Disclaimer: I do not own the Avengers or any Marvel characters.
Steve wakes up a sweaty mess, feet tangled in the baggy grey comforter that doesn't insulate well enough. He's cold.
He's always cold.
The sounds of other people going about their lives just outside the door is normally a distraction, but today Steve finds it grating. It's almost unbearable to be neighbors with nineteen other people on a good day, and on the days Steve can't find his way out of the past the time trickles by in achingly slow moments. Someone in the hallway sneezes, and Steve grits his teeth.
They thought being around other people would help after being isolated for 70 years. That watching other people carry out their lives would help him figure out what to do with his. SHIELD handed him a room key the day he checked out of medical and pointed him down the long grey hallway to room 221, which turned out to be the equivalent of a studio apartment that was just built. The entire thing is a flat, dull blue expanse of sturdy necessities that all point to his ineptitude and circumstance. He is an old man in a world that aged without him.
He pulls on a pair of sweatpants and one of the navy t shirts that appear in the brown boxes in his mail slot. Maybe he has money to get different clothes, but he doesn't know how to get it and he won't trouble the agents about it. These work alright for workouts, anyway. He grabs a towel and slips on his tennis shoes, snags his shield from where it sits by his headboard.
It's five thirty in the morning and he knows by experience that he's not getting back to sleep. He opens the door onto the charcoal carpeting and shuts the door behind him, ignoring the fact that his door doesn't lock. There's a single flimsy deadbolt on the inside that he can lock if he wants the semblance of privacy. He's broken through enough of them to know the lock is a formality. He goes to the training area, taking the stairs to start warming up his muscles. There's about fifteen flights, but he'd rather jog them than take the chilly metal box of the elevator. The stairwell door opens onto a side area where he slips off his shoes and pads onto the mats, where he stretches for all of five minutes before giving in to that animalistic urge to hit away his frustrations. He tapes up his hands to protect them from the little damage they can sustain and begins beating away at the nearest bag, a red and white one that dangles from its hook like a dead thing.
Can't even bleed for the people you left behind.
The serum makes sure of that.
He's alone this morning, which isn't unusual. Most other agents come down after their morning coffee, when they've had their toast and throwaway cup and answered their emails. Steve does none of these things, and so is able to go and practice until they start to come down. He always ducks out when he hears their footsteps in the stairwell, leaving the bag swinging on the hook. He gets through a good half hour of practice on the punching bag, which has become less about keeping in shape and more about the unnervingly cathartic feel of sinking his fists into something that will take it as long as Steve needs it to.
Today, his ears are ringing when he steps away from the bag and unwinds the tape. His hands are barely pink around the knuckles even after the beating they just took. He growls low in his throat and heads over to the target range, snagging his shield and his shoes. Today is one of those days, the ones where the past hangs in his mind like a blanket and all he can see is the expression on Bucky's face as he slipped out of Steve's hands and into the abyss. Today, he needs an escape.
The third time the shield flies from Steve's hands, he's aiming for the cardboard cutout instead of the wall. While he likes to work out the exact force he needs to rebound the weapon, he discovered a closet where the extra practice models are kept. The black-coated paper shears under the edge of the shield, and Steve retrieves the disc, inspecting the blow. The model is neatly severed in half, the feet still attached to the ground and the top half of the figure a few feet away on the ground. He hates to waste these tools when they could last someone several rounds of target practice instead of a single blow, but they make taming his emotions easier. He gets through two more cutouts before the ringing in his ears goes away. On some level he's disgusted that violence relaxes him, but he's far enough down that he doesn't truly care.
He hears footsteps pounding down the stairway and finishes putting the cardboard pieces in the trash slot just as a few agents come out onto the floor, clad in matching SHIELD sweatpants and sporting handgun belts. They look like they're ready to use the range, so Steve leaves them to it, ignoring the weight of their eyes on the back of his neck as he exits the floor. No matter how he puts it, people will never see him as anyone other than Captain America, the shield-wielding hero who punched nazis a lifetime ago. There's no point in telling them otherwise. Steve Rogers is the other guy.
Steve makes the trek up the staircase and back to his room to drop off his things, ignoring the shower despite the sweat sticking his shirt to his chest. Later, he tells himself. His nerves are still tingling with the adrenaline of the morning. There's no need to add a spray of cool water into the mix. He tugs on a different shirt and heads to get his morning cup of coffee, banking that no one will be there despite his shortened time on the range this morning. Everyone else on this base has a function and a job, a schedule they adhere to. He is the only one with all the time in the world.
He hadn't truly anticipated there being people in the breakroom, but when he opens the door, the cluster of people chatting over their mugs glance over at him, conversation stilling before picking up in hushed tones. There's a woman using the microwave to make oatmeal, and Steve nods politely at her as he gets a mug out of the cupboard. Someone threw on a fresh pot not that long ago, so he pours some and stands off to the side, pretending to look over some magazines someone left. The woman on the cover of what he assumes is a modeling magazine wears a dress like plastic wrap, claiming to be the most highly paid model of 2012. Steve stares at her picture for a minute, finding himself comparing everything different about her to his time. Her bleach-blonde hair to his favorite shade of brunette. The streaks of black around her sultry eyes to the resolve and challenge of Peggy's. But this is his time, he corrects himself. Then, and now, and for the infinite future. Time remembered Steve Rogers, and it did not wait, even for national heroes.
The coffee goes sour in his mouth, and he sets the mug in the sink, feeling the familiar feeling of panic rise in his chest. He moves to get to the door, to go back to his room and feel the new familiarity of his quarters cover the sounds of his fear, but is stopped in his tracks by the cold that accosts his bare arms as an agent opens the freezer door of the break room refrigerator. His world narrows to a tiny tunnel view before exploding outward again.
Steve flattens himself against the coffee machine. The oatmeal woman slides her hand over the counter, and her ring grates over the top of it, sending the hairs on Steve's neck to stand at attention. He shivers involuntarily and she looks over at him before continuing her conversation with the man next to her. Something mundane. Cars? Music? He can't bring himself to care. The freezer door shuts, and in a cruel twist of fate the ice inside it rattles.
The whole room tilts on its axis, a rotating blur of ragged carpet and straight backed chairs that signal wrong, wrong, wrong and suddenly he's sitting on the ground and the room is quiet and empty except there's a pair of gleaming brown wingtips two feet from his sneakers. His breath hitches in his chest and the involuntary reaction to this, his body decides, is to clench his fists even tighter. He feels the skin break where his nails are biting into his palms. There is a soft exhale from above.
Steve looks up into the haze of fluorescent lights to see a man in an impeccable grey suit. His face swims into view and Steve feels his stomach turn to stone.
"Howard?"
He's blinking and gasping up at the man who flew him on a suicide mission, who designed his shield and worked alongside Peggy. Someone else made it through. He doesn't let himself get trapped in the hows, only on the now. Howard is here, and he's not alone anymore. Howard kneels down.
"Sorry Cap," he says, "But I'm Tony."