Chapter 1
May 2, 2012
Stark Tower
Stark Tower had some impressive features. A 24-hour cafe for staff and residents. A fully integrated, voice-controlled computer. Six entire floors devoted to inventing technology that Stevie couldn't even have imagined. But what she enjoyed most was the Olympic-sized swimming pool.
She hadn't been able to swim very much, before. First, because her asthma hadn't let her breathe the right way, and later, because she'd been too busy chasing the Red Skull across Europe. It was a challenge she enjoyed – finding out how fast she could go, how long she could hold her breath. As an added benefit, for just that hour every day, she wouldn't have to talk to anyone. She wouldn't have to put on the Captain America face and act happy and confident when she didn't feel it.
She didn't have to talk, but she did have time to think, to try make sense of the new world she'd woken up into.
An ecological research team had found her when the ice around her plane melted, bringing it to the surface. After that, SHIELD had taken her immediately to Stark Tower, on Tony's insistence, where she was packed into a tank of brine.
"Brine?" She'd asked Tony when he'd told her over that first breakfast, he in pajamas, she still in her hospital gown. "Like a pickle?"
"More like antifreeze," he'd replied, pulling a box out of the freezer that turned out to be full of waffles. He'd slotted them into a huge, chrome toaster like slices of bread.
"They had to keep you at a constant temperature, or your extremities would thaw before your heart, and that would have been...bad. It was a hyperbaric chamber, brine tank and heart-lung machine in one. I based it on the bacta tank from Star Wars."
The waffles had smelled like absolute heaven. Stevie had picked one up and started eating with her hands, too hungry to use a fork and knife.
"I have no idea what that is," she'd said through a syrupy mouthful.
"Oh my God, that's right! JARVIS, queue up A New Hope immediately!"
"Yes, sir," the calm, British voice had said from nowhere.
I will never get used to that, Stevie had thought.
After that first, clandestine breakfast with Tony the doctors had descended on her to test every organ, tissue and vital function they could get their instruments on. She'd been jabbed, put on a treadmill, stuffed into a clanging tube and covered in sticky electrode patches.
Tony had a whole set of rooms ready for her – easily four times the size of the apartment she'd shared with Ma Barnes, with rooms that poured into each other and a whole wall of floor-to ceiling windows that dimmed or brightened at a touch. It took her hours to figure out how to use the massive television, and then she found out JARVIS would operate it for her if she asked.
Tony was happy to show her new foods, new movies, new music that she'd missed – but it was like trying to read a book by the light of a fireworks display. Snatches of information coming at her randomly with no connection to each other. It was Pepper who remembered the basics.
Pepper was Tony's girlfriend, Stevie supposed, but much more than that. She ran Stark Enterprises, and, with the same efficient practicality, Stevie's reintroduction to the world. She had come down to that first breakfast as well, red hair tied back in a sleek ponytail, bringing a toothbrush and a full set of clothes, exactly Stevie's size.
Pepper had been the one to get Stevie an email address. She had explained the Internet. She had told Stevie how to operate Stark Tower's security systems, how New York had changed over the past 70 years, how to order food from the Tower chefs if she didn't want to cook, how to order clothes online if she didn't want to go out. How the War had ended. How the country had mourned her. How to find out what had happened to all the dead people she used to know.
The files on the Howling Commandos, printed on old-fashioned paper by a sympathetic intern, now sat on Stevie's nightstand. She picked them up and put them down without reading them. As she swam that morning, she thought about that stack of paper. About what she might find there.
When Stevie came out of the pool, Dr. Rao was waiting for her.
"Morning, Doctor," Stevie said, as she briskly toweled off, long blonde hair made dark by the water. "What's on the docket for today? Weight tests? Speed? Endurance?"
Dr. Kavita Rao had been the only member of the medical team who stayed after the initial tests. She was a dark-skinned, intense woman, the top her head barely reaching the shoulder of six-foot Stevie. She was, in her own words, a "transhumanist", and she absolutely refused to leave until she'd cracked the code of Erskine's serum.
"Actually…" The doctor hesitated. "There are some test results I need to speak to you about. Privately."
Was she...worried? That was a look Stevie had never seen on her before. She felt a prickle of unease.
This early in the morning, the locker room was abandoned. Stevie sat on a wooden bench, the damp slats digging into her bare thighs. Beside her, the doctor was clenching her hands in her lap, expression hidden by her chunky glasses and black hair. How bad could it be? Was she sick? She felt fine. Could the super soldier process be reversing itself?
