. Faustus claps his hands. Steve startles in his chair. “Perfect,” he says. “I’ll start the process right away. We should get you out of here by tomorrow."

“Oh,” Steve says.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Steve walks back to his room in a daze. His phone feels heavy in his pocket. He clutches the article he’d been given, seeing the words but not reading it.

Steve wonders how the typeface is so much neater and cleaner than what typewriters could do. He’d noticed that before with the other file Hill had given him, but there had been so much going on he’d forgotten about it.

Printing presses must be different now. If everything is electric and not typewriters. He’d typed words onto the computer and presumably, those same letters can be printed like what he sees now. He wonders what Dr. Faustus would say if Steve told him it looked like all the life had been taken out of the text.

He ends up in front of his door, staring at the peephole that had intrigued him twenty-four hours ago. It takes him a moment to remember his keys in his pocket.

He opens the door to the same grey room as before, feeling just as tired, if not more exhausted than yesterday. He takes a step into the room, his body moving as though in slow motion.

How is this… real? he thinks. It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t feel like his second day seventy years in the future. That’s just… that’s just impossible. How can he possibly be here? He doesn’t feel like it’s real. He doesn’t feel anything right now. Just...

He’s not sure how long he stands in the threshold of his doorway before he refocuses and notices his room is not entirely how he’d left it. At first glance everything is neat and tidy like before, but then he notices the items on the desk.

He walks closer, barely breathing.

It’s his compass and pocket knife. Sitting plain as day on the beige wood.

The air gets thin in his chest. The paper in his hand crinkles loudly as he grips it tighter without meaning to and his heart begins to pound. A shiver runs through him and it takes several gasping seconds before he figures out why he’s panicking.

Someone had been in his room.

His keys all but burn a hole in his pocket. He hadn’t given anyone the extra key but someone had been in his room. He swallows back a whine, trying to get ahold of himself.

This shouldn’t be that big of a deal except it is because it means the lock on his door is just for show. Whoever had dropped off his things had walked inside with no issue. They could’ve done whatever they wanted. Checked for diary entries or signs of distress or anything.

The room hadn’t felt like his before and it certainly doesn’t now.

All at once he feels tears pressing at his eyes and he has to lean his hand against the desk, gritting his teeth. He’s felt so raw ever since he’d woken up. Like every little thing cuts to the bone.

He should be happy he’d gotten the items he’d requested back but now this room, this one space that might’ve become a refuge as he tried to find his way, had been invaded.

Steve drops the wrinkled wikipedia article on the desk and crouches, leaning his forehead against the edge of the desk as he tries to breathe and fight back the tears threatening his vision.

He should be used to this. He hasn’t had privacy for years. Not from the Commandos while living in close quarters and not from the SSR doctors wanting to poke and prod to learn every little thing they could about the serum.

He supposes he’d expected to regain some of that privacy when he got home. But now, more alone than he’s ever been, he’s no closer to it.

Besides, he never went home.

I want to go home. The thought slips through before Steve can stop it and he ducks his chin, squeezing his eyes shut. A sob bobs painfully in his chest. His hand comes up to cover his mouth and he breathes heavily through his nose.

I can’t go home. I can’t go home. I can’t go home.

It takes him several minutes of steady breathing before he’s able to actually look at the two precious items he’d been returned. He grabs both the compass and the pocket knife and sinks down to the floor, pressing his back against the desk drawers. The metal of both items is cold and heavy in his hands and he closes his fists over them, letting them warm up.

He can feel his dog tags hanging around his neck and he sits in silence, clinging to the three points of connection he has left.

He’d sat the compass with Peggy’s picture next to him while he’d crashed the plane and he examines that first. It had fared pretty well considering it had spent seventy years in the ice with him. There’s some corrosion around the hinges, but it seems it had been preserved in the ice like he had.

He opens it with trepidation.

The picture of Peggy inside had not survived so well. It had been open when he crashed, and the black and white photo is warped and wrinkled with water damage. A lot of the image had faded or worn away, obscuring Peggy’s face. A lump rises in Steve’s throat as he stares at the distorted image.

He hasn’t asked anyone about Peggy yet. He knows she must be dead. Along with the Commandos and Howard and Phillips and Ma Barnes and George and Becca and the girls and everyone else he’d known. Even the youngest of Bucky’s sisters would be very old by now, and no one has mentioned them. Maybe he should ask but… But by not asking it feels like there’s still a chance. Still some hope he might not be completely alone here.

But if they were alive, wouldn’t they be here?

Steve swallows hard and closes the compass. Maybe he can ask Rumlow how to replace the photo. Or maybe he can try googling it. He doesn’t want to show Rumlow the compass. His privacy has been invaded enough today, he doesn’t need anybody else peering into the deepest parts of his soul.

He shifts his weight and pulls out his phone and charger and leaves them on the floor next to him. Then he slips the compass into his pocket. His fingers press against the slight bulge and he breathes in shakily. He’d kept the compass in the utility belt of his suit during the war and having it in his pocket feels like a small pillar of stability.

He looks at the pocket knife next. It’s a small, simple switchblade, American made. The metal is slightly tarnished and the knife sticks a bit as he pulls it out, but the blade is still sharp.

The knife had only recently become something precious to him.

It had been Bucky’s knife. Steve can still see the faint initials ‘BB’ scratched into the handle by Bucky himself. Steve hadn’t been given it exactly. He’d borrowed it and then with one thing or another he’d never given it back. Bucky had picked up another knife during a raid and the pocket knife had stayed in Steve’s tactical belt.

After Bucky died, it had been Steve’s job to go through his things so they could be sent back home to his family. It had felt like a shot through the heart sorting through Bucky’s clothes and personal effects.

His pack was like a graveyard of better days. The stack of letters from home he’d carefully preserved, the photo of him and his family. A postcard from a town they’d helped liberate in France, a dried wildflower pressed between two pages of a well-worn book.

Seeing the remnants of Bucky spread out like that, so much and so little at the same time, had nearly been too much for Steve. He’d powered through it, packing everything up in a bag to be sent home. Bucky’s body would be searched for by the Graves Registration Service, but for now, all he could give to the Barnes’ was a few articles of clothing and snapshots of their son in the things he’d left behind.

He hadn’t kept any of Bucky’s things for that reason, but he’d kept the knife.

The knife had stayed in his belt, next to his compass. He’d grown to rely on the slight, grounding weight of it in the short period following Bucky’s death. It was something he could carry with him at all times, some tiny connection he could maintain.

Now, looking at it, Steve wonders how long it had taken to find Bucky’s body. Whether his family had decided to repatriate the body or bury him abroad in a war grave.

He wonders what had happened to his things. His letters and his mother’s rosary and his sketchbook. His next of kin had been Bucky, so he doesn’t know who the army would have sent his things to after he died.

Whoever they sent it to is probably dead now anyways.

Dr. Faustus had said the suicide rate among veterans is high. He wonders… had any of the Commandos…?

Steve sits for a while, staring at the pocket knife. His back and behind grow numb but it isn’t till a knock comes at his door that he blinks himself out of the stupor he’d fallen into.

He hadn’t turned on the lights in his room and he hadn't noticed how dark it had gotten. He squints at the clock through the gloom and realises it’s supper time.

All at once his stomach opens up like a gaping hole and he feels lightheaded. He’d forgotten to eat lunch. He isn’t sure if he was supposed to go before or after his appointment with Dr. Faustus, but he’d been in too much of a fog to think of it at the time. Now he’s paying for it, his enhanced metabolism hitting full force now that he’s paying attention.

The knock sounds again and Steve closes the knife. He puts it in his pocket, pushing up shakily from the floor. He ignores the phone still laying there.

He checks the peephole to see Agent Hill waiting for him and he opens the door.

“Are you ready for supper, Captain?” she asks, scanning him quickly. Steve leans on the doorjamb, trying not to let on to the fact that his knees feel weak with hunger. “Is the cafeteria still alright?”

“Yes,” Steve replies roughly, before clearing his throat. “Yes, that’s fine.”

Hill smiles encouragingly at him and Steve follows her towards the elevator, the lights in the hall extra harsh after sitting in the darkness of his room for what must have been hours. Steve’s fingers press subtly against the two items in his pocket, one long and one round. He breathes in.

He can handle another cafeteria meal.

After he gets back, Steve is left to face another night alone in his room. This time though he has more things to occupy himself with. First he reads through the Deinstitutionalisation article, forcing himself to re-read the bits he loses focus on. The Nazi murders of thousands of people with disabilities and the brief mentions of camps nearly sends him spiralling. He can feel his brain shying away from the words, not wanting to dig too deep. Afraid of what it might find.

It’s difficult to keep from slipping into memories but eventually he makes it through. The article says pretty much exactly what Dr. Faustus had explained. Although there are some opposing voices concerned that the complete shift away from deinstitutionalisation has hampered the ability for some people to get help.

Steve wonders what side of the debate SHIELD is on. The ‘facility’ Dr. Faustus had assigned him looms ever present in the back of his mind.

It isn’t time for bed yet according to his sleep schedule, so Steve picks up his phone and turns it on. He spends the hours before bed practising and reinforcing the things he’d learned with Rumlow that day. He’s determined to get the hang of technology here. If only to belay the looks of exasperation Rumlow hadn’t quite managed to hide while teaching him.

He can learn this. If he puts his mind to it he can figure out how to catch his footing in the twenty-first century. He has to believe that.

He still can’t sleep on his bed though. It’s too soft and suffocating once he finally lets himself go to bed. He only waits half-an-hour this time before he gives up and sets up his makeshift bedding on the floor.

The clock is once again banished to the bathroom and Steve tries to sleep.

oOo

No one had thought to mention to Steve that they would be flying out to the Retreat. He finds out when a new agent, Agent Simons, fetches him after breakfast.

Steve is all packed, his SHIELD issued clothes and toiletries in a duffle bag that had materialised in his room while he was at breakfast with Hill. His knife and compass are secure in his pocket, his dog tags around his neck.

Simons leads him to a car and it’s only when they arrive at an airstrip that Steve realises they aren’t driving the rest of the way to the Retreat.

“We’re flying?” he asks, standing stiffly by as Simons unloads the trunk of the boxes and paper bags SHIELD had sent with them.

Simons nods distractedly, arranging the cargo in a rolling cart. “It’s pretty remote,” he says. “I think it’s only reachable by air.”

Oh.

Steve’s vision splits in and out of focus, half of him remaining present with Simons as they trek towards a waiting jet while the rest of him feels frozen and stuck somewhere else outside his body.

Last night he’d dreamed about the plane. The Valkyrie. He can only remember snatches of it now, the weightless swoop in his stomach when he’d aimed the nose downward, the rattle of the metal around him, the whine of the engines, the blasts of cold air from the broken windscreen.

His hand starts to sweat on his duffle bag strap.

You’re being ridiculous, he thinks as he helps Simons load the plane. We’re not going to crash the plane. And besides, I’m sure planes are a lot safer in the future.

His internal reasoning doesn’t prevent his stomach from tying itself into knots as he straps himself down in the passenger seat and Simons begins the preflight checks. He isn’t exactly afraid of the plane crashing, at least, he doesn’t think so.

It’s more the memories it brings up. The fear and desperation he’d felt while fighting Schmidt. Then the sinking realisation of what he needed to do to keep the bombs from making landfall. Not to mention the very real pain of the crash and subsequent icy grave.

Steve glances down at his knees as he settles in the co*ckpit and for an instant— his leg is trapped in the twisted remains of the flight controls. It’s crushed, pulsing with pain pain pain the metal cuts through his suit, staining the rising icy water red. The cold is like nothing he’d ever felt before. His feet burn with it as it pools in the co*ckpit. He tries to pull his leg out and screams because it hurts and he can’t move. His brain is foggy with cold and pain and his ribs are crushed against the instrument panel. It— it hurts he can’t breathe.

His teeth chatter and he can’t breathe and it’s dark and all he can hear is the spitting static of the broken radio and the rush of flooding water—

The engine starts under him and Steve nearly bites through his tongue as he comes back to himself. His fingers are bone white, digging into his knees. His lungs burn and he pulls in a shaky, subtle breath, hoping that Simons hadn’t noticed him space out.

A shiver runs through him and his leg twinges in sharp phantom pain. He’d had to yank it free from the control panel, biting his tongue and grunting as he cut the twisted limb on sharp, jagged metal in doing so. By then the water had gotten up to his seat and it had taken every ounce of willpower and concentration to pull himself out of the crushed co*ckpit.

He’s so cold he’s so cold he’s so cold he can’t breathe

He’d landed painfully in the icy water, his head going under before he pulled himself up. His sinuses stung as water rushed up his nose. The water was so cold it felt like it froze his very thoughts. His movements were slow and uncoordinated. His head ached, his ears rung, unable to hear anything beyond splashes of water echoing off metal in the choking darkness he’d been plunged into.

His ribs were a white hot wall of pain, every wheezing gasp acting like needles to his lungs. The cold shock had him panting and breathing in water as he flailed in the dark. His drowning coughs were like sledgehammers to his ribs. He couldn’t get up. The floor was tilted and trying to drag him deeper, keep him pinned in the co*ckpit to drown. He’d tried to drag himself up above the water line but his whole body ached and he was going numb. He couldn’t control his breathing, he could barely think.

He’d hit his head during the crash and blood blinded him in one eye. He was pretty sure his leg was broken, his ribs too. His fingers were numb but even with the gloves he could tell some were twisted and broken from when he slammed full body into the control panel.

He knew he was dying. He could feel his strength slipping away, his vision spotted black. The cold, the pain, it was too much. It was all he could do to pull himself somewhere the water was a little less deep. The plane creaked and whined ominously and sunk a couple more inches.

He’d let himself drop then. With the last of his strength, he rolled over, laying on his back. He was wracked with full body shivers, his very skin painful in the freezing air. He couldn’t feel his feet so he couldn’t tell if he was out of the water or not, but he could hear it sloshing through the broken fuselage. His lungs let out wheezing, gurgling noises, his gasps of pain loud in the darkness. There was blood on his tongue, on his chin.

The water was still rising slowly, but he was too tired, too cold to move. His back pressed against the icy metal floor. His breath panted out in clouds of fog and he shook, every shiver jolting his injuries. His ribs burned with every gasping breath and his broken leg screamed with his violent shaking. Grunts and moans left his lips uncontrollably as he laid back and closed his eyes, hoping the serum would let him pass out before the water reached him and he drowned.

Please please—

He remembers hoping they would find his body, bury him next to his mother.

Steve doesn’t remember much of his flight with Simons.

They land in a clearing by a log cabin. It looks like the picture Dr. Faustus had shown him, the cabin alone in a forest of trees, a lake out front. Steve grips his knees so tight he thinks they bruise as the plane hovers and descends. It doesn’t land like any plane Steve has ever been in and it leaves his heart fluttering like a startled rabbit.

He forces himself to breathe steadily as he and agent Simons disembark. Simons drags the wagon behind him and Steve carries the rest of the supplies. The sun shines down on them in stark contrast to the freezing memories that still try to grip him. Flies dart up as they trek through the grass, the buzzing and chirping of insects filling the air. Water laps at the edge of the lake and a bird hoots in the distance.

The serenity of the wilderness setting is spoiled somewhat when Steve has to wait for Simons to type a code into an electric lock before they can open the door. The door itself swings out, looking about a foot thick with whatever reinforcements it has built in.

A chill runs up Steve’s arms. He should have expected this facility to be more than just a cabin in the woods, but he’s barely had time to process any of this.

The sun shines brightly into the cabin as they step in. The floors, walls, and ceiling are made of smooth light wood boards. The door opens into a small kitchen, wooden cabinets lining one wall and a long wooden dining table facing them. The other side of the room is a living room with a large fireplace and a back door leading outside.

Steve helps Simons put away the groceries they had brought, privately marvelling at the large electric fridge and electric stove. None of the apartments he’d lived in had ever had an electric stove, let alone a fridge. The fridge has something on the front of the door he doesn’t know. It’s like a little alcove set into the door with a lever or something at the back. He looks at it curiously but doesn’t poke at it, not wanting to show his ignorance in front of Simons.

“More food will be sent later for you to restock,” Simons says, breaking the silence.

Steve pauses for half-a-second before forcing himself to continue filling the cupboards with soup cans and boxes of pasta.

“Oh. Okay. ”

His face feels flat and expressionless, the muscles completely dead. He sits inside himself like his body is just a shell, moving around and interacting with the world without letting it touch him.

He doesn’t know how to feel about the grocery plans. He’s glad he’ll be fed, but he doesn’t like the idea of staying here long enough to need more food.

He licks his lips nervously. “How…long is the stay intended to be?”

He can’t believe he doesn’t even know that. His hands tremble a little as Simons hands him a box that reads Nature Valley Crunchy. It’s got some kind of bar shaped food on it that he doesn’t recognise, but he barely sees it, his mind nearly numb with panic. Regardless of all of Dr. Faustus’ assurances, Steve can’t ignore how it feels like he’s being shipped off. Sent to live quietly somewhere while SHIELD figures out if he’s fit for polite company.

Simons shrugs, pulling out a huge plastic jug of milk from one of the brown paper bags. “That’s above my pay grade,” he says. “I’m just the pilot. But there’s a computer here you can use to keep in contact with Dr. Faustus.”

Steve stares at Simons. Does everyone in SHIELD know he’s seeing a psychiatrist?

Simons doesn’t seem to find anything odd about his statement. The groceries are done and he moves onto the boxes he’d brought. There are six in total, all with uniform black lids and brown sides. He and Steve line them up on the table and Simons opens one. Inside is full of files, a thin white book on top. He grabs it and sets it on the table.

"This should give you a good base. The files are mainly supplementary."

Steve flicks his eyes over the boxes. It feels all at once too much and too little. Is this supposed to get him up to speed? With what, exactly?

