Hey! I hope you guys enjoy. I don't feel like I got the point across as well as I'd like but I hope you all get it. Takes place after Thor: the dark world but before Winter Soldier.
Music: Light and Saturn from Sleeping At Last.
Disclaimer: I do not own anybody from Marvel. I do not own the song and lyrics mentioned ( The lyrics are from Saturn btw.)
Poor Steve Rogers was standing outside a building, a piece of paper in hand, utterly confused. He looked down at the piece of paper and read the address sprawled there in a large, boisterous letters and then back at the building. The address was correct which only made poor Steve even more confused because he really had no idea what he doing here and the building looked really sorta scientific.
It was his week off from SHIELD and before he left he had met Thor who had come in to SHIELD Headquarters to discuss something or the other with Fury now that he was back on Earth. They had struck up a conversation and sometime during it Steve had mentioned how he liked to look at the stars. Which had somehow led to Thor scribbling this address on a piece of paper and extracting a promise from Steve that he would visit there. Steve still wasn't quite sure what had happened. The only thing he took away from the conversation was that Thor had really good puppy eyes. Who would have thought?
Which is how he ended up in New Mexico string at a rather normal looking apartment building because Steve was a man of his word. Well there was nothing for it he would have to knock and find out if this was in fact the correct place after all. Steve got off his bike, walked up to the door and pressed the bell.
"Coming!" a voice yelled from within.
After a few moments a flustered looking woman opened the door that Steve tentatively identified as Jane Foster. Upon seeing him she froze in shock.
"Um ma'am?" Steve asked when she still didn't say anything. That jolted her out of her shock.
"Captain Rogers!," she squeaked, "Uh, uh, what are you doing here?"
"Actually ma'am I was wondering if you might know," Steve admitted, "You are Jane Foster right?"
"Oh, yes" said Jane, "And, um, no one mentioned you were coming so I don't really know…"
Steve sighed and said, "Well, uh, I met Thor and we struck up a conversation and he sent me here."
"Thor?" asked Jane, "He isn't back yet. Why would he send you here?"
"I know," said Steve, "I may have mentioned that I like to look at the stars and he got excited and sent me here."
"Oh!" said Jane in sudden understanding and then she sighed and laughed, "Thor is too generous," she said, "Come in, come in."
Steve went in warily after her. "So you do know why he sent me?"
"Yes, I think so," Jane answered as she hurriedly cleared some papers of a covered tabletop. "This is an observatory. You know, a place where you can look at stars. We have some of the best equipment here. I showed some of it to Thor and he liked it a lot. I guess he thought you might like it too."
"Oh," said Steve. He looked around at the mess of papers everywhere. "I hope I'm not interrupting."
"Not at all," said Jane. "I was actually just finishing up and going to get something to eat. How about we do that first because I'm sure you're hungry and when we're done it should be dark enough to set up the telescopes. "
"Sure," said Steve because truth be told he was hungry.
"In a way this is good," said Jane bustling over to the cupboard in the kitchen area and starting to pull out various packages, "I need to take a break and I already gave the others the day today. Thor thinks I work too much sometimes. Do you mind ramen cups because it's all we've got," she finished.
"No, I don't mind," said Steve still standing around awkwardly. Jane set the ramen cups in the microwave and after they were done they shared a rather awkward dinner. When dinner was over however, night had fallen and Jane led Steve up some stairs to the actual observatory part of the building.
Steve looked around in wonder at the complicated machinery. "These are some of the most powerful telescopes we have," said Jane indicating several masses of machinery, "But for tonight, we'll use something simpler."
She headed over to a much smaller piece of equipment that was already set up. Steve watched first at the night sky which was fantastic and best of all there were very few building to spoil the view and then next at Jane who was apparently calibrating the piece of equipment.
"We don't use this one as much as the others, because it is more for pleasure use than scientific research," she told him. Steve watched as she typed in some numbers in the little handheld control and then the telescope spun to face a certain part of the sky. Jane put her eye to the eye piece and checked it and then nodded and entered in some more things into the control. Finally she looked up and said.
"Alright Captain Rogers, what do you want to see first?"
"Steve," Steve corrected automatically, and then frowned, "I don't know." After several moments he asked shyly, "Can we see Saturn? I've always liked it because of the rings and I've always wondered if it really looked like that."
Jane smiled. "Of course! Good choice. Saturn's rings have just reopened and they're in their full glory."
"Reopened?" asked Steve.
"Yes," said Jane as she typed in the coordinates for Saturn, "Sometimes Saturn's ring appear to become really thin. We say this is when they have closed. When they expand back, they've opened."
"Oh," said Steve. "I didn't know they did that."
"Jane smiled at him. "We all learn something new every day." The telescope stopped moving and she bent and put her eye to the eyepiece and watched for a moment and then said, "There it is," and gestured Steve toward the telescope.
glory, was the planet Saturn, it's rings arrayed around it just like in the pictures.
