Author's Note: I first posted this on my other account (I know, why do I need two right?) but...I figured I'd post it here instead after I took it down for editing (no one had read it anyway so I thought what the heck...why not?). SO. In anticipation of the new Captain America movie coming out on July 22nd, I give you this here one shot. I was also thinking of writing an AU fic but...I'm not sure yet.
Let me know what you think? It would be much appreciated.
Disclaimer - Abraham Erksine and Steve Rogers belong to Marvel.
Small Soldier
by Harlequin Sequins
.
.
What do you want to do with your life?
If you'd asked me a month ago that age old question, I wouldn't have known what to say. What I wanted was what I couldn't have. Something out of reach, but still I stretched as far as I could. Sometimes you just have to work a little harder to get where you're going than most people. For me, that was not the case. I could have worked my fingers down to the bone and still I'd have gotten nowhere. That's just how it was. There was no changing the hand that fate had dealt for me.
I wanted to be a soldier. Modest dreams for a modest kid from Brooklyn. But, you see, I was small. Puny was the word most had used to describe me. I must have been the size equivalent of an eight year old on stilts. I was just that pathetic. Brawn was not on my side, it never was and never would be. I remember my father always said, before he died, that if it weren't for my brain I'd be nearly useless. Ma never did like it when he said such things and she tried to soothe me later, when he wasn't looking, with some hair ruffling and a few gentle words for my sake. But as I got older, and my father was out of the picture, I became better at shielding myself from the remarks of the people around me. For some of them, the intent was to inflict harm, but some really did mean well. It was just the delivery that was all wrong. It had nothing to do with intent.
My size was the only thing working against me. The only thing. They can't say I never tried. Because I did. Over and over and over again until I thought I would break. At night, when I lay awake in bed and ran endless circles around sleep, I was filled to the brim with all the doubts and insults of those recruiters.
Kid, you gotta be kidding me. You wouldn't last one second out there.
Whoa there, little puke. Nice try. Come back after you've hit puberty.
I don't think so pipsqueak. A fourth grader would make a for a better soldier!
What on god's green earth are you thinkin'? Get the hell out of here, small fry.
You think you're big enough to fight the Nazis?
Take a look in the mirror pal. You ain't never getting in. Hear me? Never. And don't come back neither!
But there was one thing that my failure to inherit my father's brawn and stature couldn't stand in the way of.
I didn't care how tall I was or how weak I was or the odds against me. I could fight. Even knowing I would always lose, the half-bit, the long shot, the horse no one would ever bet on even when they were falling off their assdrunk – there was just no backing down. I couldn't. It was never in the cards for me. If you'd asked me why, I wouldn't have known how to tell you. It was just something in my blood. Ma couldn't seem to flush it out of my system, no matter how hard she tried to steer me away from self-proclaimed martyrdom, but I was never one for admitting defeat. Must have been the war hero gene restlessly moving through me.
It would mean admitting failure and that was just something I couldn't do.
And all I wanted was to have a chance. Was it too much to ask? If they would've let me, I think they would have been pleasantly surprised at what I could accomplish. I was small, but damn was I mighty! Sure, I got a daily dose of ass-whoopin' from the friendly neighborhood bully, just like any underdeveloped book nerd always did. But I'd have made one hell of a medic! It wouldn't have been what I truly wanted, but I'm not picky. I'd take what I could get. With fate working against me, and circumstance working even harder, it wasn't my place to be particular. If I was serving my country – well, then, that would've been good enough for me.
I think it was after ma died that it became more than just passing fancy. I was out of school, back up plans lined up for my back up plans, and I had settled as comfortably as was possible into the stone cold facts of life. As easily as a dreamer could. I got into drawing, took to charcoal like I'd been born into it, and sometimes I even dabbled in photography when the mood suited me. I planned my life around art, around illustration, but still that old hope glowed. A soft, faint glow. I held onto it secretly; ma wouldn't have approved of me holding onto old skeleton dreams. What she didn't know couldn't hurt her.
But when she died, I was all alone, and I didn't have her warmth and kind old folk wisdom to guide me anymore. It was just me. Steven Rogers – parentless with no direction and naturally there was nowhere else for me to go but into the big black beyond.
