A/N: For Katie, who asked for a Captain America One-Shot. I couldn't really think of anything else that didn't involve Steve on a giant eagle, so...

I can't write. I'm sorry.

I will be adding more of these that aren't so, you know, sad-ish. Maybe. Requests are helpful.


A little slow Thursday

The bar crowd was thinning early, even for a Thursday night—only three more guys left hanging around. It was after ten, dark, but decent weather, considering the past week had been typical New York drear.

She would be the first to admit that night shifts were the best. Lots of tips, lots of drunks, and a nice comfy baseball bat underneath the counter just in case they were a little too drunk. But most of the time the night shifts played out the same.

She could tell where every single one of the bar's occupants were headed—the older man on the end would stumble home and wake up with a hangover, while the man a few seats down would wake up with a prostitute and a hangover. They were both usuals. But there was the one on the opposite end. Younger guy, looked like he was in a very personal relationship with weight lifting. He sat with three empty glasses of beer in front of him, looking for the world completely sober and ridiculously depressed.

Those were the ones she liked to talk to.

Those ones told you about their life.

"Can I get you anything a little stronger?"

She was already moving towards him with whisky in hand when he looked up. She paused, startled. His eyes—old, knowing, devastated eyes— looked out of place on a young man. They were eyes of the sixty-year-old on the opposite side of the room. Eyes of a soldier that had seen years of war. He threw her a world-weary smile to acknowledge that she'd spoken to him.

"I'm not sure it'll make that much of a difference, ma'am." He spoke with a drawl to his words, a true New York accent if there ever was one. She grinned and slid a glass towards him anyway.

"On the house, then. You look like you could use a break."

She leaned towards him, elbows on the counter, and watched the smile that quirked the side of his mouth. A small, secret, smile that said you have no idea and thank you for understanding at the same time.

"My best friend died a year ago today."

She fought down her smile—that would really be a conversation killer—and donned her best concerned-barista face. She nodded for him to keep talking.

"Great friend. He died saving me. Saving a lot of people, actually." He downed the whisky. She refilled the glass and marveled that this man didn't even seem the slightest bit buzzed.

"I'm sorry," she said. And she was sorry for him, a little. He seemed to appreciate the sympathy.

And the longer she looked at him the more familiar he seemed to get, which was extremely strange. She would remember a face like that.

"We'd gone through a lot together, me and him. I'd saved him from Naz—uh, that is, I'd rescued him, only for him to die on me."

"Bastard," she muttered, shooting him a small, sad, smile to know she was joking.

"Yeah," he huffed. "He was a bastard. But I guess everybody died on me, in the end."

She dropped the smile from her face and glanced back to the empty glasses of alcohol. There was something seriously wrong with this man's life if he thought that he was completely alone. She knew she had to know him from somewhere—maybe if she could just figure it out this would all make sense—

"I'd promised her one dance. One, unimportant, lousy, dance. And I ended up frozen in ice for fifty years. I barely got to say goodbye."

He rolled the glass of half-finished whisky around in his hand, his eyes blank. Eyes of a man that had lost so, so much.

Or where those eyes of a drunk man?

Okay, maybe she'd misread him. This man was wasted out of his mind. Completely and utterly. She had to admit that he had had a perfectly sober attitude until he'd started talking.

"I'm sorry, buddy. Enjoy your evening."

And she straightened from the counter, adjusted her apron, and walked away. The stories were no good when they were as farfetched as being frozen in ice.

She'd only looked back towards the man once as the night progressed. Instead of seeing the impossibly heart-broken face, there'd only been four empty glasses and a stack of bills on the counter.

He'd even paid for the whisky.

Weeks later she was whipping down the counters during a sluggishly boring Tuesday afternoon. There was only one man in the bar—a harassed looking guy, probably in his late forties (seemed kind of hawkish around the eyes, if she was honest with herself). It was then that she placed the face of the blue-eyed ice man.

She'd spoken to and brushed off Captain-freaking-America.