"It's….it's….." Steve stuttered, "It's beautiful," he finally breathed. His eye remained glued to the eyepiece and he watched the magnificent planet hang in space, unaware of Jane behind him smiling at his obvious awe and due to the fact that she could remember that her reaction to seeing a planet for the first time had been much the same.
When Steve had drunk his fill of Saturn, they watched Betelgeuse, the crab nebula, Sirius and various other wonders in the night sky. Steve was amazed and watched the splendor of them all in a childish glee. Jane was no better because she too loved the stars and they soon found themselves in a running conversation, all the earlier awkwardness disappearing in the face of a common passion.
It was early morning when they finally wound down. They both flopped down on the floor of the observatory and sat in silence for a few moments just drinking in the sight of the vast black, star speckled canvas. Steve suddenly realized just how much he was grateful that Thor had sent him here.
After a moment Jane stirred and said, "I didn't know you loved the stars so much, Steve."
"I've always loved them," Steve remarked, "But since…since I've come back I love them even more because they're some of the few things that remain mostly unchanged."
There was palpable silence while Jane processes the depth of that simple comment, the loss behind it, the loneliness, the homesickness.
"Oh," she said finally, "I get that. I do."
"Sometimes I wish I could just go back," Steve said before he thought about it. "Things were simpler then."
Jane was silent for another moment and then she said cautiously, "Steve…Have you ever thought that it might be a good thing for you to be here? Not in just the saving the world stuff but for yourself?"
Steve turned to look to her a frown creasing his brow, "I'm glad to be alive," he began but Jane shook her head.
"I know you are but, I didn't mean it like that."
Steve thought for a moment. "I have things and people I care about in this, this time," he said finally, "But I think in the net weight of things, I'd, I'd prefer the 1940s." He looked down, feeling ashamed to feel that way.
"It's okay to feel that way," said Jane gently. "Heaven knows I wouldn't handle waking up 70 years in the future as well as you do. But have you ever though that it might be, be the better path for you? You know, like, like life in the 1940s may not have turned out to be the best thing for you so the world, put you in the time that, that you…." Jane struggled with her words for moment, "That you would reach you best potential as a person, that you would reach a happiness that, that you may not have reached had you been found earlier."
She looked up at Steve in time to see the anger and hurt warring in his face before he gained control of himself and suddenly realized how insensitive her words would have sounded. She opened her mouth to apologize but Steve spoke first.
"How can you say that?" he said and his voice held a mixture of pain and anger and pure confusion.
Jane opened her mouth, intending to apologize but instead the words, "You remind me of a star in a way too, you know," fell out instead.
Steve was notably more confused. Jane wasn't in much better shape but she continued to struggle to explain.
"When I was a bit younger someone told me that quite a few of the stars that we see in the sky aren't actually there."
"What?" asked Steve.
"It's true," Jane nodded. "A lot of stars that we see have in fact exploded and are dead or small dwarf stars. But because the light of the explosion hasn't traveled across space to reach us yet we can't see it. We just see the light that the star sent out before it exploded. When I heard that I felt kinda cheated because it meant that these things which I saw and loved and which gave me hope were dead and I was wishing on dead things for my dreams to come true. And every time afterward it used to make me feel sad when I thought about it because I wanted them to be alive and because I guess I felt it all to be sort of a lie and looking up at them felt like seeing the, the shades of something great but something that was n longer there."
"Is that how you think of me?" Steve asked unable to keep the hurt out of his voice.
"No, no!" said Jane, "I'm not finished. I used to think of them like that. I mean I went on with my work and everything but I think it always was at the back of my mind. But one day I heard a song and two of the lines changed my entire perspective of it."
"What were they?" asked Steve.
"You taught me the courage of stars before you left, how light carries on endlessly after death," Jane recited. "And you know, it never occurred to me to think of the stars as courageous because of that. But when I did sit down and thought about it, I realized that it was true. The stars, they, they don't know what they mean to us. They don't know how much they give us hope sometimes, or provide a guiding light, or give us a tether back to a place we may never reach again but, but they still reach out with that light. Even after they've gone they still send their rays out into the unknown, not knowing if they did any good but hoping that maybe one day it would do good. Even after they've gone they still reach out and change things. Even after death, their light reaches out still, even thought they've no home to return to, no home there at all even if they would have never returned to it. Their rays race though the dark and the cold, to reach us and light up our little world. And you remind me of that. What you did, the good you did, reached out far after you went in the ice, like the light from a star. People never forget you, they never forgot what you did. You brought hope, you gave strength. You are a star Stephen Rogers. And you're one that is still alive. You still shine brightly."