He doesn't get a chance to ask before Simons is walking off, showing him the rest of the cabin. There's a bedroom on one side with the aforementioned computer.

Steve finds it a bit hard to pay attention to the brief tour because his eye is drawn above the bed with its colourful quilt and pillows. The wooden boards of the walls are broken and missing. Instead he's faced with gunmetal grey walls, a sizable dent in one of the hexagonal panels.

"What's that?" he asks a little sharply.

Simons looks up as though he hadn't noticed the metal eyesore disrupting the cozy cabin facade in the bedroom.

"I don't know," he says unhelpfully.

Steve bites back an irritated sigh, his hands flexing briefly into fists by his side. It seems SHIELD is throwing him from one extreme to another. The Deputy Director of SHIELD to take him to breakfast and the lowest man in the pack to ship him off to exile.

"Dr. Faustus will contact you every two days,” Simons says as he gestures at the black screen of the computer, because that is apparently something he knows. “If you have any issues you can let him know."

Steve feels resigned and empty as he responds. "Okay."

The computer looks bigger and bulkier than the one Rumlow had trained him on but he'll figure it out when he needs to. He’d hacked Hydra tech, he can figure this out.

A sneaky thought creeps into his head that he tries to ignore. Had Rumlow been tasked with teaching him about computers just for this situation? Was SHIELD already planning to send him here even before Dr. Faustus' diagnosis?

More thoughts swarm him as he follows Simons back to the kitchen. Why are the cabin’s walls lined with metal reinforcements? Why is this place so remote? How long is he going to be here? He doesn't know and that scares him.

Oblivious to his inner turmoil, Simons walks back to the door. The tour is apparently finished and Simons doesn't waste any time preparing to leave.

"Do you have any questions, Captain?" he asks as he gathers the empty grocery bags. Steve stiffens slightly, his hands clasping habitually behind his back as he realises he's actually about to be left alone here.

He sweeps a swift glance over the room and spies the boxes of files again. Anxiety crawls over his skin and he can't wait any longer to know just one thing.

"Is there— do you know if there's any files on the Commandos, or… or anyone from the SSR team in there?" For some reason he can't quite bring himself to say their names to this stranger. "What happened to them?"

"I don't know," Simons says again, and Steve's hands clench behind his back. "But I can put in a request for that when I get back."

Steve can feel himself deflate somewhat. "Okay." He doesn't know what else to say.

Simons must feel similarly because he nods at him without waiting for any other questions. Then he turns and makes his exit, leaving Steve standing there alone in the empty cabin.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Steve can hear his heart beating in his ears. The emptiness seems to get louder. The serum amplifies everything. The agent had left the door open, his hand had been full with the cart, and the serum zeros in on everything. The sound of crickets outside, the wind in the grass, the tiny waves on the lake.

The tick, tick, tick of a clock.

He breathes in sharp and swift, trying to squash down the flutter of panic in his chest. It’s fine. It’s just a cabin. Completely isolated in the woods. With metal walls.

Steve bites the inside of his cheek and scans his surroundings, his shoulders tensing. He feels much like he did his first night in the SHIELD room. But maybe that’s okay, because he knows what he needs to do.

He needs to know what’s here, know what’s in this space. Just like he’d done in the grey box of a room SHIELD had left him in. Steve closes the door, blocking out the buzz of activity outside, before turning to the kitchen, where the clock ticks away on the wall.

He ignores it, striding towards the cupboards and opening them again, this time paying more attention to what’s in them, and how much of it he has.

He recognises most of the stuff, even if it’s in different packaging or something he would’ve considered a luxury before. There’s rice, potatoes, cans of soup, sliced bread, a bag of apples. He has pasta noodles and cheese and a four litre jug of milk. Eggs and bacon, a small bunch of bananas, peanut butter, and jam—from a store, not his mother’s preserves—and more.

No cabbage though. No flour or other basic baking ingredients besides a little sugar for the coffee. The coffee comes in a tin almost as round as his head.

Everything is familiar but also just slightly off. He taps his fingers as his mind runs calculations, trying to figure out how many meals this will last him.

He isn’t used to planning his own meals with his metabolism yet. Before he’d relied entirely on double rations and extra emergency rations at every meal. Steve shudders as he remembers the hundreds of mediocre D-ration chocolate bars he’d eaten over the last two years.

Even then he’d barely had enough not to be hungry. He’s been hungry ever since he woke up here from the ice. It’s a lot harder to know what and how much he needs to eat. Especially when he’d had to do it in a cafeteria of people staring at him.

He shakes his head. It’s fine. He’s used to being hungry. He’ll figure out how much he needs to eat. And hopefully SHIELD won’t keep him here that long. Maybe the resupply is just a precaution. Maybe he’ll be able to convince Dr. Faustus that he’s ready to come back sooner than expected.

Steve turns his attention to the living room. There’s a large brick fireplace on one wall, a collection of stiff looking couches around it. There’s a few attempts at homeyness. Some overstuffed missmatching pillows, a knitted blanket thrown over the back of one of the couches, a faded green lamp on an end table, a bookshelf.

But everything has an air of abandonment. Dust hangs in the sunbeams. The couches look stale and uncomfortable. The fireplace doesn’t look like it’s been used in years. Steve walks restlessly through the living room, eyes skimming over paintings of ponds and books on hiking.

He ends up in the bathroom on the other side of the house from the bedroom. The bathroom is smaller than the one in his SHIELD room. A single stall shower with blue tile takes up most of the space. He searches it like he had the other bathroom.

There’s a few neglected bottles of soap and shampoo—both liquid—that actually have labels. It takes him a minute to figure out the pump for the soap, but he will admit the concept is nice. The toilet paper is soft and expensive again.

His sweep continues and in a cubby next to the bathroom that Steve had assumed was a closet are two machines he doesn’t recognise at first.

They’re stacked on top of each other, almost as tall as he is. They’re made of beige metal that looks faded and a little dented with time. The front of both machines is taken up by a round glass door and there’s a panel of buttons on each one.

Steve leans closer, trying to figure it out. The insides of the machines are metal too, the bottom one dotted with holes like a strainer. He crouches to run his fingers over them, his brow furled. The buttons and dials give him a better clue but he has to squint since most of the writing has worn off.

Econo-- wash, half loa-, sl-w spin, door relea--. The dials are covered with symbols he has a harder time deciphering but after a few minutes of speculation he thinks he gets the gist. It’s an electric washing machine and dryer.

He sits back on his heels for a moment, just staring at them. He can remember laundry day growing up. Ma had done it by hand, boiling water on the stove and hanging everything on the line. When they could afford it, she’d send it out, but often it was her red-worn hands wringing water from his sheets after he’d sweated through them or been sick on them.

Ma Barnes had a laundry machine that spun the clothes for her, but she still had to run it through the wringer and hang it to dry herself.

The laundromats Steve had used when he was older were similar and still laborious. The electric washing machines were big metal drums with attached mangles to wring out the water. He always took the clothes home to hang dry. No one he knew had a drying machine. He'd heard of heated dryer cupboards and seen a few ads for a machine kinda like this right before the war, but to see it here, in his house no less…

Electric washers and dryers would have been so much nicer, he thinks. The only problem is he doesn’t know how to use these. The washer looks very different and more advanced, and the dryer is entirely a mystery. Agent Simons hadn’t paused to show them and this hadn’t been part of Rumlow’s crash course.

Steve bites the inside of his cheek in frustration. Looks like that’s another thing for him to figure out. He closes the closet door a little louder than intended.

He crosses the cabin to the bedroom, looking over everything again. The drawers of the dresser are empty besides one dead moth. Two brass horse heads stare at him from the top of the dresser, their glassy eyes blank and empty.

The bedside tables are empty too, the quilted bedspread smelling faintly musty. The computer desk has a few dusty pens and pencils in a drawer and something called a ‘highlighter’ in bright yellow. Another drawer is full of scrap paper and a few paperclips.

Stepping away from the desk, Steve sets his jaw and goes over to examine the dent in the wall. The exposed metal panels are slotted together in hexagons, like a grey beehive. They’re marred by the sizable dent that had presumably broken the disguising wooden panels.

Steve squints at it. He could swear the dent is in the shape of a giant fist. He brushes his fingers over the cool metal in bafflement. The fist is significantly larger than his and he can’t imagine what could have made it. What had the future been up to?

Steve knocks against the metal wall, frowning at the deep, dull sound. The wall is thick, deceptively so. He doesn’t like it.

Pushing himself away from the wall, Steve tugs his fingers through his bangs and turns back to the living room. He remembers the thickness of the doorframe and he goes to check the back door. The frame is just as thick, about a foot deep, and he wonders if that’s the depth of the metal walls.

It’s like a bunker, he thinks uncomfortably, staring at the frame. SHIELD had left him in a bunker.

Why? He doubts it’s to do with an outside threat, unless SHIELD isn’t telling him something important. He has to admit that is also possible but he hasn’t forgotten the fake room he’d woken up in. He has a suspicion why SHIELD has put him in a metal dugout. Dr. Faustus’ promises about institutionalisation notwithstanding.

His jaw clenches and Steve shakes himself out of it, stepping out to check the back porch. The woods behind the cabin are dark and thick. Steve gazes into them, listening as the wind rustles through the branches. The smell of pine brings back memories of making camp with the Commandos in all types of bad weather. He can’t believe he doesn’t know what happened to them. Had they even survived to the end of the war?

A bird caws in the distance and Steve realises he’s been staring aimlessly. He glances quickly around the porch. There’s a rickety wooden chair looking out into the woods and a tall woodpile against the side of the house.

Good, Steve thinks, he can actually use the fireplace.

He returns to the living room, looking at the duffle bag he’d dumped by the front door. His hands form fists by his side and he can’t seem to unclench them. He doesn’t want to unpack. He doesn’t want to stay here at all. He doesn’t want to settle in.

But that sort of thinking won’t get him anywhere. He just needs to play along until he can convince Dr. Faustus to let him out. They obviously think something is wrong with him, so he needs to appear fine and ‘adjusted’. If unpacking the few things SHIELD had given him will help, he’s willing to try.

He doesn’t have much. He’d brought the clothes and toiletries and he’d stashed a few pens in one of the pockets since he wasn’t sure if he’d be coming back to the tiny SHIELD room. The important things, his things, hadn’t left his person since he’d got them. The knife, compass and dog tags stay with him at all times.

The only other thing he’d brought is his phone and charger cord. He’d been careful to plug it in the night before and he does so proactively now. He’s not sure how long the battery actually lasts and it feels weird the phone doesn’t need to stay plugged in.

After that there’s nothing left to distract him from the boxes of files on the kitchen table. Steve’s stomach clenches uncomfortably as he approaches them. The amount of files feels overwhelming and he’s almost afraid to know what they contain.

But at the same time he’s pretty sure there’s a part of his brain that’s been screaming this whole time because he doesn’t know anything and no one will tell him. Now he can finally get somewhere.

Setting his jaw, Steve squares his shoulders and pulls the lid off the first box. Rows of neat files stare up at him. There are labelled divider tabs throughout and he reads through a few of them.

Japan Surrender and Occupation - Hiroshima and Nagasaki

1950s Korea Maps

Baby Boom - Population Graph

1963 - Martin Luther King Washington Demonstration

Watt’s Riots - 1965

Photos - Vietnam 1967

Moon Landing - 1969

Steve licks his lips, his mouth feeling dry. Just that one quick scan feels like an avalanche of information.

Moon landing? he thinks faintly, sitting down at the table. He can’t even be excited by that because the other half of his brain is trying to process other things, like an occupation of Japan, or the fact that he doesn’t even know what a ‘Vietnam’ is.

He breathes out slowly and blinks hard, trying to combat the sluggishness in his brain. He presses the heels of his palms to his eyes and breathes.

“C'mon Rogers,” he mutters to himself. He can do this. He'd gotten up and continued on after Bucky’s death, surely that had been harder than this.

He blows out a breath and glances down at the thin white book Simons had shown him. Apparently that is his main resource, and everything else is supplementary. He glances at the row of boxes, trying not to be intimidated.

He can do this. He'd gotten up after Bucky died because Zola needed to be taken in. He can buckle down and read this because…because the sooner he does the sooner he gets out of here, right?

And…maybe it really will help. Dr. Faustus had seemed to think it would. And Steve… doesn't have anything else to do.

He flips the book over and reads the title. Twentieth Century, it says in big bold writing above a black and white picture of immigrants waiting in the street with their belongings. The World Since 1900. Second Edition.

Steve flicks his eyes over the book, surprised. He’d expected it to be focused solely on the years he’d missed, but it seems the book covers before he was born too. He flips it open to check the table of contents, and he is correct. The book doesn’t even begin to cover what he’d missed until halfway through.

Steve glances over the preceding chapters before deciding to start at chapter thirty-three. He doesn’t need to learn his own history right now. He wants to know what those labels in the filing boxes mean.

He flips to the middle of the book, opening to the chapter labelled Conclusions in Europe.

Or, he intends to.

As he flips, he passes a black and white photo of the emaciated corpses of two men laid on the ground. The page falls open and he stares.

Their stomachs are entirely caved in, every one of their ribs visible. They lay discarded on the ground, their stick-thin arms spread wide and stiff in gruesome rigor mortis. Their mouths hang open, their skin drawn tight over their cheekbones. Their eyes stare up blankly into the sky. Unseeing.

Steve freezes. A buzzing fills his ears. His eyes fall down to the image description under the photograph.

Death in a Nazi camp, it reads. Recorded by a camera team of the advancing Allied armies. Only when photographs like this were released to the general public did many people realise—

Steve tears his eyes away and the next page slips from his grip and falls open to the right chapter. He’s acutely aware of his breathing. His hands feel sweaty and the back of his neck is hot. He swallows with great difficulty, the haunting image floating in his mind.

The advancing Allied armies. The words play over and over in his mind. Yes. He knows about that. The Commandos had been part of that once. When the first camp was found in France. After the Allies had invaded in ‘44. They’d been joined up with the U.S. 6th Army group, sent to investigate if Hydra had anything to do with the camp.

Natzweiler-Struthof. The name will forever be seared into his brain. It was forced labour, like the Hydra camp Bucky had been in. People slaving away in quarries, forced to work till they dropped. Or, some were selected for human experimentation.

The white mortuary tables, the echoing rooms, the destroyed records unable to tell them if Hydra was at work here so they just had to keep looking—

It had been empty when they got there. The place already evacuated by the Nazis before it fell into Allied hands. But the buildings left behind told their own story. He can still remember— still smell the lingering death and despair that hung over that place.

His mind flashes with images. The crematorium with the— the body-burning furnace that heated the prisoners shower water. The hanging gallows at the top of the hill. The eerie gas chamber hastily converted from a quaint countryside dance hall—Monty had been sick once they figured out what it was. Then there were the prison barracks and barbed wire fences and the guard towers. And the comfortable SS quarters in the ski hotel with an outdoor pool in view of the barracks cuz that's what this place was before it became a Nazi camp with a morgue with white slabs for medical experiments and barracks for political prisoners and French Resistance fighters and— the way Dernier had screamed when he found out—

Steve sucks in a breath, shaking his head. His throat constricts and he swallows hard, forcing back bile. No. He doesn’t want to think about that. He doesn’t need to think about that. He’s not even reading about that. He’s reading— He’s reading about—

His eyes search the page under him desperately, blinking away a film of tears that had snuck up on him. The Yalta Conference the first header says, and he desperately forces himself to start reading.

The images and memories from before get stuffed into a box in the back of his mind. He doesn’t plan on reopening it again any time soon. (But the photo of the corpses lingers. That's what the prisoners must have been like, before they were sent away to other Nazi camps. How many more camps were there?)

They'd found that camp barely four months ago. For him anyway. How many—

Put it away, he begs his mind.

For a few pages it’s okay. He can read and distract himself from his darker thoughts. He has lots of practice at that after two years of hunting Hydra.

Through the textbook he gets a birds eye view of things he was too low ranking to know about during the war. Like the meetings and negotiations between Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt and the formation of a new body called the United Nations Organisation. He follows as the war begins to close in on Berlin and the President dies in April.

The mention of Roosevelt’s death is so sudden and simple that it throws him for a loop. It’s a single sentence that he has to re-read twice before he can fully process it.

The rest of the build up to the end of the war is just as fast. April 28th, Mussolini is killed, on the 30th Hitler kills himself. “The Fuhrer was followed in death by his most devoted admirer,” the book tells him, “Joseph Goebbels first murdered his wife and six children, then killed himself.”

Steve swallows with difficulty, barely two pages in and reeling from the mix of emotions afflicting him. He can’t stop reading, he sucks in the information like a dry sponge, (trying to bury less welcome memories) but the matter-of-fact reporting of groundbreaking and gut-wrenching facts leaves him dizzy.

And the book is just getting started. “Estimates of death in the World War of 1939-1945 range between forty and fifty million,” it says as it begins to outline the cost of war.

He reads in numb shock. He gets a chart. European war dead laid out in a list, with the highest being 20,000,000 in the USSR. The number is so large, so gruesome that he can barely grasp it.

Then there's the plight of the german-speaking people left in liberated countries.

Steve leans his elbow on the table, his hand pressed to his forehead as he reads on. His mind is overwhelmed by pictures of hollow Berlin buildings, fleeing refugees and the occupation of Germany by America, Britain, France and the Soviet Union. He doesn’t even get a chance to feel relieved about the end of the war, instead he has to sort through post-war politics and the disintegration of wartime alliances.

It feels as though things start to go bad immediately. Tensions rise between America and the USSR, while overcrowding soares in Berlin as German refugees flee back home. On and on it goes.