You lived that life before, she reminded herself. You can do it again.
But before, she'd had Bucky. She'd woken up to find she had fans, – people who loved her without knowing her. Who wanted to dress like her and took pictures of her whenever she left the Tower. Without her shield, her strength - without Captain America - what would she be to them?
Nothing.
"Don't leave me in suspense, doc," Stevie said, trying to keep her tone light and confident. "You're starting to scare me."
Dr. Rao took Stevie's hand gently in both of hers.
"Stephanie," she said, voice softer than Stevie had ever heard it. "You're pregnant."
Stevie thought she should probably feel something at the news. Terror, maybe. Or elation. Maybe all her feelings were canceling each other out, because all she felt was a sort of hissing numbness, like her body was full of static.
"I..." she started. Then stopped.
It was only one time, she was about to say. But that was stupid. Even she knew that was all it took. Bucky. Oh, God.
Grief hit her like a slap, raw and fresh as the day Bucky fell from the train. It had been Christmas, 1944. The Germans had pulled out of La Gleize. She and Bucky had made love in a shed that smelled of hay and wood smoke, under bedrolls and coats to stay warm. He'd undone her braid and run his fingers through her hair. You're so beautiful, he'd said. You've always been so beautiful.
Dr. Rao's hands were small and cold in hers.
"I haven't even been sick," Stevie said, lamely. She'd barely noticed her period had stopped, and she'd dismissed it as grief, or overwork. She'd had other things on her mind at the time. Like preventing the end of the world.
"When we did your blood panel, your hormone levels looked unusual, but you're not exactly the average patient. We don't know what normal is for you," the doctor continued. "We had to be sure."
"The ultrasound?" Stevie felt slow and stupid.
"Yes. I'm sorry, I wasn't entirely honest with you. I didn't want to scare you if it turned out to be a false positive."
"And you're sure?"
"Absolutely."
Stevie stared ahead of her, as if the lockers were fascinating. They all had thumbprint locks. How expensive were they? Of course, Tony Stark had to have the most advanced locker technology, even when he could have bought combination locks like a normal person. Dr. Rao continued.
"You're about 12 weeks along – not counting the seventy years you spent in the ice, of course."
At that, Stevie finally felt something. Fear. She'd crashed a plane into the Arctic Ocean. A wall of water had hit her like a speeding train, an impact that would have killed a normal person. She'd been frozen for over half a century.
"Is the baby okay?"
"We don't know. Everything looks remarkably normal, considering. We'll need to wait and see."
Wait and see. Her stomach twisted. The doctor was still talking.
"I can't imagine what you're feeling right now," she said. "But I want you to know you have options that didn't exist in 1945. There's no shame in being a single mother, even if…"
Stevie suddenly couldn't bear to sit and listen any longer. She stood abruptly, dropping Dr. Rao's hand. The other woman spluttered to a stop.
"Thank you, doctor," she said. The other woman looked vaguely shocked. Stevie was never rude. "I'm sorry, but I'd like to be alone."
"Call me any time," Dr. Rao called after her as she strode out of the locker room. "Any time, alright?"
She strode through the halls to her suite in her bathing suit, barely registering the strange looks she got from the Stark Industries employees. As she passed a reflective bank of windows she slowed to look at her abdomen. Was it softer? Rounder than before? It looked the same.
Pregnant. Bucky's child.
If he'd lived, what would they have done? Moved to California, like they'd planned? He'd have a job, she'd stay home, play the housewife, forget about the war? Should she do that now? Tony had a room full of armored suits; he bragged about fighting terrorists in Afghanistan. Talked about an initiative – a team of heroes who could protect the world from threats no one had expected. Maybe I belong here after all, she'd thought. Maybe I can do some good.
Would she have to give that up?
In her apartment, Stevie threw on some sweats and headed down to the workshop. She needed to do something, fix something. She needed not to have to act like everything was alright.
The Stark Tower workshops were all the way in the basement, full of Tony's prototype suits and classic hot rods. When he'd found out she liked to work on motorcycles, Tony had given her one of her own. Unlike her father's old shop, Stevie's had a fully integrated sound system, and as she opened up the engine of her latest project, a woman crooned in a low, sad voice.
Go on and take it.
Take it all with you.