For a while I drifted. Tried to make sense of her passing. Pneumonia of all things. The woman was made of steel and it was a cold gone bad that finally took her. I got to thinking that maybe she was just human, you know? After father died she let loose on her death grip on life a little. Maybe I was the only thing keeping her here. I don't rightly know if that's a comforting thought…or a sobering one.
Her death robbed me of all will to draw. I lost all interest in my charcoal set and it gathered dust lying in wait for me to take it up again next to a blank canvas. If it had been just a few months ago, the sight of white paper would've driven me insane. A muse would find me. She'd whisper ideas into my ear and I would stay up all night on weekends, my hands dusted with a fine black coat. Without knowing, I'd always draw people. More often than not they were faceless war heroes, drawn up from the memories of recruiters I'd sometimes see down at the school, plucking fresh bodies to fill their empty uniforms. When ma died, the canvas was left blank for a long, long time. I didn't feel the need anymore. There was no desire to create.
I don't remember much about those months I mourned her. Just that they were vague and hollow months passed. When I woke from the daze, I took to my canvas again like a starving alcoholic to his drink. I remember it had been of an old woman I'd seen in the park.
At twenty two, I was yet again a man possessed with the need to prove myself.
By the time I got back into the recruiting process, grown a few inches or so, most of my bullies and childhood friends alike had been shipped off to Europe. It was my best bet, the European front. Even I knew it was too high of a hope to even consider the Marines (toughest nails of the bunch they were), who were being sent down to the Pacific after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With war declared on Japan, it seemed like the entire world was on fire and no one could escape the hungry inferno that was war. I wanted to be a part of it more than ever.
The little bit of growing I'd done since my last attempt had no effect. They still only saw the weakness, the paleness, the stringy muscles and the skeletal look that hung off me like an old ratty shirt. I was as undesirable now as I was back then. Nothing had changed. I received the same pitying looks, the same cruel laughter – nothing short of a miracle was going to change their mind.
I even tried different cities. Moved from hotel to hotel. And when it seemed that one had taken the cake as the seediest little dirt hole I'd ever seen, the next was just as ridden with cockroaches and rust and filth. I was in no place to complain. After all, it was for the sake of my dream. Back home, I had rent to pay, a life waiting for me, my canvas patient and blank as ever. It could wait. I could always go back to drawing when I returned from the war. When there was a whole lot of life left to live out the way I wanted to. There was always time in the world. But my time to fightwas growing short.
For a month and a half I traveled. I enlisted first in New York. After receiving a definite fat chance in my home state, I picked up and set out for Pennsylvania, then Georgia and New Orleans.
No one would give me the time of day.
Too small.
Too gangly.
Too sickly.
Too pale.
I was just too much of not good enough to even have the luxury of an option. They turned me away. Always that red stamp came crashing down on my quickly withering dream. Sometimes, when I warded off cockroaches and stared up at the water-stained ceiling of another dingy motel, I would wonder. Am I wasting their time? More importantly – am I wasting mine? I could go to college. Be an artist. What good is it to chase after ghosts of old dreams? I would only catch phantoms in the end.
But morning light always had a sobering effect on my nocturnal wallowing. I hadto try. I had to. No one was going to tell me I couldn't do it – not when I had the will and the mind to overcome the reality of my chances. I was Steve Rogers after all. Son of an immigrant countryman and a woman made of steel. They had fought for everything they ever got in life and only death could take it away from them.
I was their son.
I had to make them proud.
Virginia would be the last endeavor. If I was rejected, I would simply give in and remember I had given it everything I had. Being not good enough was something I couldn't help. There was no chant, no pill, no secret that would magically make me soldier material. It was something you were born with. Maybe I just had missed out on that important little gene.
I had never taken so much care to my appearance as I did that morning. I brushed my teeth with a nervous vigor. I brushed my hair back, then forward, only to decide multiple times that it just wouldn't do. After so much time had passed I dressed and left for the recruiting office just down the way. I had never been so nervous, nor so hopeful. This was my one last shot. I had to make it good – and I couldn't miss.
The line was not as long, not as it used to be when news reached us of Europe and war on Japan had first been declared. These were the afterthought enlisters. The ones who thought well hellwhy not? I don't have anything else better to do. It's not like I'm going to college or nothing like that. If only I had their extravagance of choices. I would not be so flippant about it. Hell, if I had half the shot they did, I'd have been in Europe by now. Even the Pacific. Anywhere but here in Virginia scrounging for a place in the Army like it was the last place on earth.