“In all,” the book tells him, “between 1945 and 1947 some sixteen million Germans were expelled from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. At a rough estimate, one out of every eight died as a direct result of compulsory flight to the West. The war was supposed to be over, yet here were two million more corpses to add to the heaps of Europe’s dead”.

Steve has read six pages of the textbook and he already feels sick. He closes his eyes and breathes.

Maybe if he had lived through it, things would be different. Maybe if he got to rejoice at the end of the war and go back home to his loved ones he might be able to better handle the post-war chaos. But he hadn’t, and he’s just left with despair.

I hate this. Oh I hate this.

He forces himself to pause and study the map of the newly divided Germany. It gives him a moment to breathe, and he might as well try to memorise what the world looks like now.

Of course then the book tells him that America, France, and Britain combine their zones so that there is only East and West Germany. So he didn’t even need to memorise those zones in the first place. Steve blows out a breath of frustrated air and makes himself continue reading about the USSR and the Communist takeover in the East.

He's not in a good headspace for politics. He keeps reading though, because at least these paragraphs aren't discussing mass death.

His brain feels so foggy though, it's hard to understand what he's reading.

Communism had been a buzz word since his childhood, since the revolution of 1917 really. It doesn’t surprise him that Communism is again a hot button after the war but he hadn’t been expecting it to become the main source of conflict. His brow furls as he reads, trying to understand the reason behind the skyrocketing tensions.

The overarching concern is said to be communism, but it seems primarily to have to do with the fact that the USSR and America are now two major powers who are desperate to maintain as much influence over the rest of the world as they can. Or at least, that's how the textbook makes it seem.

He wonders what he would have thought of it in the ‘40s. He doesn’t even know what he thinks of it now.

The book doesn’t get into those tensions yet, instead it takes a break at 1947 and starts a new chapter, focusing back on America’s other wartime enemy; Japan.

The fog clears a little and Steve sits up with interest, remembering the file folders mentioning some kind of occupation. He wants to know what happened. He needs to know. This is his first detailed account of the end of the war and, as difficult as it is, he needs to know.

He reaches over and pulls out the file, setting it beside him for when he’s ready for it. As much of a rollercoaster the last few pages of his textbook had been, he’s still anxious to learn as much as he can of what he’d missed.

He hadn't realised how difficult it had been not knowing these last two days. Maybe Dr. Faustus was onto something.

With renewed vigour he flips the page to the new chapter and his eyes are drawn to a black and white image of a giant cumulonimbus cloud expanding into the sky.

A weapon of terrifying power, the image description reads. An atomic bomb explodes over Bikini atoll in the Pacific in a 1946 test explosion. It destroyed a fleet of obsolete warships moored there to test the bomb’s power.

Steve flicks his eyes over the picture again. The cloud is an explosion from a bomb? He can’t see anything for scale so it’s hard to tell how big it is, but the caption is descriptive enough. What does that have to do with Japan?

An uneasy thread of trepidation begins to wind up in his stomach.

He starts reading hesitantly. First he learns about a fire-bomb raid in Tokyo that kills 80,000 people in March. According to the book most Japanese could see their defeat was coming and in April the Prime Minister had “tried secretly to interest the Americans in peace which would avoid the humiliation of ‘unconditional surrender’”. Stalin did not pass on the message, but American Intelligence intercepted it and knew of it anyway.

Which is why it’s a total shock when, instead of going that route, the US drops an atomic bomb on a city called Hiroshima. Steve reads the historical retelling numbly:

The initial flash spawned a succession of calamities. First came heat. It lasted only an instant but was so intense that it melted roof tiles, fused the quartz crystals in granite blocks, charred exposed sides of telephone poles for almost two miles, and incinerated nearby humans, so thoroughly that nothing remained except their shadows, burned into asphalt pavements or stone walls. Bare skin was burned up to two and a half miles away.

After the heat came the blast, sweeping outward from the fireball with the force of a five-hundred-mile-an-hour-wind. Only those objects that offered a minimum of surface resistance – handrails on bridges, pipes, utility poles – remained standing… Otherwise in a giant circle more than two miles across, everything was reduced to rubble…

Steve’s hands are shaky and sweaty, his breath shallow. The devastation of the bomb is staggering. He had no idea such a feat was even possible. Except, his mind flashes back to the rows of bombs in Schmidt’s cargo hold. Eight bombs for eight major cities in the US. Each with a name stencilled on the side. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia.

Steve’s breath is trapped somewhere in his throat. Those were Tesseract powered bombs. He has no idea the destruction they could have caused but he anticipated something on par with these atomic bombs. That’s why he’d fought so hard to stop them. That’s why he’d crashed into the Arctic—

He tries to shake off the thought but the only thing to distract him is the textbook. Things only get worse. The death toll in Hiroshima is 70 thousand, with 80 thousand injured. And then three days later they drop a second bomb on Nagasaki with 40 thousand dead.

Japan surrenders unconditionally on September 2nd and is occupied by America to be demilitarised and democratised.

Steve’s eyes stray to the supplemental file, breathing like he’d run a marathon. The file seems to grow bigger on the table and it takes a moment to find the strength to open it. He doesn’t want to but at the same time he needs to know.

The first thing is two pages from Wikipedia, outlining more about the atomic bombs. He couldn’t care less about the bomb’s design and specs, instead his eyes fall to the section on casualties. This one is worse because it gives more death statistics, and these ones are higher.

He reads numbly, white static in his brain.

“Over the next two to four months, the effects of the atomic bombings killed between 90,000 and 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half occurred on the first day. For months afterward, many people continued to die from the effects of burns, radiation sickness, and injuries, compounded by illness and malnutrition.”

His hands are numb, detached from his body. He can’t feel the chair under him, he’s not even sure he’s breathing. The magnitude of what he’s trying to grasp is too much. They’d dropped two monstrous bombs on Japan and killed thousands. That’s the exact thing he’d died to stop and now his own country had—

How— How is he supposed to—

He searches the file, looking for some explanation. Some logic for the civilian target and massive casualties when Japan was already on the brink of surrender. But all he finds is a collection of images.

It’s photos of the aftermath. A city reduced to rubble. A shadow of a body burned into the ground. An American general next to the Emperor of Japan. Black thermal flash burns on a civilian’s legs. US trucks handing out food. A burned and bloody woman getting glass picked out of her shoulder. A body—alive? Dead?— with full body burns, their arms stiff and blistered.

Steve’s stomach heaves and his vision blurs. He shoves his chair back from the table. The papers and pictures scatter on the floor as he bolts for the kitchen. He trips into the sink, leans over, and vomits.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Steve can’t force himself to continue reading the textbook right away.

He gasps and heaves by the sink till his stomach is empty. Then he keeps gasping because it's hard to breathe and sobs keep building up in his chest.

He isn't crying, he's just— He just needs a minute.

Eventually he rinses out the sink and swirls water in his mouth, feeling sweaty and shaky. He’s still nauseous and a headache pounds behind his temple. The sight of the pictures on the floor has bile rising in his throat and he scoops them up indiscriminately, shoving them into the folder without looking at them.

He feels dizzy, like he might faint, and the whole kitchen feels contaminated. He can’t stay in there. He leaves the terrible textbook and horrible folder on the table and retreats outside.

He goes out the back door, sitting shakily on the old wooden chair. His shirt sticks to him where he’d sweated through the fabric and he shivers as the light breeze chills him. He forces himself to just sit and breathe for a while. He clamps down on the lump in his throat and the damp stinging of his eyes and eventually they go away.

His brain swirls with toxic thoughts. Too many to deal with without getting swamped. So he focuses on something else.

It’s a good thing nobody had been there to see him reading those files.

He can’t imagine if Rumlow had been sitting there, watching him go through the information. Steve has no doubt his reaction would have been reported to Dr. Faustus. It’s already clear he has no privacy here. Even Simons had known about his appointments.

PTSD. That’s what Dr. Faustus had diagnosed him with. Steve still doesn’t actually know what those letters mean, but it’s battle fatigue. He’s heard of it. Seen it in some of the soldiers he’d worked with.

His hands curl around the armrests of the chair, his mouth still tasting sour. Faustus had sent him here because of that diagnosis. To rest and adjust.

Are the files a test? A way of seeing if he can handle living in the future?

Steve’s pretty sure he’s failed that test. But he also can’t imagine how anyone could learn that information and not be shaken. Is his reaction truly that abnormal? He would hope not. Although he wishes he’d been able to keep better control of himself.

It’s just… everything is so much. It’s only been three days since he’d found himself awake here. He’d gone into the ice accepting death and now all of the sudden he’s the only one who hadn’t died.

Steve’s throat squeezes tight. He’d barely begun to process that. It’s been seventy years. SHIELD hadn’t offered to bring in anyone he knew to help him. Any questions he broached around the topic were skillfully avoided.

Everyone he knows… is dead.

Ma and Pa Barnes. Bucky’s sisters. The Howling Commandos. Howard, Peggy. And as of two weeks ago, Bucky.

Steve’s throat makes a soft, strangled noise and he breathes in shakily. His mind flashes with Bucky’s face as he’d reached for him, his eyes wide and scared and desperate—before the bar fell away and Steve’s whole world came crashing down.

Steve’s shaking hands go to his pockets, his teeth biting into his bottom lip as he pulls out the knife and compass. They are strikingly similar. Polished brass finishings and a solid weight in his palm.

They stand as two threads of connection in the raging storm of grief and loss. He sits holding them for a while, brushing his thumb over Bucky’s etching and keeping the compass closed to avoid the water damage to what is now his only picture of Peggy.

Peggy had been there after Bucky’s death, helping him get back up again. But there's no one here now. He doesn't even have Hydra to hunt. No mission to cling to.

I need one, he realises, his fist closing around the compass. He needs a mission, a reason to keep going here. If he doesn't— Dr. Faustus’ words come back to him like slow acting poison.

It would certainly be easier not having to deal with it all. Suicide rates among veterans are very high. Steve is beginning to see why.

He shakes his head, dislodging the thought. Without a mission, a reason, he will drift and flounder and he doesn't want to know what Dr. Faustus’ response to that will be.

He stares at the compass and knife for a while before it comes to him.

He needs to know what happened to Peggy and the others. They may be dead, but they might have descendants or family. He needs to know.

And in order to do that, he needs to get out of the cabin. Which means, he's fairly certain, reading those files.

But he can do it. His fists clench around his lifelines and he sits up straight. With a mission in mind he can do it.

Once he’s ready to go back into the house he doesn’t go back to the table or mountain of files. He avoids them, swerving instead towards the bedroom. Simons had said Dr. Faustus would contact him on the computer and Steve needs to get on top of that if he has any hope of getting out of here early. The only problem is the one in the cabin looks a lot different from the one Rumlow had him practice on.

It’s bigger, more reminiscent of some of the machines and screens Steve had seen during the war. That should be comforting except he doesn’t know if he knows how to use this one.

Can’t be that hard, he tells himself as he stands staring at the dusty computer, his hands on his hips. If he can contact Dr. Faustus, he may be able to ask about his friends. And soon he'll need to convince the man he's ready to leave.

It's motivation enough. You figured out Hydra tech on the fly, you can do this.

Fifteen minutes later, dust in his hair and tickling his nose, he isn’t so sure. He’s tried everything. The power button on the screen and on the heavy plastic box that Rumlow hadn’t really touched on. He blew off the keys, found the outlet in the wall and unplugged the whole thing and plugged it back in again. He checked the connections of the various wires he could find, thinking back to fiddly radios that needed to be handled just so.

The only thing he doesn’t do is switch around the wires because he doesn’t know what they do and he has no doubt he’ll mess them up worse than before.

Kneeling on the hardwood floor of the bedroom he has to admit that either he has no idea what he’s doing, or the computer is well and truly broken.

He runs an agitated hand through his hair, staring at the persistently black screen, trying to think through his options. He needs the computer. That’s how he’s supposed to convince Dr. Faustus to let him out of here. How is he supposed to appear fine and adjusted if he can’t even turn on one blasted computer?

A cold wave of fear washes through Steve as he sits hunched on the floor. How is he supposed to contact SHIELD when he’s finished the files? Or if he eats all his food? All at once it weighs down on him how absolutely alone he is. Trapped in a bunker cabin in the middle of the woods, no roads in or out, no way to contact anyone—

No wait. He startles and jerks to his feet as a thought occurs to him. He has a phone. He’d forgotten. He has a phone now, a wireless one that can fit in his hand. Rumlow had put his number in there, right?

Steve stumbles over to his side table and unplugs the phone. The glass screen lights up, showing the time 11: 42 on a pale blue background. Steve swipes through the password and reminds himself how to get to his contacts. There’s a single name in there, Brock Rumlow.

Steve carefully presses the glass above the phone symbol by Rumlow’s name. It feels weird not having any real buttons and a part of him cringes at the idea of calling Rumlow to admit he can’t get the computer working. But Rumlow is supposed to be introducing this stuff to him, right? And he needs to be able to contact Dr. Faustus.

The screen goes black and a pad of numbers appears, Rumlow’s name above. Instead of ringing, a box pops up with the word SEARCHING…, the ellipsis loading over and over again. Steve’s brow furls, confused, then the box changes.

Error: No Service it claims, and the call closes.

Steve stares, his eyes darting over the screen. This time he sees the words scrolling at the top of his screen that he must have missed before. No Service zone it reads.

His heart begins to pound, his hand growing cold around his phone. His phone isn’t working either. He doesn’t know why but he can’t get the phone to work either even though it’d been working yesterday. With fumbling fingers he tries to do some of the simple searches he’d done the day before, but all he gets is a blank screen.

Internet not connected, it tells him and Steve lets out a harsh breath, slumping down onto the bed next to him. He stares down at the phone, the slim device seemingly no more than a useless brick of metal and glass.

His hand is shaking, he realises faintly.

It feels like he’s been shaking since he woke up. Every little thing seems to send him over the edge. It’s ridiculous because he’s dealt with much worse. So what if he can’t contact anyone? It’s no worse than that time he’d lost contact with the Commandos behind enemy lines and he’d had to crawl through mud for two days, laying low and sleeping with one eye open while he tried to get back to the rendezvous point.

He’s been through so much worse. This shouldn’t— this shouldn’t make him breathless. Shouldn’t leave him on edge, aware of every little sound in the isolated bunker he’d been left in.

They’re coming back to get me, he reminds himself. Simons had said someone is coming for a restock, right? So maybe he can ask them how to fix the computer then. Or maybe he can finish the files by then and convince them to let him out. Maybe he won’t even need to talk to Dr. Faustus again.

Steve breathes in sharply and puts the phone away. The time reads 12:15 on the screen. He hadn’t realised he’d been sitting for so long.

Even with his newfound resolve to get out of here by the next restock, Steve shudders at the thought of the files waiting for him.

Lunchtime, he decides instead, straightening his shoulders.

He takes stock of what he has in the kitchen, his arms folded as he tries to plan a meal that will actually be filling but won’t risk using up all his food before the next restock. Simons hadn’t said when that is happening, so Steve has no timeline. No idea how long he’ll be here and no clue how long he’ll need to stretch his supplies.

He makes do. He opens two cans of soup with a can opener that almost looks like the one he grew up with. He gets a pot and fiddles with the stove until he’s sure it’s on. He isn’t exactly sure what temperature to cook at because he’s used to the coal stove he’d had in the three room apartment he’d shared with Bucky. Ma Barnes’ coin operated gas stove had seemed like a luxury back then.

Electric stoves had been a step beyond that and it’s unfair that his lack of funds growing up seems to have put him extra behind now. Even things that had existed in his time he doesn’t know how to use because he’d been busy surviving with what he had.

He gives his head a shake and focuses on his lunch, letting his hand hover over the burner until it feels like the right temperature to heat the soup. There’s a packet of bacon in the fridge, in a plastic package instead of the brown paper from the butcher he’s used to. He splits it open with a knife to fry a few slices and glances around. He doesn’t have anything to wrap it up in, not even newspaper, so he puts the open plastic back in the fridge with distaste.

He stands in front of the fridge to marvel for a moment. He’d heard of electric refrigerators before, but it is yet again another thing he’d never actually experienced, especially one so big. He’d grown up with an ice box, always pinching pennies to pay the iceman for a new block at the end of the month.

In contrast to the little wooden box he’d come to know, the fridge is bright white and takes up the entire wall. Cold radiates from it and Steve abruptly shivers, slamming the door closed.

He focuses back on his bacon, frying it carefully in a dinged up pan he finds in the cupboard. His stomach growls, reminding him he hasn’t been full since he woke up here. He stirs the soup to make sure it doesn’t burn and pulls out a loaf of sliced bread he’d been left with. The bread is weirdly soft and flimsy and he wrinkles his nose skeptically as he transfers the bacon out of the pan and puts the bread in to toast.

The soup is ready and he sets it aside, carefully turning off the burner. Bacon fat sizzles as his bread toasts and Steve searches for condiments. He braves the fridge again for mayonnaise and allows himself a small smile when he finds the peanut butter in the cupboard.

It had been forever since he’d been able to make a comforting, familiar meal for himself. He’d been living off of K and C-rations and the odd hot meal for the last two years. It’s nice to be able to indulge in a favourite.

Once the toast is done he assembles his sandwich. He spreads the mayonnaise and peanut butter thinly, unable to forget the threat of empty cupboards, no matter his caloric needs. The bacon layers on top nicely and Steve doesn’t waste time biting into the warm sandwich.

He hums in appreciation at the nutty, salty taste, the crunch of toasted bread and bacon the only sound in the house besides the ticking of the clock on the wall above him. Steve eats the sandwich over the sink, not wanting to spoil his dinner with the boxes on the table. He eats the soup right out of the pot so he has less dishes to do.

He stares out the window above the sink, sipping mushy carrots and potatoes while the lake outside glitters in the sun. He wonders absentmindedly how thick the window pane is. He can't hear anything outside, not even with the serum.