Don't look back at this crumbling fool.
Just take it all,
With my love.
She wasn't sure how long she worked before Fury came in. She'd been trying to loosen a stuck piston with a mallet – a very loud process. When she stopped for breath, he spoke.
"That's a nice machine." Fury's rich baritone cut through the music. "Is it a Harley?"
In his tailored, black suit, Nick Fury looked like the quintessential spy, at home in shadows. Years ago, he'd set out to track down and recruit the powerful and strange to protect the world from even stranger threats. Tall, dark-skinned, with a shaved head, an eye patch, and an unmistakable air of command, Fury inspired confidence – or fear, depending on where you were standing. He was the director of SHIELD, which made him Stevie's CO, she guessed.
"Indian 841," she responded.
"1943?"
"'42."
He whistled softly. "An old soldier."
"The engine's seized, but he'll run again. He just needs a little patience." She stood, put the mallet on her workbench. "You here with a mission, sir?"
"I am."
He handed her a file. She wiped the oil off her hands with a rag before she opened it. A picture was paperclipped to the front cover - a blue cube, suspended in a ring of cables. A chill spread out from her chest.
"The Tesseract?" she asked. Fury nodded.
"Howard Stark fished it out of the ocean while he was looking for you. He thought the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."
Stevie remembered the Red Skull holding the cube on the bridge of a crashing plane, a tear in the world, shadows moving behind the stars. His scream as he dissolved. She suppressed a shudder, made herself read the file's contents.
"Someone stole it."
"He's called Loki," Fury responded with a wry smile. "He's not from around here. There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already knew."
Loki...like the god of mischief? A criminal choosing that name must have a high opinion of himself.
"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me," she said.
"Ten bucks says you're wrong. There's a debriefing package for you upstairs."
Fury looked at her, one eyebrow cocked. She so desperately wanted something to do, something more important than motorcycle repair and medical tests. Something that would stop her from thinking. But...she'd gone into the Valkyrie before she knew about the baby. Now that she knew, could she justify the risk? She imagined what it would be like, sitting on the sidelines, while some lunatic ran amok with the key to ultimate power and Howard Stark's son tried to contain an unprecedented catastrophe without her help.
"I'm in," she said, handing the file back to him. "But you should have left that thing in the ocean."
Taking the mission was the right thing to do. There were good reasons to do it. Why did they feel like excuses?
Hi everyone! It's good to be back - of course it took me longer than I expected to get this up and running. "The best laid plans of mice and men" and all that. This is more of an "interquel" than a sequel. I was doing some preliminary writing, trying to figure out how Stevie got from Point A - waking up in 2012 - to Point B - the Winter Soldier storyline. Along the way, some important things changed, and I thought it'd be best to actually make this a real fic instead of a bunch of scribbles.
The biggest change, of course, is Stevie's pregnancy. Why did I do that? A couple reasons. I thought of how Stevie's gender could change the story in the most extreme way. What can a female Stevie experience that our old friend Steve cannot (outside the world of MPreg, at least)? Pregnancy and parenthood up the stakes of future stories in ways I'm still working out - can you imagine Stevie navigating the cloak-and-dagger plot of Winter Soldier with a toddler to take care of? It also ties the character more firmly to the modern world, and to other characters. Tony Stark isn't just her friend anymore - he's part of her child's life. How will this effect the conflict between the two in Civil War? (If you have any ideas, let me know! I'm already wresting with that.)
In part, this choice was also based on my personal experiences as a working parent - now expecting my second child, actually. It's hard to balance professional life with parenthood, no matter who you are. If you're a single parent, and a superhero, it's a bit harder! Despite the number of humans who are parents - quite a lot of us, it turns out - there aren't many superhero characters who are also parents. It's time to represent! That's my selfish reason for giving Stevie a kid, anyway.
But I know why you're still reading - the random notes!
*Stevie was in the ice before the invention of the first toaster waffle, which took place in 1953.
*Info on the thawing process used on Stevie comes from an article entitled "Wait, THAT's how they thawed Captain America Out?" by Kit Simpson Browne on Movie Pilot.
*I also did some research on the mammalian diving reflex, the history of resuscitation, and brinicles (areas of ocean water that freeze incredibly quickly) which didn't make it into the chapter explicitly, but is still super interesting. For a good book on resuscitation, read "Shocked: Adventures in Bringing Back the Recently Dead" by David Cassarett.