The line shortened. I shuffled forward behind a husky man that looked twice my age in size. But in the face, he was younger, maybe nineteen. It'd be pushing it to say he'd been twenty from the wide-eyed look he had about him of being fresh out of school and new to the real world. One look at him and the recruiter didn't even have to think twice. That fateful sound of the accepted stamp hitting the paper. I wondered, idly, if they sounded the same. Or was there a different, lower, more somber timber to its counterpart?
I was next. I took a deep breath, having a short window of time to prepare myself for the look I knew I was going to get. The mountainous man moved off to the side, carrying victory with him like a halo of gold around his burly shoulders. Optimism urged me forward, though my steps faltered a moment as the breath was dragged out of my lungs the second the doctor gave me the preliminary glance over.Please, just give me a chance. That's all I ask for. Just one.
I stood straight and proud and tall. There was no room for slouching in boot camp. They'd beat it out of you even if you had the most unholy slump of them all. Chin up, eyes level with his, shoulders back and straight as if a rod ran through them. His face changed. He shook his head. Inside of me, panic erupted, burned as if someone had set me on fire. He reached for the red stamp. My hand flew to his, stopping it.
"Kid, you're too small."
"All I'm asking for is a chance," I said. "I'll prove I can do it."
"Look, I'm as sympathetic as the next guy, and I don't want to do this, but the truth hurts - the Army has no room for weaklings like you," he replied, moving my hand gently out of the way. My heart dropped and it felt as though it were hitting my lungs by the way I couldn't seem to breathe. "Go on home son. You don't belong here. Next!"
The man behind me shuffled forward. But I didn't budge.
"Sir." I said to him, raising my voice so that he could hear me. I could tell he was shutting me off by the way his eyes glazed over when I addressed him.
Look at me! Listen to what I have to say!
"It's over," he explained with measured weariness. "You've been rejected. You're just not big enough."
"I must ask you to reconsider," I insisted.
"I don't think you understand what war really is, do you boy?"
I refused to lower my eyes in shame, even as he patronized me the same way the others did when I put up a struggle. "I want to fight."
"Let me explain it to you then, shall I? War is hell. In simplest terms, it is the ninth circle and maybe worse," he said, and cleared his throat, leaning over the desk a little so I could hear him better. "There are days on end where you don't get to sleep, where you don't get to eat, where you are pushed to the edge of sanity and sometimes you're not pulled back in time. And then, there's the calm before the next storm. Your body is tired, but you just can't sleep. Your mind goes back to it all over and over again. All that life lost. All that blood. The screaming .God, you'll never forget it, not as long as you live. And you find yourself wasting what little time you have to rest, to eat, to sleep just wondering.Wondering why you're here. What the point of all this is. So much wasted potential. And for what? Most find that they can't seem to get a grip on an answer."
"With all due respect, I am well aware of the consequences. War is also sacrifice. And freedom is a cause worth fighting for. I would lay down my life for it. That's why I'm here. Because I want to be. Not because I have no other option, not because my father said so, not because my plans for college fell through and this is the next best thing. This is what I want to do. All I need is a chance. Please," I said to him, no waver in my voice to be found."I am asking you to rethink your decision."
He folded his hands and breathed out of him a deep and thoughtful sigh. My heart throbbed painfully against my chest. Please.
"You have a good heart, Mr. Rogers. You have courage and that takes guts but you can't just rely on bravery to guide you through. It also takes strength to survive out there. I don't want to be the one to send you into battle only to have you come back in a wooden box. I'm sorry. My answer is still no."
The red stamp comes down.
And the rest of my hopes with it.
Outside, the weather was fine. The sun was hot and bright and there wasn't a cloud to be found in that big stretch of crystal blue sky. My head was reeling as I looked out of the window for a long, painful second. So, it was done then. Everything I'd ever hoped for was gone in an instant. I guess it was back to Brooklyn for me. I could find a good art college, settle down for a long life. But I would never know –know what it was like to have fought for the good of the world and everyone in it. The thought of it hurt like hell. It wasn't just a superficial ache. Like a stubbed toe or a paper cut. This was like a knife to the heart, plunging in up to the hilt till it could go in no more, and the poison of it seeped into my system.