His spoon clicks against the pot in the stillness. He can imagine his Ma tutting at him over his manners. If she were here she would insist on a bowl and a plate. Decency costs nothing, she’d say.

But she isn’t here.

Steve turns away from the idyllic scene outside and fills the sink with hot water for the dishes. Four dishes—a pot, a pan, a spoon and a knife. Easy.

He doesn’t have a dish scraper for the fat so he improvises the best he can with some scrap paper. It doesn’t work very well but the pan is cleaner and he throws the greasy paper in the fireplace to burn later. He makes an educated guess that the bottle of purple liquid under the sink is dish soap even though it's entirely foreign. He’d always used soap shakers or soap flakes.

He watches the purple liquid foam up into impressive suds. The scent is strong, but unplaceable. He wrinkles his nose and scrubs his dishes before rinsing them in the hottest water he can manage, glad that he doesn’t have to boil it. He leaves the dishes to drip dry and wipes down the counters.

He isn’t full. He isn’t sure if he can risk that. But he’s been on rations since the beginning of the war. Longer, really, considering his grocery budget. He can manage it.

It’s fine.

It’s what he tells himself when he’s once again faced with the files on the table. If he wants to convince SHIELD he’s ready to leave the cabin he has a feeling he will need to be finished with these. As much as his mind shies away from touching the ominous folders awaiting him, he doesn’t want to stay here. He’s done harder things. He can do this.

He seats himself at the table, his lips pressed into a thin, determined line as he briskly stores the Japanese file SHIELD had given him, avoiding glancing at any of the photos. That done he reopens the thin textbook and prepares himself to find out what happened to the rest of Asia after the war.

It probably takes him longer to read than it should. He’s learning everything for the first time and he has no idea how important any single sentence might be. He has to stop to examine all the maps closely, absorbing as much information as he can because for all he knows everyone knows what the Indian subcontinent looks like before and after independence.

After what feels like hours learning about rising tensions against French colonials in Indo-China and the independence, violence, and partition of India and Pakistan, Steve has to pull away when he turns to the Communist revolution in China.

The page turns over to show a black and white photo of a Chinese man being shot in the head by a Shanghai policeman and Steve decides it's time for supper.

He busies himself making a new meal, the sun starting to shine low and gold through the kitchen window. He's not sure what to make for supper. He'd gotten used to most of his meals coming in pre-packaged tins. Cans of two small hamburger patties, chopped egg and ham, or american cheese. There was always hardtack biscuits and caramels or hard candies to round it out. That and endless emergency chocolate rations for him.

He ends up finding some cans of pork and beans and he boils some potatoes. It's a sad looking dinner but familiar enough.

He can't force himself to read the book again after supper. His head is swimming with the years of information he's already learned. He doesn't think he can handle any more.

He gets restless being idle though so he builds a small fire in the fireplace. He doesn't have an axe so he just uses his hands, the sharp cracks of wood loud in the empty landscape outside the cabin.

He settles and tries to read one of the nature books he finds on the bookshelf. The wildlife bird book was published in 2005, which he supposes is out of date, but the year still feels like something out of a sci-fi pulp novel.

Once the ticking clock in the kitchen tells him it's time for his sleep schedule he's left with a dilemma. The quilt covered bed in the bedroom is as unappealing as the one he'd left back at SHIELD but he knows he should use it.

He tries it at first, if only to cling to the illusion of normality. He can handle sleeping in a bed. The last two nights were just a fluke.

But no matter how he tosses and turns, he can't get comfortable. The pillows are musty and the mattress must be uneven because at first it feels like his legs are sinking down to the floor. Then, when he flips over, he swears his torso tips down and blood rushes to his head.

There's a tiny blue electric light from the box under the computer, which means it must not actually be dead. (He just can’t figure it out.) The outlet buzzes and the light reflects off the ominous dented metal above his bed. He stares up at it, the weight of the bunker house pressing down on him. Sleep eludes him entirely, and after a few hours of futility he gives up and drags his blankets out to the living room.

Instead of sleeping on the floor like he had at SHIELD he situates himself on the stiff couch. The cushions are firm and unforgiving and the fridge hums in the background, the buzz broken by the ticking clock every second.

But the crackling of the fire in the fireplace and the smell of burning logs combined with the heat and familiar flickering of light eventually lull him into a doze. He'd spent hours by the campfire with the Commandos when the mission didn't call for a blackout. He'd grown used to falling asleep to the soft snaps of burning twigs and in between one blink and another, it pulls him under.

The dream starts like a bombing raid. He’s crouched in a bunker with the Commandos, listening as German planes fly overhead. Or is it Allied planes? He tries to listen to the engines, certain if he tries hard enough he can discern the buzzing. But no matter how he turns his head or strains his ears he can’t be sure.

He sits up, trying to catch sight of the planes, and that’s when he realises he isn’t in a bunker. The metal walls curve around him, the floor vibrating beneath his feet. He’s on the Valkyrie.

The Commandos aren’t there anymore. He’s alone on the ship, even the Hydra pilots he’s supposed to be fighting are missing. He walks slowly around the bomberbay, his footsteps echoing on the metal gainways as his eyes slide over the hulking black metal casings of Hydra’s bombs.

He's never been able to read in his dreams but he knows what the lilting white paint spells out. New York.

Eventually he makes it to the co*ckpit. He knows he should be more urgent. He knows something is supposed to happen, but Red Skull isn’t here. The Tesseract is gone too, the glowing blue cube missing from the command centre. The ship is eerily empty, the droning of the engines the only sound as the sky rushes past the windscreen.

He steps up to the console, his shield hanging off his arm as he scans the screens. He’s oddly calm. He knows this part. He’s going to sit down and drive the plane into the ice. That will stop the bombing raid, simple as that.

But as his eyes glance over the bomberbay screen he realises with a sudden jolt that the bombs are already deploying. The whirring engine gets three times louder as his heartbeat picks up. His eyes jerk up to the digital map and the little plane indicator shows they are over America already, the city of New York spread out across the screen like an ant colony.

His breath catches. Wait no. That’s not how this goes—

The New York bomb is already deploying. Steve watches it fall from somewhere outside the ship, watching it plummet like a stone through grey wispy clouds. He shields his face with his arms as it goes off with a brilliant flash of acid blue light, the shockwave expanding over the horizon.

The dream gets murky. One moment he’s watching the bomb fall, watching the mushroom cloud grow and grow— and the next he’s on the ground, his ears ringing as alarm bells wail and shrieks of pain fill the air.

The streets are unrecognisable. Smoke hangs heavy in the air, every building on the block flattened into rubble. Twisted telephone lines stick up from crumbled heaps of debris, sparking dangerously, the scent of fire on the wind. Piping and wiring jut out of busted concrete like flayed veins. The roads are clogged with smashed boards, bent and twisted metal, and burnt rubber tires, only a few streetlights standing out like the ragged masts of a shipwreck.

Glass crunches underfoot as Steve shakily begins picking his way through the wreckage. There’s a set of steps that lead nowhere now, a black shadow of a person burnt into the stone.

That’s when he starts seeing the people.

Figures stumble through the dust towards him, moaning in pain, their arms stretched out like zombies as they feel their way forward. Most of them are naked, their clothes burnt off, some with dark patterns blazed into their skin. A woman stumbles towards him, her mouth open in a wordless howl. Glass sticks out in shards from her head, her eyes blinded as blood drips down her face.

Steve stumbles away from her, his heart pounding. He can hear a child crying somewhere, the noises of pain and terror seeming to come from everywhere at once. He clambers over a collapsed stone wall, the body of an old man crushed dead underneath.

The further he gets down the street the more devastation he sees. There are a few buildings that remain partially erect now, but their windows are blown out, eyeless, like that photo of Berlin he’d seen from after the war—

Abruptly he realises he’s on Bucky’s street and he figures out what he’s been trying to get to. He hurries forward. There’s a man—the grocer, from down the street—sitting crumpled next to a brick half-wall. His skin is burned and blistered, peeling away from his arms and face. He lets out a continuous low wail as he rocks back and forth, his clothes bloody and tattered.

Steve swallows heavily but pushes onward, tripping over bricks and cutting up his hands as he climbs over debris. Then he sees it, Bucky’s townhouse. The building is collapsed in on itself, the front steps obliterated. There’s a fire somewhere down the street, Steve can hear the screams. He rushes forward.

There’s someone there, half-crumpled under some shingles, dust caked in her hair, making it look grey.

“Becca!” he screams.

She looks up, her eyes widening as she sees him. Her hand reaches out for him, her bloody fingernails chipped and torn.

“Steve,” she rasps.

He nearly turns his ankle on a piece of stone and he has to catch himself on a length of rebar. He’s lost his shield at some point along the way but it’s only a passing thought in his mind.

“Where are the others?” he gasps, as he reaches Becca, scanning her.

“Under—” Becca coughs, blood coating her lips. “Got trapped underneath.” She looks back towards the house, splintered wood standing up like jagged teeth from dusty stone. “Help me. You’ve gotta help me dig them out before the fire gets here.”

She tries to stand up and that’s when Steve realises she’s bleeding from her abdomen. Her stomach is cut open, a shard of glass still lodged inside, sticking out through her torn dress. The wound stinks, dark blood slicking his hands as she stumbles against him.

“Alice is still— she and Ma were in the kitchen,” she mumbles, her head lulling tiredly against his shoulder. She retches and vomits up more blood, the splatter hitting the centre star of his suit. She sways and something falls out of the gash in her dress, hanging like a limp, glistening worm. Becca doesn’t seem to notice her intestines hanging out of her body. She’s still trying to get to the house.

“Becca—” he stutters, eyes wide as discs. “Rebecca, sit down.”

She doesn’t sit so much as slump downwards, Steve’s hands the only thing keeping her from falling straight down. Her head rolls backwards and she goes limp.

“No, Becca wait—”

The fire is growing closer now. He can hear screams as people burn to death, trapped under their own houses. He can smell it in the air, skin and blood and hair burning up into smoke. Like the furnace— Like the—

Becca is motionless under his hand, her eyes open, staring blindly up at the sky.

And Steve—

Steve wakes up screaming.

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

Steve starts the day with a headache lodged behind his right eye.

He stares glumly out the kitchen window at the grey sky, waiting for his water to boil. He makes coffee, not because it does anything, but because the smell is familiar, and he’s been drinking coffee every morning for the last two years.

The powdered coffee from the tin in the cupboard is not as good as the coffee packets from his rations.

He makes breakfast despite his queasy stomach, munching his way through six ‘granola bars’ and some egg on toast. He cracks the lid on the massive jug of milk, shaking his head. He’s used to glass bottles every week from the milkman. The jug in the fridge seems unnecessarily excessive. Although he supposes it’s meant to last him until the next restock. Whenever that is.

His stomach clenches. Maybe it’s longer than he thinks, if he’s expected to use four litres of milk.

He breathes out and moves away from the fridge. He eyes the table of files with distaste and trepidation. He thinks he’d rather run a Nazi blockade than sit down and subject himself to more of the bloody history he’d missed. But avoiding it isn’t going to get him out of this cabin.

He needs to get out and find out what happened to his friends.

He sits down with his coffee cup and rubs a hand over his face. His chin is rough with stubble, he hasn't felt up to tackling the fancy razor in the bathroom.

He sighs and begins reading. The chapter on Asia finishes summarising Mao’s revolution and he flips to chapter 35. Cold War he reads, his heart sinking. Confrontation 1945-55.

For the next few hours he muddles through post-war relations between the US and the Soviet Union. He reads about the Truman doctrine, which feared a ‘domino effect’ of countries falling to Communism, even though the textbook tells him “such a view of a world in peril from the Russian menace was not altogether accurate.”

Still, a new agency called the CIA is formed (as was SHIELD Steve presumes), and America situates itself as the ‘protector of the free world’.

That leads to the Marshall Plan and money funnelling into Europe and Germany to rebuild capitalist countries after the war. It also means, he is horrified to learn, less focus on Nazi war crimes. The book briefly mentions something called the Nuremberg trials for Nazis, but the passage doesn't say much else.

He pauses and looks up the Nuremberg trials in the back of the book. finding a short section on it in chapter 32. He'd skipped it to start reading about the end of the war, but clearly he’d missed a few things.

“The major Nazi leaders and most criminal generals were tried at Nuremberg for 'crimes against peace’ and ‘crimes against humanity’”, the book tells him. “Most of the accused were executed or sentenced to long prison terms.”

“But,” the book continues solemnly, “historians have estimated that between 150,000 and 200,000 Nazis—soldiers, officials, industrialists—were responsible for the death of nearly six million Jews and six million others in the murder camps and slave barracks of the Reich. After 1945 only about 35,000 of them were tried and convicted. By 1948, American investigations into Nazi crimes were completed.”

The words blur.

Steve hangs his head in his hands, his mind and body a mess of warring emotions. He doesn’t even know what to do with the knowledge that only a small portion of Nazis had faced punishment for their crimes. The book doesn’t even mention Hydra and he can barely focus on the apparent short arm of justice because it’s the first time he has numbers.

It's the first time anyone had mentioned the death toll of Nazi crimes. Six million Jews. Six million. He hadn't realised— His stomach churns and his breakfast threatens to come back up. He sucks in a breath and it shudders like a sob. His palms press against his eyes as he fights back tears.

Six million Jews. Twelve million people. The number is too big. Too horrible. He can’t wrap his head around it. It’s too much—

His mind flashes with memories of that camp. Traces of ash in the furnace, whipping racks in the prison. Not a soul to save as the Nazis fled the advancing Allies. Just how many more of those camps were there? Six million Jews. There’d been articles about antisemitism in the papers during the war and rumours of French Jews being rounded up and sent away. How many more—? How could—

He only realises how hard he’s shaking once the coffee mug starts rattling against the wooden table. His breaths are harsh and panicked. His head swimming with twelve million dead, murdered by Nazis. And fifty million killed by the war and 200,000 people in Japan destroyed with just two bombs.

The coffee cup jumps as he pushes himself up from the table. He moves blindly through the kitchen, fleeing outside where he leans against the wood siding and gasps for breath. The wood is warm against his back, the sun piercing his eyes as it gleams off of the tall grass surrounding the cabin. Early summer heat shimmers in the air but Steve has never felt so cold. His hands shake and shake and his shirt is damp with sweat.

He gasps embarrassingly loud, sobs catching in his throat as he tries to smother them. He presses his hands to his face as his body shudders and his eyes bleed hot tears onto his cheeks.

It takes him a long time to be able to breathe evenly again. He feels utterly wiped, his legs shaky and exhausted. The sun aggravates his headache as it glitters off the lake. His nausea hasn’t gone away either. It settles like a stone in his stomach, a seed of panic making its home there no matter how carefully he breathes. His hand touches his pocket where he can feel his compass and he swallows, his throat bone dry.

I want to go home, I want to go— He blinks back a damp film in his eyes, swallowing firmly. His other hand goes for his dog tags under his shirt.

He knows he has to go back inside. He knows he needs to keep reading that cursed textbook. He’s never dreaded anything more in his life. Even crashing the plane was easier than this.

As with the plane, he doesn’t think he has a choice. He’d been left here with the files, all but told to read them if he wants to leave again.

It’s a mission, he reminds himself tiredly, even though the words make him want to throw up. It takes a few more minutes but eventually he finally pushes himself off the wall and goes back inside.

It's a bitter pill to swallow but he has no choice. He chokes it down with a sip of cold coffee and turns to carefully memorise the map of Europe with the so-called ‘Iron Curtain’ separating the Communist bloc. An element of the Cold War that had distracted everyone away from the Nazi horrors of the last six years.

Steve leans his head against his hand, blinking hard, trying to keep concentrating as he reads. It feels like he’s learning incredibly important information. After years of following the war through newspapers he’s accustomed to this sort of avid, desperate learning. But at the same time it’s so much. Every once and a while his brain spins with a jarring disconnect as he remembers that this all happened. It’s all real and over, seventy years ago.

He has to close his eyes and breathe for a minute.

Two pages later the Cold War starts a war in Korea and Steve realises he’s going to need to keep notes. He gets up from the table, a little shakier than he expected, and roots through the desk in the bedroom for a pen and paper.

It still feels weird using the ballpoint pen but fountain pens don't seem to exist anymore and the ink rolls on smoothly as he begins to note down the wars he’s already come across. The Cold War had started instantly, right after the war. He doesn’t have an end date for it yet.

He realises with a numb detachment that he doesn’t even know if it does end.

The Korean war goes from 1950 to 1953 and he rubs his throbbing temple as he reads about the country literally being divided North and South by communism and capitalism.

He pulls out the supplemental file SHIELD had left him. The maps are more detailed than the one in the textbook, complete with pictures too. Steve doesn’t know why he needs to know all the troop movements and individual battles of the war, but he studies them carefully. For all he knows this is common knowledge now.

After an hour of memorising tactics and wins and losses, Steve turns back to the textbook to read how the war ended.

It’s in the middle of the attempted peace talks that Steve gets his first taste of the new reality of war. “Eisenhower had promised the electorate he would end the war,” the book tells him. “In early 1953 Dulles fulfilled that promise for him by making cold-blooded threats. Unless the Chinese agreed to a peace formula, he declared, the USA would use atomic weapons against them.”

Steve has to take a break after that.

He decides he needs a snack. His stomach is grumbling even though the six granola bars this morning had felt excessive. He moves instinctively for the bananas on the counter, a regular snack growing up. He actually feels a small pulse of excitement, probably the first since coming here. He hadn’t had a banana in years now. It’s harder to ship bananas when there’s a war going on.

