The absolute beginning of my MCU/DCTV universe-integration challenge. Enjoy!

The newspaper was so large, it obscured his entire torso. If anyone peered at him from the train car's length away, they'd have a hard time laughing at the ridiculous image it posed. Steve sniffed and ignored the self-conscious thoughts society always rubbed into his brain, thanks to his stature. After a while, he learned how to tune it out. He focused on the fine print before him, a date spelling out at the top. 1943. War in Europe still raging. Steve's heart hung at the hopeless reminder that, try again he might, he probably would never be accepted until the war finished.

"What'chya readin'?" a female voice from his right chirped. Steve jumped, and can you blame him? A pint-sized male with a bad haircut and no muscles to his name; it didn't exactly scream "stud" or anything.

Steve surveyed his new neighbour warily, blue eyes scooping up and down. A uniform, so she apparently served or was serving or served but was currently on a break so she'd serve again. Blond hair reached her shoulders. Blue eyes which managed to both hide depth and sparkle warmly, if not mischievously.

"Paper," he responded with an upwards jerk of his chin, pointing at the reading between his two hands. "Where'd you serve, ma'am?"

"Oh, me?" she said, a bit taken aback. "Uhm, nowhere yet. I was just recruited. 'Shame we can't do more right now."

Steve blinked up at the woman's stature. She was expertly composed that he nearly dismissed the nervous shake he detected in her tone. Not all of her words, just the 'oh' and the 'uhm'. So, she was nervous about shipping out. He could understand that, at least (but he would more if he could actually be accepted).

"Nothing to worry about, ma'am, I'm sure you'll serve our country well," he said with another nod, this time towards her and this time to be polite. She smiled. The train rattled on, jostling Steve. His shoulders wavered and newspaper quivered in the motion.

"Do you?" she suddenly perked up. Steve's eyes flicked, once again, to the impressive blond.

"Pardon? Do what?"

"Want to serve? You seem to support the right stuff." She slide from the metal bar, serving as an arm rest of sorts, to the seat beside the scrawny boy. Her arm trailed along the back of the subway seats.

"I do. Ma'am. Very much. I think it's what any young man is supposed to do," he replied. After a beat of realisation and a pair of widened eyes, he added, "and women, of course, should they want to."

The woman nearly raised her brows.

"I mean– not to say they don't want to–."

Steve tried to dig himself out of the hole he tripped over himself and into, but he fell short when he noticed the woman's eyebrows weren't raised because she was appalled. Her twisting mouth, twisting to form the shape of a smirk of amusement, conveyed a different message.

Steve shifted in the silence that had befallen then. Her smile and his slack-jaw look were all there was. Then,

"What's your name?"

"Steve. Steve Rogers, ma'am."

"And, uh, what's the date, Steve?"

"Oh, uh–." Steve scrambled to look at the first page. His hands tore through each page, trying to get back to the cover despite being totally flustered and his mind not thinking straight. He flopped the paper over, at long last, and smoothed it out on his lap. "It's today's. Um, April twenty-sixth. 1943?" he added after her stare signified that she wasn't quite satisfied.

The woman nodded. Her blue eyes caught sight of the date between his lingering fingers.

"Well, Steve," she began, rising from her seat as the train slid to a stop into the next station. Her hand wrapped around the pole to help her lift herself up, but her gaze steadily remained focuses on the only current small-bodied passenger, "this might be an interesting year for you, yet."

She whisked her way outside just as the doors were beginning to slide their way shut. Steve blurted out a, "Hey! What's your name?" but his voice bounced off the creme colour and turned the heads of the other commuters in the car with him. Just as before, the little guy steeled himself against caring and lifted the newspaper to obscure his face.

That mischievous smirk of hers haunted Steve for the rest of the trip home.