I suddenly felt tired. Like I could sleep forever. I had been too nervous to eat before coming here, but not even the rumbling in my stomach that I'd arrived here with remembered itself in the wake of defeat. And that was what I was – a man defeated. Weakness of the body reigned victor over strength of the heart. And so it was. I couldn't change the man's mind. I'd tried. That would have to be enough.
I shuffled out of the enlistment office and down the long hall with what seemed an albatross slung over my shoulders. A few people passed, all of them luckier than I had been, but I did not seem them go. Behind me, a pair of footsteps stood out from the rest, but I paid no mind to them. They were like white noise with all the activity going on around here.
"Mr. Rogers," came a voice.
I turned on pure reflex at first, but then it sunk in and I realized the voice was heavily accented. A painfully thin man, run ragged by age, stood before me with his hands clasped in front of him in an important sort of way. His hair was wild and streaked with varying shades of charcoal gray and brightest silver. He reminded me of young, less flustered looking Albert Einstein.
"My name is Dr. Abraham Erksine." He bowed his head slightly as he introduced himself. "If you would be willing, and of course have the time, I would like a moment with you."
"Have I done something wrong?"
"No, no, certainly not," he said to me, pushing his glasses up his nose. "I wish only to discuss something of great importance."
He led me off into a side corridor when I didn't appear to object to the idea of talking with him. It was quieter down here and not as many people moved through it. The man stopped and took a manila folder out from underneath his arm. With an elegant flair, he opened it, all the while not looking at me. I, however, was struck nearly dumb by the sudden appearance of this strange guy. He'd come out of nowhere. And what could he possibly want to talk about with me? I was a weakling. A sickly excuse for a man with a cause.
Somehow clarity managed to dig its way through the self-pity and snap me out of the fog. This Abraham Erksine character - this was the enlistment center we were standing in. Anything he would want to talk about had to be related to the military, wouldn't it? My heart lifted for a moment. Could there have been a mistake? Did the doc reconsider after all?
If I hadn't been interested before, I certainly was now.
"Now, Mr. Rogers, it says here you have attempted enlistment five different times," he said, his brow furrowing as he looked over my file. "In five different cities. You were rejected for the same reason each time."
"I'm too weak," I clarified.
"Yes, exactly," he replied. "I overheard your speech. However, there is a quality that is very much alive and well in you that I have been searching for. It is a hard one to find. Humanity, it seems, has forgotten it, even if it is in them they cannot see it in themselves. But in you – yes, you have it. I can see it now. In your posture. In your eyes. It's in your blood, isn't it? Your father had it too. Or was it your mother?"
"What's this all about? What quality?"
"Strength. And not of the physical kind. No, this is a different kind of brawn – only the heart may carry it. You have much courage in you. And paired with tenacity, you can go very, very far, even to the ends of the earth if you had the right tools and were given the right chances. I can offer you that chance."
"You want me?" I could hardly believe what I was hearing. "Why?"
"Everything will be explained to you later. All I need for now is a yes…or a no."
He held out his hand, waiting. I looked at it, taking his words and replaying them over in my head. A chance.That had been all I wanted. The rest would give me nothing, not even the slightest one. And here was this man, standing before me in flesh and blood, telling me there was a way.
Still, I was wary. What if this turned out to be some cruel and awful joke? Well, it wasn't as if I'd never been teased before. In fact, I was sure no one could rival me in that sense. I had been teased all my life for what I sorely lacked and yet now…here I was being offered my dream on a silver platter in spite of all my shortcomings.
He watched me patiently, the man, looking for any sign of acceptance or refusal. His face didn't appear to change much as I held out my hand, took his, and gave it a good strong shake.
"Count me in."
"My, what a grip," he said, chuckling. "Yes, I think you will prove to be a very good candidate."
Remember how I said I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life?
Well, let's go back to that instant for a moment, because it had been a very long time ago. That was before. After was a whole different story. And it's funny, when you think about it, how much influence circumstance truly has over fate. How it can take a man and shape him into something great or lead him straight into his downfall. I couldn't tell you if this was the pathway to greatness for me or the downward spiral.
But I could have told you with nothing short of a winning smile what I wanted. And that was what was most important to me, to my ma and I'm sure it would've been to my father, had he the chance to watch me struggle to grow under the weight of consequence. I wanted to be a soldier. That was all I asked. Nothing more…and nothing less.
I guess that blank canvas will just have to wait a little bit longer.
copyright of Harlequin Sequins, 2011.