There’s a sticker on his banana which he raises an eyebrow at. He leaves it for now and goes to peel it open. His brow furls at the softness of the skin. The banana had looked a little weird from the start, a little longer and thinner, but mostly fine. The delicate skin throws him off though. Just from looking he can tell it’s already bruised.

Then he takes a bite of the banana. His mouth twists and he lets out an irritated huff from his nose. The banana isn’t ripe yet. It looked fine, but it’s bland and not nearly creamy enough.

Disappointed he finishes the banana and puts the bunch on the windowsill above the sink, hoping that will help ripen the rest of them.

He glances at the clock, feeling jittery. It's like there’s a weight on his chest, compressing his lungs and forcing them up into his throat to choke him. He doesn’t want to go back to reading but he doesn’t have anything else to do and part of him wants to know what he missed.

He wants to know if the Cold War ends. He needs to know if more atomic bombs have been used. Is the world he woke up in under threat from constant nuclear war? Is that why SHIELD put him in this bunker?

He doesn’t know if that makes him feel better than his other theory.

He eventually sits down at the table, turning the page to find a chart of the swaths of treaties and alliances made between various capitalist and communist countries. Steve sighs and begins memorising them. Warsaw, Comecon, SEATO, NATO… The list goes on.

The chapter ends with ‘Containment in the Middle East’ and the UN formation of the new state of Israel in Palestine. The book doesn’t really go into it, only a single sentence informing him of a whole new country? State? He isn’t sure, and frustratingly, SHIELD doesn’t have any supplemental files on it.

He can’t even look it up himself because his phone doesn’t have the internet.

Steve grits his teeth and makes a separate note to look it up himself when he gets out of here. Clearly SHIELD’s overview isn’t going to be enough. It’s a sobering thought. He has no idea how much he’s missing or what he doesn’t know. He’s relying entirely on SHIELD right now and he has no one to ask if he has any questions.

He runs a rough hand through his hair, thinking back to the computer again. It’s embarrassing he hadn’t been able to turn it on. He wonders what Dr. Faustus will think when he tries to contact him and gets no response. Maybe— A spark of hope flares before he can clamp it down. Maybe someone will come when they can’t reach him. Maybe he won’t have to wait till the restock.

There’s a lump in his throat when he swallows and Steve focuses on the next chapter. If someone comes, he wants to have made as much progress as possible. Maybe he’ll be able to convince them to let him leave if he’s learned enough.

The new chapter starts startlingly enough. Stalin dies in 1953 and Russia feels threatened by America’s growing influence. That’s when Steve learns about Russia’s first atomic bomb test in 1949, and then a hydrogen bomb in 1953. “Less than a year,” his book tells him helpfully, “after the Americans had set off their first thermo-nuclear device in November 1952.”

The book does not explain what a thermo-nuclear device is. Steve is left to imagine as he continues to read through Russia’s evolving foreign policy.

It’s a lot. He’s beginning to understand the full threat of the Cold War, watching as it heats up with a Russian hydrogen bomb 3000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, in 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

While he slept, the world teetered on the edge of blowing itself up.

The book goes too fast. It’s clear to him that it’s a rapid summary of events. It has to go fast. It’s covering a hundred years of history in 300 pages. It flies through events out of necessity, touching briefly on the arrival of the space age before diving into America’s conflict in Indo-China.

Steve reads through the beginning of a new war, to the withdrawal of the States from North and South Vietnam in two and a half pages. He studies war maps from SHIELD’s files, reading Wikipedia articles about Agent Orange and staring numbly at black and white photographs of soldiers in jungles, a naked child running in the street, and helicopters rising over a rice patty.

He makes note of the war on his paper, his head foggy and his stomach growling.

He makes lunch in a daze. His mind is a tangle of thoughts. He really shouldn’t be surprised about the new wars. The way the book lays everything out, it makes sense America had dived into ill-advised wars, as if enough people hadn't died in the last two bloody wars. They’d even introduced the draft again in the Indo-China war. And the war itself had been a disaster. A bloodfest that killed two million people.

Steve rubs at his headache as he waits for bread to toast in his pan. He can’t stomach much more than buttered toast even though he needs to eat more. He stands in front of the sink, exhaustion weighing him down as he wearily chews his toast.

The only sound in the whole cabin is the ticking of the kitchen clock. Tick, tick, tick tick.

Steve’s eyes close as he finishes his meagre meal and his hand grips the edge of the sink. He wants to sleep. He’s so tired. Everything is too fast. It’s his fourth day in the future and it’s too much. He can’t— He can’t—

He has a death grip on the sink. He sways, his knees threatening to buckle. He’s so tired. His head hurts. His stomach is a ball of acid in his gut. He’s hungry but he can’t eat and he wants to go home.

His breath catches sharp and painful in his chest. His other hand climbs up to clutch his dog tags through his shirt. He clings to them like a child to a teddy bear, forcing himself to breathe in pained inhales and exhales.

He doesn’t know how long it takes him to calm down. By the time he opens his eyes he has to blink away bright spots. His mouth is dry, his fingers numb around his dog tags and the sink ledge. He shakes out his hands, checking to make sure he hadn’t damaged the sink.

It takes him the rest of the afternoon to finish the chapter. He sits slumped at the table, his head on his hand as he forces himself to read about foreign civil wars and American interference in Latin America, USSR satellites in the Middle East and the development of neutron bombs. As if they didn't have enough bombs.

The only brief reprieve is the moon landing. It’s a single paragraph in the textbook but Steve gets a more in-depth overview in SHIELD’s files. He reads with as much energy as he can spare about the astounding milestone. He gets pictures which he stares at in astonishment.

It’s not just photos of astronauts on the moon, the American flag standing proudly behind them. It’s also photos of crowds at the launches and dozens of people gathered around television sets. Watching in avid fascination as the first man makes his first steps on the moon.

Bucky would have loved that, Steve thinks despondently. If he’d survived, if he and Bucky had lived, they would have been alive to see that. He would've liked to see it. Watch in awe with everyone else. Instead he reads about it alone, only a few photos to memorialise the world changing event.

He makes a note to make sure to watch it himself when he gets out. Surely the footage has to be viewable somewhere.

He keeps the moon landing photos out as he packs away the rest of the files. It’s the first pleasant thing he’s learned about the future. Everything else so far has been wars or invasions and the increasing risk of mutual destruction. And even though the space race had been sparked by the Cold War, it’s still the best thing he’s learned about so far.

He needs reminders of the good things. The book and SHIELD’s files focus so much on the wars. He’s missing the people, the lives that existed outside those lost to bloodshed.

He can’t read anymore for the day though. As much as he wants to finish as soon as possible, his head is spinning. He can’t concentrate anymore. He needs a break.

He drifts around the cabin, feeling untethered and lost. He tries to read some of the books, but his brain can’t focus on hiking trails or insect species.

The cabin is stifling. Utterly silent beyond the ticking of the clock. Steve is tempted to take it down but the thought of not knowing what time it is makes his skin prickle.

Instead he retreats outside. The sound of insects buzzing and birds chirping is a relief after the oppressive hours inside the cabin. Steve hadn’t been given a jacket by SHIELD but the air is warm, the sun shining down on the long wild grass surrounding the cabin. Steve marches through the small field, his hands in his pockets, touching his compass and knife as he heads for the tree line. The forest stands like a dark wall around the cabin, pine trees stretching up to the sky and low-hanging branches covering the ground in shadows.

Steve doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have a goal in mind as he begins stepping over fallen logs and ducking drooping bows. Sticks crack beneath his feet, the smell of pine and moss filling his nose. He sucks in a deep breath of warm air, the first deep breath he’d had in a while. He can feel the tension in his shoulders loosening the further he gets from the cabin.

He steps over a rotting log and he can almost feel the familiar weight of his shield on his back, the press of the harness into his shoulders and the stiff fabric of his suit. The sounds of the forest are familiar. Half of him is certain that if he turns his head he will see Bucky five steps behind him to his left, Morita the same on his right. They’d move through the trees in pincer formation, watching each other's backs with a settling, comforting presence.

Steve doesn’t turn his head, keeping the illusion alive so he doesn’t have to feel alone and exposed in a forest that feels as foreign as any he’d tramped through in Europe.

It isn’t long into his walk that he hears something, a faint noise that hovers somewhere above the rustling of the wind in the trees and the occasional squirrel darting up a tree trunk. Steve co*cks his head, trying to catch the thread of sound.

It’s soft, barely there, like a high pitched note only dogs can hear. It’s like background static that he has to fight to capture. His brow furls as he tries to pinpoint it, and he walks forward with more purpose, searching for the source.

The faint whine grows louder as he continues onward, the sound morphing into a high pitched hum that makes his ears itch. He resists the urge to swat at them, clenching his jaw in discomfort as he draws closer to the source. It’s rough terrain. There’s no path cut in between the trees and he has to pick his way around stumps and rocks. He has plenty of practice hiking with the Commandos though and it's nice exercise after being cooped up inside.

At last he comes to a break in the trees, the hum louder than ever. He glances around and his eyes widen. It takes him a moment to fully take in what he’s seeing.

A few feet ahead a line cuts through the trees, the whole forest stopping abruptly. In its place is a shimmering, flickering white wall of energy. Down the line he sees a tall metal pillar, the sparking light emerging from it in a straight line, connecting with another post further on, and then another, continuing on past Steve’s vision.

The wall hums and crackles, reminding Steve of Hydra’s laser weapons and the way they could cut a man in two, burn his flesh so he wouldn’t even bleed before he died.

Saliva has pooled in his mouth and he swallows compulsively. His eyes feel wide and dry. He doesn’t blink as he stares at the laser fence, the rest of the forest continuing beyond the blade of light cutting a line down the middle.

It's different, of course it is, but for a second he's looking at the barbed wire fences of the camp, noting how the interior fence could be electrified—

On a vague level he’s aware his jaw hurts. He can’t seem to unclench it. His feet are rooted to the ground, the pale white light reflecting off his skin as it crackles away, cutting off his path.

He should be able to think of something to do. The next step. He can’t just stand here, stock still in shock. He shouldn’t even be shocked. He’d seen the metal walls and security measures of the cabin. Agent Simons hadn’t even told him exactly where he is right now. He’d been given no direction. No contacts. Should he be surprised to find a—

Steve spins on his heel, his mouth pressed into a thin line as he marches alongside the laser fence. There’s less brush to trip over now because the fence has burned away the nearby debris. Even the tree branches on his side don’t reach over the top of the fence.

His dog tags jingle in his shirt and his feet pound on the packed earth, the fence at his shoulder.

After less than a mile of walking he finds what he’d suspected would be there. Another buzzing fence at a 90 degree angle from the first. He turns on a dime, marching down the new fence, a scowl growing on his face.

A few minutes later he comes across a dead bird at the base of the fence. Its body is singed and its wings are in disarray. Soft white down flutters in the breeze, its feathers twisted and scorched black.

He jams his fists deeper in his pockets, anger growing in his chest as he keeps walking. A half mile later he finds the next corner of the fence and he continues with grim doggedness. Determined to find out how trapped he is.

He finds the final corner and something gets stuck in his throat. He walks back to his starting point, his mind buzzing louder than the flickering fence next to him.

He’s enclosed in a sparking, burning laser box and no one had even told him.

He stops and grabs a sturdy stick, eyes cutting to the white wall of energy. His hands are steady but he can feel the rest of him vibrating with tension. He’s furious. He’s hurt. Dr. Faustus had had the nerve to preach to him about deinstitutionalization and then sent him to a metal bunker surrounded by a laser cage.

He jerks to a stop and spins to face the fence. He raises the stick and presses it to the flickering screen of light. A hissing sound fills the air, a plume of smoke curling up from the tip. The smell of burning wood arises, charred ash fluttering to the bare earth as the fence eats up the stick.

Steve pulls it away, a hot orange ember glowing on the end of the stick as it waves through the air. He throws it down and stamps it out, only then noticing how harsh his breathing has gotten. His headache has reached a fever pitch, the ball of pain behind his eye stabbing like a needle with every heartbeat.

His knees give out for all of half-a-second and he stumbles back against a tree, the bark rough through his shirt.

He loses his grip on his breath, the thin thread of control he’d been clinging to suddenly snapping. His anger morphs into something violent and jagged that turns in on himself. His chest spasms and Steve gasps in pain. The buzzing of the fence fills his ears and his hands come up, trying to block out the sound.

He’s surrounded by a laser fence. He’s in the middle of nowhere, completely cut off from every living soul, trapped inside a laser cage.

Let me out!! The words ring desperately in his head, his breath catching as he heaves in damp lungfuls of air. He sinks down against the tree, the bark scratching his back all the way down. He buries his head in his knees, air hissing through his teeth as he tries to breathe.

Tears prick at his eyes and he squeezes them shut so tight colours spring up in the resulting blackness.

His thoughts race unchecked. I want to go home. I want to go home. I hate it here.

The fence hums uncaring. The forest doesn’t hear him. He’s alone, a tiny dust mote left adrift in a future he can’t comprehend.

I hate it here.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Steve’s days coagulate into a dreary routine.

He sleeps uneasily before waking up and fixing himself as much food as he dares. Then he forces himself to sit down and study the files he’d been left with. After a few hours of slogging through wars. civil rights protests, American presidents and Russian leaders, he makes himself lunch. Then he dives back in again for a few more hours before calling it a day and trying to find something else to do until night time.

It isn't a difficult routine and some of the things he learns about are interesting, and even good. Like desegregation, and what his files call ‘Second Wave Feminism’. But he moves through each daily action as though chains are dragging him down. Everything takes twice as long. His brain is foggy and it's hard to care about the things he's learning.

He's so tired.

He tries to draw exactly once. But all he sees are the faces of lost loved ones and the emotions it brings up actually make him sick to his stomach. The only time his pen touches paper now is to keep track of the list of dates he’d learned and his growing questions.

After the third night in a row that he wakes up with sweat soaking through his clothes he tests out the cabin shower. He’d brought the toiletries SHIELD had given him but there are two half-empty bottles of liquid soap and shampoo in the bathroom. He uses those instead. He doesn’t know how to buy replacements for his supplies yet. If he can stretch what he’d been given, he will.

The shower itself is okay. The water is lukewarm even at the highest setting, but it’s warmer than the spiderweb memories that cling to his skin. After his shower though, the shower head begins to drip. It doesn’t stop even hours after the shower, a steady drip drip of water joining the constant tick tick of the clock in the kitchen.

Steve tries to ignore the maddening drone. But sometimes it drives him outside. He walks circles in the woods far enough away from the fence that it doesn't drill into his ears.

He tries walking around the lake once, but he gets stuck for about half-an-hour just staring at the water, watching the dark depths ripple and suck at the shore. Echoes of creaking metal and cracking ice fill his head and he only gets pulled out of it when a mosquito tries to bite his face. His arms and ankles are covered in bites and it takes an hour for the serum to deal with them all.

He cleans the kitchen spotlessly because he has nothing else to do. Then, in a pique of regrettable curiosity he pokes at the little alcove in the front of the fridge door, still wondering what it is.

There's a small lever at the back of the alcove and he pulls at it tentatively. When that doesn't do anything, he presses it.

A sudden jet of ice cold water spurts from a hidden spout in the alcove, dowsing his hand and splashing onto the floor. Steve snatches his hand back with an aborted shout, stumbling back several feet as he drags his hand up and down his shirt, trying to dry it off.

He stands shocked and panting, staring at the fridge. There's a tremor in his legs and the cold isn't leaving his hand. He locks his knees and shakes out his hand irritably, wiping it compulsively on his pants.

Apparently fridges can dispense water now. Steve has no idea why someone would need that and he can't help glaring at the offending device as his breaths even out somewhat and the rush of adrenaline in his blood fades, leaving him chilled and shaky.

He looks down, only just noticing how his socks are wet. He jolts into motion and spins towards the bedroom, marching stiffly to go change them. He shakes out his hand again, his mouth twisting at the lingering cold.

Stupid fridge.

The one bright spot in his mind-numbing routine is the promise of the restock. He knows it’s coming. And even if he doesn’t know when it is, he can’t help it as his anticipation grows as the week draws to a close.

Surely they won't leave him longer than that without contact. He never did get that computer to work

Like an answer to a prayer, the seventh day in the cabin rolls around and he hears it, the low sound of engines off in the distance. His heart leaps up in his throat and for a moment he doesn’t move, standing stock still in the kitchen, shocked they had even come. But then his brain kicks into gear and he scrambles to prepare.

He dashes to the bathroom, running a comb through his hair and smoothing out his shirt in the mirror. He sighs at his unshaven stubble. He'd tried the razor a few days ago, but he'd been avoiding it out of frustration. He should've known better. He wants to look presentable, like he’s sane and adjusted so that SHIELD will take him back. Let him leave this place.

With that in mind he deliberately slows to step calmly outside, ready to greet agent Simons or whoever had come. But the sound of the engines is different from the plane he’d arrived in. He looks up, spotting it. The aircraft is smaller than he expected and he shields his face with one hand, squinting as it comes closer.

His brow furls. The plane is too small. It’s hardly a plane at all, at best it’s a tiny helicopter, not even big enough to fit a person inside.

The blades beat the air, whipping up a strong breeze as it lands in the field outside the cabin. The rotors slow to a stop, leaving Steve to scan it with growing disappointment. There’s no windows on the thing, and even if there were, a child could barely fit inside.

This is not his ship home.

He marches out to it. Crickets leap away and blades of grass break under his feet, sending up sharp smells into the air. He reaches the aircraft, the word DRONE emblazoned on the side in dark blue letters. The aircraft stands about as tall as he is, the sun gleaming off its rotors. There’s a seam for a door that reveals the co*ckpit of the DRONE. Instead of a pilot, he’s met with brown paper bags full of groceries.

Steve deflates fully. His hand clenches on the doorframe, his heart stalling in his chest. No one had come for him. Even after days of no contact with Dr. Faustus, no one had come. He hadn’t even been given a chance to argue his case.