"I don't know if I want to be a star ma'am, said Steve, his voice choked. "I just want to go home. I'd rather be home than be a star," He admitted.
"I think almost everyone thinks like that," Jane admitted in turn, "But if we didn't walk out the door, we'd never see anything. If we didn't shine then all there would be is the dark. Those stars up there, they do a great service for us. They are braver than I am. But Steve, I'd like to be that brave too. I'd like to be brave enough to do something without knowing whether or not it'd help, without even knowing if there is anyone out there to help. That kind of courage, I don't have but I'd like to one day."
"I'm not that brave either ma'am," said Steve.
"Can I ask you a question?" asked Jane.
"Yes," said Steve, after a moment.
"If you knew, if you knew when you were on that plane that we were going to be on the other side. If you knew and you knew that we'd need your help, even if you didn't know what it was we needed you to help us with and who it was you were going to help, and you had a chance to escape the plane and still crash it safely, would you have escaped?"
Steve's jaw dropped at the questioned. No one had ever dared to ask him something like that. He hadn't even dared to think up such a scenario. But here was Jane looking at him earnestly and he could see in her eyes that she didn't mean to hurt him. So, so he closed his eyes and, shuddering, thought about it.
He thought of Peggy, of being able to make that date, of maybe marrying her, of being with his friends, of seeing Tony being born, of living out his life in a world that was home and taking the changes in the time that they came, slowly, over many years that made the transition easier to bear. And then he thought about doing all of that, knowing that there were people in the future who would need his help but not get it, he thought about the way he'd feel if one day he looked up at the sky and saw no stars, because none of them had been brave enough to dare the dark for a human that it didn't know, he thought about it all and realized with a sinking heart that he wouldn't have been able to do it. He wouldn't have been able to live with himself, turning his back on people who had needed him, knowing, knowing that they were there. If he left the plane, he would live the life he wanted but he would never be free of the shadow of that knowledge. He wouldn't be who he was. He wouldn't be Steve Rogers; he would be a shade of himself, pretending. Pretending to be alright, pretending to be the honorable guy they all believed him to be. But it would be a lie. Because he turned his back on people who needed him. It might not have been the most healthiest way of thinking, but it was Steve's way of thinking. And that's when he realized what Jane had been doing. She hadn't been pushing him towards healthy; she'd been pushing him towards truth. And the truth was, Steve would have chosen the ice and his subsequent rebirth into this strange new time. May the heavens help him he would have chosen it.
Steve opened his eyes to find Jane watching him worriedly and gasped out, "I would have chosen the ice!" and covered his mouth with shaking fingers, closed his eyes and cried.
"Oh Steve!" said Jane and he felt her arms surround him as she hugged him and rocked him gently back and forth.
Steve didn't know how long it was that he cried for but finally his shuddering sobs stopped and he sat up and wiped his eyes. He took a deep breath and blew out the heaviness that was on his chest. He leaned back and watched the stars for another long moment and realized that of all things he could be feeling, he felt better. He felt, he felt at peace. For the first time, in a long time, he felt at peace. The gnawing regrets that he had secretly felt for crashing the plane, for missing out on the life he had lost, and had hidden deep inside, were gone. In its place was deep seated peace and the realization that he, Stephen Grant Rogers was at home.
"I, I feel better," he told Jane."Thank you. Thank for that. I, I finally think that I might be able to deal with all of this properly now. I feel at home."
She gave a tentative little smile, "I'm glad. I'm sorry if I hurt you and you know pushed you before you were ready." But Steve shook his head.
"No, someone had to do it. Someone had to help me do it."
Jane smiled properly then. "Then I am glad to be of service Steve."
They lay back on the floor of the observatory and watched the stars in silence until the sun came up and then they went back downstairs.
Steve decided to leave right away instead of staying for breakfast so Jane accompanied him to his motorbike. Before he left though she took his hand in both of hers and said, "You truly have the courage of stars Steve. Don't forget that, when things become hard."
"I won't ma'am," said Steve, "Thank you for showing me that I had it." He smiled and then added, "I still don't think I'm that significant thought."
"Oh, we're all insignificant," said Jane simply, "But that's okay because we all matter."
Steve blinked at her. "I'm afraid you lost me ma'am."
"When I look up at all the stars there are in the sky I realize just how insignificant I really am," said Jane, "but at the am time I'm aright with that because I don't mind being insignificant because I have the privilege of being part of this big, wonderful universe, even if my part is just to look at it in wonder."
"I don't know if that answered me," said Steve laughing, "but that's okay because it was beautiful anyway." And grinned as Jane laughed self-consciously. "Thank you for a lovely time ma'am."
"Come again anytime you want," said Jane and Steve nodded and drove off down the road. He sighed and settled down in the seat of his bike as he gunned down the road towards feeling like for the first time he was living in the now, looking forward to the future and driving towards home.
R&R Please!