They’re never going to let me out!! The thought cracks like a streak of lightning panic through his brain and Steve shoves it down, shaking his head. No. No. They can’t keep him here. Not forever. It’s only been a week. It’s only been a week. Calm down. He can handle this.

He can handle this.

Steve transports the groceries back to the cabin and ten minutes after he'd removed the last bag, the DRONE lifts off again.

Steve watches it through the kitchen window, too numb to be amazed at the display of modern technology. The sink creaks under him and he realises he's been gripping the metal almost strong enough to leave prints.

It doesn't matter. He'd gotten food at least. He's relieved to be able to fill his cupboards again. He has another four litre jug of milk even though he hasn’t finished the last one, and more bananas. His previous bunch of bananas hadn’t improved with time, so once he’s done putting away the groceries he tries some of the new ones, hoping he’d simply gotten a bad batch.

The new bananas are not any better.

Steve scribbles an exasperated note to look up bananas when he gets out of here, wondering how the future could have possibly messed up bananas.

He doubts SHIELD’s files will tell him.

oOo

In the days after the restock his routine slips away from him. He wakes up from his stress dreams and he can’t get himself off the couch. He sits curled up under his quilt, the fire cold in the grate as he watches the sun rise and peek through the curtains in the morning.

His stomach growls, cramping in pain, but the motivation to get up slips away from him like sand through his fingers. For the last week his purpose had been preparing to get out of here. It’s why he’d forced himself through page after page of horrifying facts. The crushing weight of the cabin and its contents had felt bearable with the promise of the chance to escape.

But that is gone now. He hasn’t spoken to a single person in over a week. He has no one to talk to about the things that he’s read, the things he remembers. Dr. Faustus had said this ‘facility’ was meant to help him, but he swears it’s making him worse.

One day, then the next slips away. The ticking clock and dripping shower resonate through the cabin, marking the slow passage of time. He lays on the couch and drifts, his body and mind numb. His sleep schedule is all out of whack and he doesn't care.

His brain flips through the various facts he’d learned at random. It’s meagre pickings compared to what he knows he’s missed. He feels hopeless. Learning all this stuff is like trying to swallow an ocean a teaspoon at a time. As much information as he has stuffed inside his head, he knows he only has a small glimpse of the full picture.

He’d tried reading some of the beginning of the textbook before the DRONE came. The parts he’d lived through, just to see how it compared. He’d stopped because he couldn’t stomach reading about his life history being framed as decades the reader had no chance of remembering. But it had given him some perspective.

He’d seen the patterns in the things the book mentions, and the things it leaves out. While it does pause to talk about the people of the world every few chapters, most of it focuses on major world events and significant world leaders.

It doesn’t talk about the songs people danced to, or the candy one could buy at the corner store, or bananas. He has no doubt he’s missing large swaths of the living, breathing life of the future. Of course he is. How could he possibly grasp even the thinnest thread of understanding? It’s too big. It’s too much. Seventy years of life and all he has are a couple hundred pages of files and photos to help him try to find some place for himself.

No matter how hard he works, he can’t possibly know it well enough.

The gap between him and everyone else yawns open like a canyon. The image driven home further by the fact that he’s stuck inside a locked box, miles away from the barest shred of humanity.

So he lies there, hungry and exhausted, feeling worse about himself with every passing minute because he’s wallowing instead of sucking it up and sitting at the table to learn more, to work at getting out. He knows better than to let himself drown in his grief. He’d learned that when Ma died. Then again later, when Bucky followed

Of course, back then he’d had Bucky to help pull himself out of the spiral he’d slipped down after Sarah’s death. He’d had the Barneses. He’d had Mrs. Westcott from across the airshaft who’d come over and bustled around, emptying the sink and leaving a casserole dish on the stove.

After Bucky he’d had Peggy, and the Commandos and the hunt for Hydra.

Here he has no one.

In the end, it’s the blasted clock that gets through to him. He’s standing at the sink, head woozy and legs shaky because he hadn’t eaten since last night and the clock ticks onward like it had for days.

His nerves feel flayed out on his skin, his head pounding from dehydration as he fumbles for the milk in the fridge. He has nearly eight litres that can't go to waste, even if it means facing the cold. He's even more wary of the fridge after the water incident and he grits his teeth while holding the door, trying to keep himself angled away.

The fridge seems out to get him. A wave of frigid air hits his skin like knives and he flinches back, dropping the entire jug on the floor. The plastic cracks and nearly four litres of cold milk floods out onto his toes.

He jerks back with a sharp curse, irritation spiking as he slams the door closed. His socks are soaked and the clock ticks and Steve can’t stand it anymore.

He snarls, his socks squishing as he steps over the puddle and drags the kitchen chair over. He’s a little shaky as he steps up but his determination steadies him as he stomps onto the chair, rises up and yanks the clock off the wall.

He thinks he might have been intending just to grab it, but the bloody thing just keeps ticking and the showerhead in the bathroom is still dripping and his socks are cold and his blinding fury surges higher as his fingers close around the rim. He flings the clock with wild abandon, a snarl on his face as the sound of smashing plastic crashes through the cabin. He sways and pauses, panting for a few seconds, one hand on the wall to steady himself, his chest heaving and his eyes blurry with dizziness.

Then the infernal clock strikes back.

Tick-tick.

He lets out an unintelligible noise, the chair rocking as he storms over to the clock. The face is cracked, but it must not be glass because it hadn’t shattered. A few pieces of plastic have broken off from the rim but the ticking second hand continues round as though nothing had happened.

Steve can't hold back a growl as he snatches the thing up. Sharp corners of plastic dig into his fingers as he flips it over. He finds the battery casing and pulls the batteries free (ignoring how much smaller they are now). The plastic casing falls to the floor with a light clatter, barely audible under his harsh panting.

Finally, blessedly, the infernal ticking ceases, silence descending on the cabin.

Steve lets out a slow breath and drops his head, the round clock pressed to his chest. He can smell the dust that had gathered on the upper rim and the plastic creaks slightly under his hands. His whole body feels like it’s vibrating, his ears ringing with the leftover memory of the ticking and his rage. He breathes in for another moment and looks up.

The cabin is silent and still. Moving slowly, Steve steps over the broken bits of plastic left on the floor and leaves the clock on the counter as he surveys the room.

It's a mess.

The legs of the chair stand in the pool of milk, surrounded by a trail of his wet footprints. Shards of plastic are scattered on the floor. In the living room, there's a musty cocoon of blankets on the couch, a dead fire in the fireplace he hadn’t bothered to light in a while. The boxes of files on the table stand neglected. He hasn’t touched them at all for the last two days. He hasn’t done anything in two days. He grimaces, lifting the collar of his shirt to sniff. He’d slept in it for days, waking up in a cold sweat more often than not.

If SHIELD came and found him now there’s no way they’d let him out.

He sets his jaw, his hand coming up to rest lightly on his dog tags. This can’t continue. He’s a soldier (he's not sure he can be anything right now). He’d gotten up and continued after Bucky died, he can do this too. He always gets back up.

He breathes in, feeling his dog tags move against his chest. His hands drift down to the familiar weight of the knife and compass in his pockets.

Yes. You always get back up.

The first thing he does is change his socks, rubbing his feet to warm them up before mopping up the milk with some dish towels. He throws out the clock and shards of plastic in the bin under the sink, hoping SHIELD won’t notice or ask too many questions about what happened to it.

Then he raids the cupboards and inhales some food. He’s hopeful that another restock will come by the end of the week, but he’s still careful, not willing to let himself eat himself out of house and home just because he’s missed a few meals. He finishes and scrubs the sink of the dishes that had piled up over the last few days. There aren’t many, but he feels better for it.

Next he changes the rest of his clothes, gathering up his used laundry to face down the washing machine.

Just like a laundromat, he tries to convince himself as he stuffs everything into the bottom machine.

He doesn’t actually have any laundry soap, but he grates some of the soap bar SHIELD had given him, hoping that will still work. He hasn’t seen any soap flakes since waking up, but that had been the standard back at home, and he isn’t ready to risk using the fancy liquid dish soap under the sink in case that is a very bad decision.

He absolutely does not want to owe SHIELD a washing machine.

It takes some squinting at the dials but he gets the machine running and he's proud despite himself at managing it. The washer whines and whirls and he lets himself breathe out. He’s not totally useless here. He can figure things out when he doesn’t have someone scoffing in impatience over his shoulder.

After an hour it's time to switch things over.

The dryer is new. None of the laundromats he'd gone to had any and most hand laundries returned clothes damp, ready for ironing and the clothesline. He plays it safe, leaving the settings as they are and pressing the start button. Nothing catches fire and a rhythmic thumping fills the cabin as the clothes begin to spin around.

Steve takes another shower to rid himself of day-old sweat, and he even uses SHIELD’s fancy deodorant. He’s not exactly sure what the custom is with it anymore—his textbook hadn’t thought to mention it in between recounting fifty years of wars—but he’s guessing if SHIELD gave it to him, he’s supposed to use it.

He tackles shaving again. The shaving cream from the can is more foamy than the brushless cream he'd used in the war. He doesn’t have a shaving brush so he has to use his hands and it doesn't massage onto his face the same which leaves him feeling weird and eager to wash it off. The razor meanwhile feels too light in his hand and he has to press and pull more to get the shave he wants. The razor head moves with the curve of his face and every second he's certain he's going to cut himself.

The shave doesn't feel as close or as smooth as one from his safety razor, but it's good enough.

He still doesn't have any nail clippers so he cuts his nails with Bucky’s knife.

The dryer finishes. It’s pretty amazing having dry clothes in just under an hour and Steve presses them to his face, revelling in the warmth. The clothes come out deliciously warm, but wrinkly. He can’t find an iron so he resigns himself to looking slightly dishevelled for the time being.

It’s nice to be clean and have clean clothes, but it does mean he has nothing stopping him from approaching the files on the table. Steve sucks in a deep, strained breath and squares his shoulders. It’s just a mission. He can do this.

He still feels paper-thin, clean clothes and a stubble-free chin only doing so much to shield his bruised spirit. Steve closes his eyes briefly and steels himself, wrapping up the vulnerable parts of his soul and burying them deep inside himself.

He has lots of practice at that.

He opens his eyes and for the first time in a few days he sits down and picks up where he left off. Before he’d given up, the textbook had switched gears to cover the major developments of various parts of the world up to 1985. He’d finished the chapters about the USA, Russia, China, Japan and Western Europe, ending off with the formation of the European Union before he'd gone lethargic.

Now the book focuses specifically on Britain, the former empire a thin shadow of her former glory. Steve had already seen some countries like Egypt become independent in his lifetime but a whole lot more follow suit after the war. He reads the recounting of the independence of most of Britain's other colonies with interest. But the chapter, as always, isn't free from bloodshed.

Britain's clashes in Ireland are especially bloody and he can’t help thinking what his mother would think as he reads about the troubles in Northern Ireland and looks at black and white pictures of riot police. He wishes he could know more about it, but there aren't any extra files on it.

Steve huffs and reads till he gets to the chapter on Africa. Then he lets himself take a break.

He only has about twenty pages of the book left, but he still has two and a half boxes of files. So far SHIELD’s supplementary folders have covered American topics more in depth—like the Civil Rights movement, the Pill, or the assassination of President Kennedy—so he can only wonder what is in the remaining boxes.

But he currently has other things on his mind. The DRONE coming instead of a pilot had scared him, which is probably why he'd been stuck in limbo for so long. He can't stop the niggling worry that he will be locked up here indefinitely, no matter what Dr. Faustus said.

He needs to do something about that. He might be mostly helpless in this world, but he’s known as the man with a plan for a reason. He'd been slacking, but now he has some business to settle with the laser fence a half a mile from his door.

Steve pulls on his shoes and treks out to the woods again, his face set with grim determination. He hadn’t made himself functional again to spend the rest of his days stuck in this cabin. He has a mission he can only complete if he leaves. He’ll play along for now, but he refuses to be trapped here. One way or another, he will be getting out and finding out what happened to his friends.

He finds the laser fence just how he’d left it, sparking and flickering with white light. There's a line of dead moths on the ground next to it.

Steve stands back and stares up at it for a long moment, the buzzing sinking into his bones. His hand clenches around his compass in his pocket and his gaze hardens into a glare.

He starts with small rocks, digging them up and tossing them at the forcefield to see the result. The fence hisses and spits them back at him, the rocks glowing red and smoking in the dirt. He tosses rocks and sticks up as high as he can, curious to see how far up the forcefield goes. He finds he can throw a rock over to the other side, but the fence is nearly three times as tall as him, if not more, and he knows from his previous scouting of the perimeter there are no tree branches close enough to safely get him over.

He examines the metal pillars generating the lasers for a while. Searching for seams or cracks in the casing he can lever his knife into. But there’s nothing. He does see what he suspects to be cameras pointed at him from the top of the tower, but he doesn’t bother hiding his actions. SHIELD saw how he broke out of the fake room they’d put him in. If they want to stop him they know where to find him.

Steve runs his hand over the smooth metal plating of the pillars. If he can’t go over and he can’t go through, that leaves only one option. Down.

He crouches down by the base of the pillar, holding a wide plank of wood torn from a log. He digs down into the dirt, keeping an eye on the laser fence to see how it reacts. The dirt that kicks up sizzles against the fence, the hum louder than ever with his head so close to the generator.

He continues to chisel away at the packed earth, a hole the size of a basketball shaping up on his side. After a while, Steve sits back. He surveys the hole before sliding the wood through slowly, testing it. The fence doesn't waver and the wood slides under unharmed.

For the first time in days a faint smile of satisfaction briefly finds a place on his face.

The pillars don’t generate lasers below ground level. He’s not surprised with the way the laser reacts to anything touching it. Most importantly, the generators don't adapt to his newly formed hole. The laser doesn’t morph to fill it or dip deeper into the new gap.

He can dig under the fence if he needs to. It will take some doing and he will have to be careful not to burn himself on the laser, but it can be done.

Steve sits back on his heels, heady relief making him lightheaded. He can leave if he needs to.

It’s a last resort, worst case scenario plan. Escaping the watch of a very powerful organisation to try to find his own way in a foreign world when he has no money, no idea where he is and no real plan is not ideal.

But he can if he needs to.

He will give SHIELD until the next restock. If he’s still here by the end of the week then he’s leaving. As risky as the plan is, he’s not staying stuck here on the words of a doctor that hasn’t contacted him in nine days.

Steve glances up to look at the camera, his expression calm and blank.

Get me out of here, he thinks simply. Or I will leave.

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Steve continues his trek through history as he waits for SHIELD's next restock. He doesn’t know for sure that it will come at the end of the week, but if it doesn’t come, he decides he’s leaving anyway before he runs out of food.

(He can't stay any longer. He can't, he can't.)

With that in mind he eats strategically, using up the more perishable foods like the other milk jug and bacon while saving the supplies he might need for hiking through the woods.

In the meantime he reads through the decolonisation of Africa and Apartheid in South Africa. The chapter ends with no true conclusion in the year 1988, only speaking briefly of the growing pressure to release a man named Nelson Mandela from prison. Steve has to re-read the last few paragraphs a few times to be sure, but the book doesn’t tell him what happens to Mandela or Apartheid. Instead he turns the page to a new chapter about the wars in the Middle East up until the 80s.

It’s the same with every one of the final chapters. The book doesn’t go beyond the year ‘88. Steve is baffled, flipping through the miniscule amount of pages he has left. The textbook is almost finished, but he’s nowhere near present day.

He flips to the front of the book to check something he hadn’t thought to look at before. He skims through the publishing information, pausing in bewilderment when he finds what he’s looking for. The textbook is not current. It was published in 1992. SHIELD had given him a book twenty years out of date to learn from.

Steve lets out an irritated hiss and shoves the book away from him, running his fingers through his bangs. He curses internally, hunching and gritting his teeth. Why would SHIELD give him something so out of date and not even tell him?

Hey by the way, that book you’ve spent the last however many days pouring over? Yeah, it’s not actually complete. Our bad.

Steve blows out a breath of air from his nose and reaches for the last two SHIELD boxes he had yet to touch. He’d been wondering what those could be and now he has an answer. The boxes are filled with much more detailed files than the other ones, the tabs labelling each year from 1990 to 2011.

Great, Steve thinks tiredly, rubbing his eyes. From the bathroom his ears pick up the sound of the dripping shower, and he resists the urge to pop his eardrums. He hates this stupid cabin and there are so many more files.

Steve sighs and finishes the last three chapters of the textbook, the focus shifting from the region of India and the new countries of Pakistan and Bangladesh to wrapping up the ‘current’ situation with Russia before ending with a look at ‘modern’ times.

Steve stares at his remaining boxes with exhausted resignation. He’d been banking on finishing his slog through world history when the book ended. But all of a sudden that finish line is taken away from him, leaving him sapped of motivation.

He steps out to take a walk around the cabin to give himself a breather. After hours in the stuffy, silent cabin it feels nice to have the sun on his face. He pauses to look up at the sky, the deep blue contrasting with the golden grass and the pine-green trees in the distance. He’d think it beautiful if he could summon the energy.

After a while Steve shakes himself and goes back inside. He leaves the back door open, letting the sound of insects and wind rustling the grass follow him indoors.

SHIELD’s files focus a lot more specifically on the United States. The textbook had had chapters for different portions of Asia, Europe and Africa. The overview had been broad and swift, but SHIELD’s files barely touch on any other countries but those relevant to America.

Steve is faced with files like:

1990

World Population - 5 Billion

Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait

Partial Shutdown of Federal Government

Hubble Space Telescope

1991

The Gulf War

World Wide Web

Collapse of the Soviet Union

Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty

1992

LA Riots

President Bill Clinton

NAFTA

War in Bosnia

And so on. He has to wonder if the reason SHIELD had specifically curated these years instead of leaving it to a textbook was to control what he was told. Or maybe they just thought American history was more important. After all, why would a man lacking seventy years of history want to know about other places?

Steve massages his brow, heaves a weary sigh, and gets to reading.

SHIELD’s files are harder to follow than the textbook. The book had an overarching narrative. It was trying to make everything make sense in context. With the remaining files Steve is left to piece together everything himself. It’s like working on a puzzle when he doesn’t have the box art and most of the pieces are upside down.

It takes him way longer to get through the files than the textbook. He’ll admit he’s a little irritated that the textbook hadn’t bothered to cover anything from 1988 to 1992. It could’ve, the 7th addition had come out in ‘92. But instead he has to pour through page after page of tiny printed documents to learn about things like the fall of the Berlin wall or the end of the Cold War.

Which had happened in 1989 and 1991 respectively. The book could’ve mentioned it.

Steve spends the next few days reading through the 90s, noting down impeachments and more government shutdowns and the occasional cultural event on his many scraps of paper. The files hold more pop culture information than the textbook did, which is nice since Steve barely knows anything about modern culture. But the historical gut-punches hit just as hard as they had with the textbook.

Steve has to go outside and lob a few sticks at the laser fence after he learns about the Columbine school shooting.

It’s been almost two weeks in the cabin and Steve can feel himself going stir crazy. It’s hard to focus on the files. It’s hard to settle—like his skin doesn’t quite fit right or his heart pulses irregularly.

He hasn’t spoken to anyone in days. He’s half-certain he’s been forgotten out here, like an outdated relic kept safely behind glass. He dreams of metal bunker walls that flood with water, his panicking breaths echoing back at him as he fights to get out. Figures stand just beyond his eyeline, shrouded in darkness as they watch him through hexagonal slots. All he sees is a flash of a white coat here, the gleam of a pair of glasses there. He thrashes against the growing cold, his calls for help always going unanswered.

He wakes with a crick in his neck, his throat sore and his fists clenched as though he’d been pounding on the walls keeping him trapped. He remains on edge for the rest of the morning until he hikes out to the laser fence to check if his test hole is still there.

It remains undisturbed and he sucks in a breath through his nose, touching his tags under his shirt.

Just a few more days, he reminds himself. If they don’t come, I can leave.

He reaches the year 2000 by day eleven, George W. Bush the new president for him to memorise. The biggest file in the box is next, almost an inch thick and heavy when he pulls it out.

2001, it says. 9/11

The header is utterly vague and he opens the folder to see a full-page coloured photograph of two tall skyscrapers. World Trade Centers, New York City, 2000, the caption reads. Steve flips the page over and very quickly learns this folder is going to be difficult.

The next page is the same image, but this time the towers spew black smoke into the sky. A fire blazes on the upper floors. He turns to the next page, and it’s more pictures, photo after photo of the burning buildings, people running in the street from a billowing white cloud of ash, firefighters pulling survivors from dusty wreckage, a person falling headfirst past office windows. There’s an image of a plane mid-fireball in one of the buildings and he gasps, stuck dumb by what must be a terrible accident.

Even though the circ*mstances are incredibly different, he still has to blink away thoughts of his own plane crash. He shakes his head, trying to focus back on the files.

The photos are striking and graphic, and he flips through them with growing urgency, trying to get past them. He doesn’t even know what is happening. He’s left to connect the dots by himself as the tragedy unfolds through only pictures. He has to face an onslaught of tragedy before he gets any sort of explanation.

Finally he reaches pages of text and that’s when he learns about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It hadn’t been an accident at all. It had been on purpose.

“More Americans died on 9/11 than had died in the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,” the file tells him, an image of a plane crashing into the side of the second skyscraper on the opposite page. “Only the Civil War battles of Antietam and Cold Harbor had been deadlier days.”

Steve sits numb with shock at the table. Part of him thinks he should be used to this by now. After nearly two weeks of reading gut-wrenching events he should have built up a resistance. But he’s been given no chance. The mental and emotional wounds have no time to scar over before they’re ripped open again. Every new thing just digs deeper, aiming for bone.

But he needs to be able to handle this. If SHIELD comes then he needs to convince them to let him out. He can’t stay here for another week. He’s already been pushed to the breaking point. He’s pretty sure he will actually go crazy if he isn’t let out soon. So he can’t break down every time he sees something bad. He’s supposed to be adjusted.

Steve stands up from the table, moving woodenly to the kitchen. He stands motionlessly, staring blankly out the window as he waits for hot water to boil. He can feel himself trembling deep inside, but he holds himself stiff and straight.

Bury it, he thinks sternly, his eyes hard. He’d done it with Ma. He’d done it with Bucky. He can do it now.

Steve fixes himself his coffee, no movement wasted as he turns back to the table. His phone sits beside the stack of pictures. It had come out of exile from the bedroom when he’d silenced the clock. He taps on it. 3:33 it tells him.

Steve sits down and breathes out. He swipes a hand over his mouth and bends over the files.

He reads about the War on Terror and the new war and invasion America gets itself into until supper time. SHIELD’s folders tell him about attack operations and new weapons developments. Steve's mouth flattens into a grim line when he notices they skim over the death toll on both sides and the fate of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Maybe he wasn't expected to notice, but Steve had learned about the Geneva Conventions ten days ago—they’re rather stark in his mind as he reads, even if that doesn’t seem to have been the case for the President.

It’s the same with the Patriot Act or Bush’s Doctrine on preemptive attacks “before a threat emerged”. After reading of the years tiptoeing around the Cold War, it seems his country now has no qualms about starting conflict. But unlike the textbook, SHIELD’s files keep the politics of the venture relatively muted. Instead he’s bogged down in the minutia of the day-to-day conflict.

Steve reads the war tactics and innovations dispassionately. SHIELD seems to think Captain America wants to know every step of every war they've ever fought, like he’s planning to be a general in Afghanistan after this.

That is, he realises numbly as he nears the end of the file, a possibility. SHIELD could try to send him to the desert because the ambiguous ‘War on Terror’ is still ongoing. Over ten years later his nation is still in active war.

After reading seventy years of history, Steve is no longer surprised. He's just… he's so tired.

Steve finishes SHIELD’s folders on the thirteenth day. The files wrap up neatly with the election of the first Black President, the death of Osama bin Laden and the withdrawal of troops from Iraq. It doesn’t really explain why they’re still at war in Afghanistan, but Steve is getting used to the murky darkness he remains in even after weeks of study.

He packs up all the files, his movements mechanical as he closes the lid over the textbook that had haunted him for the past two weeks. He fixes himself supper with the last of the rice, wishing he’d been given something like cream of wheat or oatmeal. He hasn’t had it since waking up and he’s tired of eating the same few meals over and over again.

He lets out a humourless laugh. He thought that would stop when he wasn’t on rations anymore, but there’s only so much he can make with his limited supplies and no way to gather missing ingredients.

That night he goes out to sit on the back porch, watching the wind ripple through the grass and trees. The sun is setting behind him, the night chill creeping in. He tugs his quilt tighter around himself and tilts his chin up, watching the stars come out.

An owl hoots in the distance, the chirping of crickets and whispering breeze filling the air. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine himself sitting in a clearing with Bucky, relaxing between missions, a faint whiff of cigarette smoke drifting up from the butt between Bucky’s fingers.

“So, what’s your plan once the war wraps up?” Bucky asked on one such occasion. “I imagine you could make a pretty penny goin’ on tour again.”

Steve swatted Bucky’s arm, his mouth curled up in a grin. “Aw, come off it. You’re just upset I dance better than you now.”

Bucky’s laugh sounded good, tumbling easily into the night. He hadn't laughed much since Steve found him in Austria. Neither of them had, really.

A little while later, as the dark closed in, Steve answered the question.

“I dunno what I’d do,” he said softly, keeping his eyes on the treeline, the stars glinting against the dark blue sky. “I could do anything.” Finish art school maybe, study more languages or find something quiet to do while enjoying being financially secure.

Steve swallowed. “But…”

He could feel Bucky glance at him. “But?”

Steve pulled at the grass by his knee, twining it around his fingers. “I don’t know… I dunno how quick the army’s gonna be to let their super soldier return to civilian life,” he admitted. He couldn’t forget. The hungry look in the eyes of some of the generals when they looked at him, the army of soldiers they’d wanted, the desperate effort to pull the serum from his blood…

“Dunno if they’ll let me go,” he murmured.

Bucky was quiet for a while, the end of his cigarette glowing brightly as he breathed in a low drag and blew it out into the night air.

“Simple,” he replied after some time. His voice was firm, his eyes reflecting the gleam of his cigarette when Steve looked at him. “They try something at the end of this, we go AWOL.”

Steve scoffed in surprise and threw him a look, half-certain Bucky was teasing. “Oh yeah?” he replied. “How we gonna do that?” He waves his hands at the trees around them. “Disappear off into the woods?”

Bucky grunted and ground his cigarette into the dirt. “Maybe,” he said, his gaze steady and serious, his eyes dark as the night. “It doesn’t matter how. No one can argue we haven't served our time. They try somethin’, we go.”

“Go where?” Steve asks softly.

The rustling wind does not answer him.

On day fourteen Steve goes around the cabin, packing up. It doesn’t take long. His things fit back into his duffle bag with room to spare. He packs all the nonperishable foods left in the cupboards, preparing to make his escape if needed. He wipes down the kitchen, taking a final catalogue of his rations. He folds up his blankets and remakes the bed, no need for anyone to see he hadn’t slept in it.

The escape plan sits prominently in the back of his mind, making his pulse jittery and his palms sweaty. It’s a stupid plan, he knows. He doesn’t have anywhere to go. He doesn’t have any money, no friends, no map and only a few days of food if SHIELD’s restock doesn’t come. The thought of trying to find his way in the future by himself terrifies him.

But if he stays here he will explode.

As bad as reading the files had been, it’s almost worse now that he doesn’t have anything to do. He has nothing but time to overthink what he’d read. Hours to ruminate on the fact that he still knows nothing.

He tries the computer again, just in case. It remains dark as ever. Proving his point.

He spends the morning fending off his nerves, sitting on the couch and staring stubbornly at the bird book while he waits to see if the restock comes. He has one of his lists of questions in his hand, acting as a makeshift bookmark. He taps it anxiously against the pages he's pretending to read.

Tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

His foot bounces silently in unison, his ears continually perked for something.

He’s staring unseeingly at a picture of a Crossbill North American Finch when he hears it. Distant engines growing closer—proper ones this time.

His head snaps up and his heart hiccups. The bird book slips closed onto the cushion, forgotten in an instant. He doesn't remember standing, instead he's already at the door, throwing it open and leaning outside. His chest expands frantically as he squints against the sun, fingers and toes buzzing with trapped energy as he searches the sky.

He sees it and his lungs empty, his fingers digging into the doorframe as his legs threaten to go limp. It’s a real plane this time. Not a DRONE. They’d come back to get him.

He spends the minutes waiting for it to land in an internal tizzy. Hysteria rises up and compresses his lungs, trying to make him dizzy as his brain flip flops between wanting to smile like a lunatic and threatening to burst into tears. His heart is pounding so fast it nearly chokes him, his ears full of rushing blood.

He keeps it inside through sheer force of will. Swallowing it down like a cold lump of clay.

He is not messing this up. SHIELD had come and he’s going to prove he’s ready to leave. He is. He did it. He’d read all the files. He’d forced himself up and moving when his brain was wrapped in fog and his hands felt frostbitten. More importantly he knows what questions Dr. Faustus will ask now. He knows what his answers will be.

He is never, ever coming back here.

He draws that determination around himself like a shield as the plane hovers and lands, flattening the grass and sending waves rippling across the lake. Steve doesn’t run out as the SHIELD agent exits. He waits with false calmness, his shoulders square and his feet shoulder-width apart.

Breathe. He’s breathing.

It’s not agent Simons this time. The man who approaches him is yet another nameless face Steve doesn’t know.

“Captain,” the man greets, the first spoken word Steve has heard in two weeks. It's such a dispassionate word after all this time it's startling. Steve can only look at him, realising numbly that no one here has actually called him by his name yet.

“I was sent to help you pack up.” Right.

“I’m already packed,” Steve tells him, his voice steady even when he feels like vibrating. “There’s just some things in the fridge. And the boxes.”

They came back. They came back for him. He's getting out, he's—

The agent nods and follows Steve inside to empty the cabin. Steve helps him bring the food and boxes to the plane, his duffle bag slung over his shoulder. His thoughts steady slightly as he works and he lets himself think about how SHIELD had showed up exactly one day after he’d finished the files. He glances at the agent out of the corner of his eye.

Now that he’s here Steve can wonder why it isn’t another DRONE. Had the plan always been to keep him here for two weeks, or was it his sniffing around the laser fence that had done it?

A chill goes through him. Or, had SHIELD known he’d finished the files? Were there other cameras in the cabin? He knows how small Howard had been able to make spy cameras. No doubt they’re even better now. Had SHIELD been watching him this whole time?

Idiot. He should have checked.

But no. He breathes in, trying to slow his pattering heart.

No. If they had, then they would have seen his breakdowns. They wouldn’t be here now, letting him leave when he still can’t even sleep on a bed. Probably. This cabin was supposed to help him adjust. It has certainly done something, but he can’t say he enjoyed it.

Steve swallows dryly as they finish loading the plane and he straps himself down in the seat next to the agent. Somehow his hands don't shake. These safety harnesses are more familiar than the seat belts, even if it’s in a bad way.

The engines hum under him and Steve swallows painfully.

There’s another reason SHIELD could’ve come for him, even after all the craziness they might have seen. Because having a super soldier who’s nuts is still better than chasing one that snuck under the fence and escaped his leash.

SHIELD wants him adjusted. They’d made it pretty clear why. All of their files had focused heavily on the wars and conflicts of the last seventy years. SHIELD had found Captain America in the ice and they want to keep him, just like the army did.

He wasn't— He didn't want to fight another war. I want to go h—

Steve watches the cabin grow smaller as the plane lifts off. His legs tense under him and he breathes in carefully. He’s determined not to lose it this time. He’s not giving SHIELD any reason to think he needs more ‘rest’.

If they try somethin’, we’ll go.

He shakes his head. Go where?

He has nowhere to go. There’s only one thing for him now. The ice may not have killed him, but it had done enough. Whoever Steve Rogers was before is still frozen, left behind with the rest of history. Steve grips his knees, his dog tags moving with his careful breaths.

His hand moves to touch his compass and then his knife in his pocket. It’s okay. He can handle it. He can be Captain America here if he needs to be. It’s a mission. It’s easier.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Epilogue

Upon returning to New York Steve is not directed to the grey room he’d been in before. Instead he finds out that SHIELD had been readying an apartment for him while he was away. (Maybe that’s why they came and got him when they did, because his new quarters were ready and not because they'd been watching him.)

Agent Rumlow meets him at the airstrip and drives him through the busy streets of New York to a tall brown brick building. It looks familiar compared to the tall steel and glass skyscrapers they'd passed on the way. The streets outside the building are foreign, but the sight of winding fire-escapes up the front gives Steve an unexpected breath of relief.

Rumlow doesn't say much, dropping the door keys into Steve’s hand. Steve privately wonders if these keys are any more secure than the ones he’d previously been given.

He unlocks the front door and Rumlow leads him through the lobby, pointing out his mailbox and the corresponding mail key. The entrance looks neat and well-kept, but warmer and slightly worn with age compared to the slate grey halls of the SHIELD building Steve had first lived in.

It's a bit brighter than he'd expected, but otherwise the entrance is very familiar, save for one thing. This apartment has an elevator. Steve had never lived in a building with an elevator before and he can’t help thinking how much easier life would’ve been with one.

Rumlow takes him up to the fourth floor—pressing a button on the wall this time instead of speaking to an immaterial voice, leading Steve to believe that that might not be as common as he’d initially thought. His apartment is in room 422 and Rumlow once again shows him which key to use.

Steve figured as much. It’s the last of the three keys on the ring.

Inside, the predominant colour is now brown, instead of grey. The walls are beige, a faded light brown mat by the door. The door opens into a small living room with a dining table pressed up by the windows, a kitchen is on the left and a doorway leads to the bathroom and bedroom on the right.

Surprisingly enough, it’s not that much bigger than his tenement apartment had been before the war—even with the private bathroom—which is a relief. But it’s filled with unfamiliar equipment.

Rumlow gives him a tour, a bored expression on his face as he walks them briskly into the kitchen.

“You know what a fridge is, right? Yeah, so fridge, oven, toaster, microwave.” Rumlow points out each thing in rapid succession, the devices moving quickly from things Steve recognises, to items he’d never actually used, to something he’s never even heard of.

“Microwave?” he asks, gripping the strap of his duffle bag so hard his fingers turn white. The underside of his arms are still damp from the flight from the cabin and his brain is already spinning trying to grasp more information after weeks of stuffing it to the brim.

Rumlow sighs softly, so quiet anyone else would probably miss it. “It heats up food,” he explains, going to a boxy device resting on the counter. He pulls on the handle to open the door and gestures inside. “You put food in, set the timer–” he points to some numbered buttons on the side “–and press start and it’ll start heating things up.”

Steve blinks, trying to digest the concept. If he understands the device properly, it’s a pretty impressive invention. No need to keep things warm in the oven or light up a burner to heat something up. “How long do you set the timer?”

Rumlow scoffs lightly, shrugging. “I dunno, depends on what you put in there. Less than a minute usually, I guess.”

Steve chews on the inside of his cheek. The answer does not boost his confidence with using the new device. “Okay,” he replies tiredly.

He decides not to ask Rumlow to show him the toaster. Toasters had been around in his day, and he’s certain he can figure them out, even if he’d never actually owned one (and even if the one Rumlow had pointed to doesn't look like the ones he'd seen in stores.) He’s getting a little tired of Rumlow’s condescension.

Steve flicks his eyes around the small kitchen, trying to get used to it on his own. The fridge is rounder and much smaller than the big white one in the cabin and it doesn't have that spout on the front either. It looks more like the ones he’d seen advertised before the war and he wonders which style is more common nowadays.

There’s a pendulum clock on the wall that loudly measures each passing second, and he’s already decided he’s removing the batteries—or breaking it if it’s actually clockwork—once Rumlow leaves. He thinks back to Hill’s silent watch in the elevator over two weeks ago, and he wonders why he hasn’t seen any other silent clocks. Are they a SHIELD innovation? Or perhaps, is he expected to prefer ticking clocks, because they remind him of home?

Funnily enough it’s one of the few changes he’d be happy to accommodate.

Rumlow steps back towards the kitchen table. Light from the city pours through the windows, forming yellow squares on the wood grain. The curtains are dull light brown and the lampshades of the two lamps in the room a yellowed beige. Steve wonders if whoever had set up his apartment thought the past actually was sepia toned. The whole apartment feels like a dusty, stuffy brown box.

His mother had always taken pride in decorating their homes in cheerful colours. The colours he could see. Bright yellow table cloths and braided blue rugs and flower print dust cloths and lacy white curtains.

His flats had always felt homey before.

Steve’s eyes trail over the sunbeams catching on the dust motes floating above the table. He’s so tired.

Rumlow reaches for something on the table and Steve gives himself a shake, focusing back on the room in front of him. On the table are several pieces of paper, a fabric case that looks a bit like a thin briefcase, and a folder. Steve moves to stand by one of the chairs, but draws up short as something catches his eye.

“What’s that?” he asks, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion.

Rumlow glances up. By the windows, on a short stand, is a mannequin torso, dressed in a familiar brown woollen uniform, a bar of gleaming medals pinned on the left breast.

“Oh,” Rumlow shrugs. “Weren’t you requesting some of your stuff? I guess someone found that.”

Steve stands motionless, staring at his dress uniform, preserved on a mannequin like a museum piece. It probably had been, he realises. Displayed somewhere before he’d risen from the dead unexpectedly.

That's so weird to see. It's not even that special. It's just his dress uniform. It looks like every other dress uniform. The fact that someone had preserved it this long, put it on display like it's some special thing just because he wore it…

It's an odd feeling to reckon with.

Steve swallows dryly and turns to look at the papers on the table. One turns out to be a plastic bank card, because that's a thing now apparently. Rumlow draws in a breath, as though bracing himself, before having Steve sit down so he can explain his finances to him.

Over the next hour Steve learns that he actually does have money, mostly consisting of backpay from the military. His eyes nearly fall out of his head when Rumlow shows him the figure, explaining that he can access it using the small plastic bank card.

“We’ll use it later,” he says dismissively. “Right now you gotta sign these forms so I can bring them back to SHIELD.”

The now familiar ball point pen is brought out. Still overwhelmed, Steve signs several different bank statements and a deluge of government documents, stating that he is indeed alive and now in possession of his assets. He also signs the apartment lease, panicking silently at the price of rent, no matter how much he apparently has in his bank account.

Almost a thousand dollars a month. He feels sick just thinking about how much it is. Before, the highest rent he would ever even consider was twenty-five dollars. Three or four dollars a room a month was all he could afford before the war. He can’t believe how expensive things are now. His palms grow sweaty, the massive numbers in his bank account suddenly feeling much smaller now.

Rumlow furnishes him with an official photo ID card and Steve numbly lines it up on the table with his new bank card. He realises dimly that he doesn’t have a wallet yet.

He wonders if his wallet had been saved like that uniform, or if it hadn't been deemed important enough. Had any of the rest of his stuff been kept, stored somewhere for people to collect or look at? The idea is alienating, but if it means he could find some of his things—Sarah's recipe cards, the wedding photograph of her and Joseph, his sketchbooks—it might be worth it.

He sighs softly and shakes his head. On the table, the image on the ID is the one from his SSR personnel files from before he died. He looks at the young face and it feels like a stranger.

When the legal documents are finished, Rumlow moves onto another item on the table with barely a pause for breath. Steve shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his duffle bag by his feet. He has yet to actually move in to the apartment, but it seems as though Rumlow is trying to get through all the official business as quickly as possible.

Steve wishes he’d thought to bring some extra scraps of paper with him so he could make more notes. He resists rubbing his temple, not wanting to let on how drained he is.

The next order of business turns out to be what Rumlow calls a ‘lap-top’. He pulls it from the cloth case and opens it like a book.

A laptop is like a smaller version of a computer, with the screen and keyboard attached. Steve now personally owns one, and Rumlow initially barely touches on it beyond demonstrating how to turn it on and how to plug it in. He seems to assume Steve already knows enough about computers to handle the laptop, but Steve knows that is woefully untrue.

“But how do I connect it to the internet?” Steve presses, his eyes flicking from the bright screen to Rumlow. “I tried with my phone at the cabin but it didn’t work.”

Rumlow’s mouth twitches up slightly. “Ah,” he says, getting up and coming around the table to lean over Steve’s shoulder. Steve has to make a conscious effort not to shrink down in his seat. His heels press into the floor as he cringes internally with discomfort. “You need to connect to the why-fi.”

Rumlow’s fingers move smoothly on the touchpad that is the mouse for the laptop, showing him where to click to find the ‘wi-fi’ and how to log in. He pulls out a slip of paper with the wi-fi password and helps Steve log on with both the laptop and his phone.

It’s frustratingly simple. Which bothers him because he doesn’t remember being told a password for the cabin wi-fi. Was that why his phone didn’t work? Or did the cabin not have wi-fi at all?

He can’t be sure. He doesn't understand wi-fi enough yet. But either way, it doesn’t explain why he couldn’t turn on the computer. Beyond incompetence on his part, obviously.

Steve blows out a slow breath, trying to keep himself calm as Rumlow moves on to show him the ‘landline’ sitting on an end table by the couch. It's a more typical phone that stays in his house. The phone number for it is different from Steve’s other phone and Steve has to wonder why he could possibly need two phones.

Growing up he’d been lucky if there was a phonebooth on the same street as him.

Besides the outright luxury, there’s another reason to scoff at the ludicrousy of having two phones. Who is he supposed to call? Everyone he knows is dead. The only number in his other phone is Rumlow’s, and he doubts very much that they will be exchanging regular calls.

The last thing on the table is a simple beige folder. “That’s the information you requested on SSR personnel,” Rumlow announces with a vague handwave towards it at the end of the lesson.

Steve’s head darts up and a cold chill runs over him. The ticking clock in the kitchen grows louder as his focus narrows in on the thin folder at the other end of the table. That’s right. He’d asked agent Simons about Peggy and the Commandos, and he’d said he’d put in a request.

All at once it’s hard to breathe deeply. It’s been weeks and he still doesn’t know what happened to everyone after he died. Steve’s lips go numb, the rest of his body fuzzy and faraway. The need to read the file rolls through him like a drowning wave. It’s the one thing he’d been waiting for. The one thing that kept him going.

But before he can, Rumlow pushes up from the table and crosses to the living room. Steve gets up reluctantly, his eyes lingering on the folder. As much as he wants to read it, he doesn’t want to do it with Rumlow around.

He already knows how badly he can react to bad news held within a folder.

The living room has a two-seater couch and an armchair, both brown. The couch faces a wide and thin black screen sitting on a low wooden table, various square black devices nestled together below it.

“This is a television,” Rumlow announces. He sucks in a long breath and blows it out as he marches towards the screen. “It intercepts signals to make pictures on the screen—”

“I know what a television is,” Steve interrupts, by now a little tired of the way Rumlow’s mouth curls up when he explains something he clearly thinks is simple. He does know what a television is. He’d seen one in 1939, when Bucky had taken him to the World’s Fair. He knows how it works, although he can’t say he ever thought televisions would end up looking like small movie screens, or that there would be one in his house.

His eyes flick around the room, searching in vain for anything that looks like a radio. Do people still have radios? He’s much more comfortable with those.

“Oh?” Rumlow glances back at him, his eyebrows raising. “Perfect. Then we don’t need to cover that.”

Steve’s stomach drops and he freezes next to the couch. He’d only meant that he understood the concept of the television, not that he’d ever used one, or had any idea how a modern one operated.

He opens his mouth to protest, but Rumlow is already turning back, brushing past him as he makes his way to the table. Steve grips the back of the couch and closes his mouth. His tongue presses to the roof of his mouth and his jaw twitches as he clenches his teeth. His eyes harden and he breathes in through his nose.

Fine. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to sit through Rumlow’s mediocre instructions anyways. Steve knows enough now to be able to figure things out himself. He has the tools. He can look up how to use the television himself, it’s fine.

And anyway, he doesn’t want to see the smug look on Rumlow’s face when he admits he doesn’t actually know how the device works.

“Hey Cap,” Rumlow calls, and Steve turns to see him standing by the dining table. He holds up the thin plastic card between two fingers. “Let’s go out and use this thing.”

The outing Rumlow chooses is a grocery store, because, as he explains, Steve needs to fill his fridge anyways. “Someone stocked the pantry already,” he says as he drives to the nearest grocery store, Steve sitting stiffly in the passenger seat, seat belt pressing into his neck. “But now we can get the other stuff.”

The grocery store is, in a word, overwhelming.

Steve is used to dry goods stores and green grocers, butcher shops and bakeries. Smaller stores or corner shops that served a few neighbourhoods. At most he’s used to the outdoor markets that drew people from far and wide. But the store Rumlow drags him to is gigantic.

It’s like a department store, but all food.

Rumlow shows him how to grab a cart, which is way bigger than any Steve had seen before. They enter the store through doors that open by themselves and Steve’s footsteps falter as he tries to take in the high white ceilings and the rows upon rows of aisles.

A few years before the war, the city of New York had started closing down the street markets, opening indoor markets instead, claiming it was more sanitary. There’d been an interior market on thirteenth street in Brooklyn, and Steve had gone there several times before the war. Inside had been individual stalls with vendors hawking their wares, anything from produce to soap to shoes.

This isn’t like that. It’s one big store with giant sections for different kinds of items. There aren’t small vendors or market stands. It’s just a mass of shelves and people,

The store seems to be trying to make up for the drab colours he’d so far been surrounded by. The shelves are stuffed full with every box and can and packet imaginable. The names and pictures are all unrecognisable, the options limitless. There are sixteen different types of bread, all different somehow.

His brain goes numb instantly. It’s simply too much.

He follows Rumlow silently through the aisles, hardly saying a word as the man guides him through the store and picks out food for his cart. The buzz of patrons and rattling wheels and beeping machines fills his ears and Steve barely hears Rumlow’s grunts about brands and food staples.

He only really comes back to himself when they get to what Rumlow calls the ‘checkout aisle’. The clerk is only one in a long row of workers, swiping the food over a red light, a small white square with little black lines somehow able to translate the price of the item onto the clerk’s computer.

The total price for the groceries is astonishingly high.

Sixty-five dollars. That's— that's over three months rent. Or, what used to be rent. He can't— He can't possibly afford—

Rumlow doesn't even blink at the price. He pulls out the bank card and beckons Steve to look at the rectangle device the clerk offers him. The password is the same as his phone, he tells him, just to keep things simple.

Steve’s mouth is dry as dirt, his thoughts jerky and uncoordinated as he struggles to pay attention to Rumlow’s explanation of the pin pad and card reader. He swipes the card as directed (‘flip it around’, says Rumlow, ‘other way’) and he has to wipe his sweaty palms on his pants, the back of his neck prickling.

On the one hand he can feel the people in line behind them waiting impatiently for him to finish paying for his food, but on the other hand his mind can’t get over how expensive everything is.

He has money now, he knows that. But he can’t stop the deep seeded panic that wells up in him as he thinks of all the expenses the future will bring. He needs a job. Fury had mentioned that at the very beginning of everything, and Steve had despaired at the thought of finding anything he knows how to do in the future.

What can I even do now? he thinks forlornly as Rumlow drives them back, plastic bags of expensive groceries lining the backseat. What can I even do besides fight?

Rumlow leaves him alone after the shopping trip, but not without one final blow.

“Dr. Faustus has a follow up appointment for you next week,” he says, and Steve can feel himself pale. His heartbeat gets loud in his ears. Simply the thought of going back to see that doctor makes him nauseous.

“Oh,” is all Steve can say.

The last time he’d seen him Dr. Faustus had diagnosed him with PTSD and decided he needed to go to the cabin to get over it. He absolutely cannot let on that the treatment has yet to work. No one at SHIELD can know. He will not go back to that cabin.

oOo

Over the next few days Steve tries to keep himself afloat, determined to be as functional and adjusted as possible so that he can prove to Dr. Faustus at his follow up that he is fine.

He finds a map of New York among the papers Rumlow had left him and slowly tries to get used to the city around him, a few blocks at a time. The first time he steps out to take a walk around the block, his hands begin to shake halfway through. But he forces himself through it, gripping his compass and knife in his pockets and marching down the sidewalk in a rapid clip that would’ve impressed any drill sergeant.

He reads the SSR folder, finally completing the mission that had held him together for the last two weeks. It’s almost as bad as he expected. The file contains an entry for every Commandos member, all of them dead. And, as if driving the knife in a little deeper, each page is marked carelessly with a deep red stamp reading DECEASED in large letters.

Every page but the last two. One for Peggy, and one for Howard’s son. Steve doesn’t get to know if the other Commandos had any children. He suspects, after some examination, that Howard’s son is only mentioned because he too is connected with SHIELD.

But, maybe it won't be so bad, meeting Howard's son. Maybe… that might be okay.

There's no mention of Bucky’s family at all.

Peggy, he finds out, lives in a nursing home (which he finds out is like a board-and-care house) in Washington D.C. He’d spent the last two weeks believing there was no way she could have survived and he sits in shock when he sees that she has. He wonders a little bitterly how no one could have possibly thought to have told him so before now.

There’s a number to call her. But he can’t quite bring himself to. Not yet. He— So much has changed already. It’s enough knowing she is alive at least. He feels as though he might shatter into a million pieces if he actually confronts how much time has passed since he last saw her.

(Besides, what is he supposed to talk about? How hard everything is here? How he feels like he’s crumbling into pieces and can barely breathe and if he stops to think for one second he might die? No. He knows Howard had been able to tap phones during the war and all his phones are SHIELDs. He can’t risk admitting incriminating things over the phone until he’s certain Dr. Faustus won’t send him back to the cabin.)

He doesn't break down after reading the folder. Mostly because he keeps himself wrapped in numbness instead. And also because he hasn't checked the flat for spy cameras. He hasn't been able to get the idea out of his head every since he'd wondered if they might've been in the cabin. But if they are there, he doesn't want to be caught looking. It might be better to just live carefully so no potential eyes—from outside or inside his flat—have reasons to fault him.

He focuses on trying to survive in the world he’s found himself in. He all but gives up on sleeping in his bed, instead making camp on his couch like he’d done at the cabin, even though his legs hang over the arm. (It's better than sleeping on the floor, which he has a feeling might draw some attention.) He eats cheaply, not trusting the numbers in his bank account after seeing the prices in the store. He’s left hungry most days, but that isn’t a new feeling.

He locates a library on his map, but he isn't ready to subject himself to history books again just yet. Instead he goes for walks everyday, sometimes for hours since he has nothing else to do. He tries to draw some of the buildings he sees, getting used to both his ball point pen and the new approach to architecture. It's easier to draw the scenery than his memories.

He finds an ancient gym near his old neighbourhood on the map and he forces himself to figure out how to get there. Rumlow hadn't done much besides the first day of tours, but that suits Steve just fine since it was clear that Rumlow had been bored out of his mind. Instead, Steve figures out the route himself, looking it up on his phone (and feeling painfully, embarrassingly proud of himself for managing it).

Leaving the apartment is harder than he'd like to admit. But it's actually better than staying inside with nothing to do. So he squares his shoulders and shoves his way through the apprehension, facing down the outside world with a steely glint in his eyes and his dog tags around his neck.

He wears a jacket he’d found even though it’s nearly summer (It’s May, he knows what month it is now), and his hands stay wrapped around his knife and compass in his pockets as he walks down the street to the train station. He never goes anywhere without his tags and those two things. He needs them.

The ticket teller shows him how to use an ATM machine. She's polite about it, although Steve can see the confusion in her eyes. His cheeks burn with embarrassment, but at least now he knows people still use cash nowadays.

While outdoors and on the train, his skin crawls and his chest refuses to expand fully, the clack-clack of the tracks reminding him too much of a different, fatal train ride. But when he gets to the gym and loses himself in the rhythm of the punching bag it's better. He can blot it all out for an hour or two or three and he almost feels okay.

It’s then, three days after he’d left the cabin, that Fury comes to him with a mission. It isn’t a surprise. Steve had known he would come. After just over two weeks in SHIELD custody, he has a pretty good idea of what they want from him. And he has a stark understanding of his current position in the world.

Steve says yes. Or, at least, he doesn’t say no.

He knows what he is. He knows what SHIELD wants him to be. He doesn't want to fight a war, but he can play the role of Captain America for now. He can pretend to be the perfect soldier if it lets him keep the mask of sane firmly over his face.

He needs to. The appointment with Dr. Faustus is next week, and if the cabin had taught him anything, it's that Steve is never going to risk going back to that place. Ever again.

“Anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?” Fury asks, referring to the new mission, the blue cube of death Steve had died to stop less than a month ago (and, seventy years ago).

“You should have left it in the ocean.”

The end