Woah, looks like this ideas catching on after all. Hmm...Still no promises, since I have no clue where this could go. I'm just running through the timeline, really. ^^

I tried out an accent in the first part but it didn't quite catch. Steve talks a little less perfectly when she's relaxed I guess? But it didn't really continue but I still left it there anyway because it kind of fit the mood. :P


She starts sometimes as a dancing monkey going on tour around the country. Answering to Captain America and wearing clothes that cling to her thighs—to everything, really. She has to wear a cup down there because she's big all over now, and sometimes it makes her wish she were a girl.

Not as often, since being a man is a lot easier here. And she can fight as a man. Besides, if she were on tour as a girl, she'd be gussied up like the chorus gals and she's not sure she'd be able to stand it. They already put loads of that pancake stuff on her face when she goes on, but it's nothing compared to the amount the gals put on. And the clothes are, are tiny and sparkly and nothing a proper lady should wear.

Then again, the gals aren't exactly proper ladies. Well, not in the same sense as what people usually mean. If they'd been born just a little later in the time she'd been a she, they'd not only fit right in, they'd be a lot better than most. But they weren't, so they've got to deal with the men who grab them and whistle or call them tarts and harlots. She tries to watch out for them, sorta like a brother would even though she's 'younger' than them, because she remembers the days before Buck and knows what it's like. But she can't watch all of them at once, so sometimes there's a scuffle.

They're all actually real nice and sweet gals. If you ignored their language.

Most of 'em are orphans or as good as, 'cause there ain't hardly gonna be a ma or pa who'd let their little girl go on stage dressed like that. Or go on stage at all, since it isn't a respectable sorta job. They're all real pretty, but then again, it's a requirement to go on stage. None of them've got a boy in the army or back home. Say it's not realistic and such.

And yeah, they've offered a tumble a couple times.

It isn't that she's a prude or that she's a she or anything, but it's not how her ma raised her. You don't tumble into bed with a gal you're not gonna marry because that's disrespectful. It doesn't matter whether she offered or you asked, but you don't treat women like something you can use and discard. She's been a woman and thought sex was nothing, that her body was hers to do as she pleased.

But ma's right.

Sex isn't…It's not something you do with just anyone. You can't be that close with someone and then get up the next day with a 'thank you, goodbye' and walk out the door. When you have sex with someone, you leave a piece of yourself with them. If you keep whoring around, you'll end up dead inside 'cause even though you've cheapened it, you still leave a piece behind.

Ma said it better. She isn't as clever with words as she used to be, probably because they were exchanged for drawing fingers. But she understands what she meant. She ain't ever gonna do that with someone she don't love. It ain't about marriage or being proper, it's about feelings.

But it's not like she'll begrudge the gals their choice. They're all hardened and jaded by life, and a stage gal's life ain't the easiest. They've only got the time until they become too old or an accident happens that leaves a visible scar, and then they'll have to find another way to put food on the table. In a way, she's lucky she doesn't have to do that, though if she'd stayed as just a dancing monkey, she may have gone the same way.

Thing is, she never lets that happen.

Senator Brandt always offers her the dancing monkey job. She'd tried not taking the offer a few times and went through other means to join the fight.

She once entered the regular army the old way, but it never really lead anywhere and something kept telling her it was wrong. She went in as Private Rogers and made sergeant, but she entered a little late and she never found Bucky. When the news arrives that the 107th battalion went up against Schmidt and came out of it in tatters, she's still digging trenches and crawling across No Man's Land in her own battle. And the war never really ends and they keep losing until one day she and what's left of her unit are running through a forest and running out of rations and running out of ammo and they get sniped off one by one.

She tried taking the other offers from the other people involved in Project Rebirth. Those don't go so well.

Out of all the offers she got, Senator Brandt's was probably the most…clean. She's not sure why a smart man like him would want to put what's supposed to be a supersoldier on stage to do fancy acts when all he needed was a handsome face and maybe a few stage wires to hold up the motorcycle, but she'd never really asked. He was a senator after all. But being a dancing monkey was a lot better than being anyone's pet assassin or soldier or whatever else they wanted her to be.

She'd slapped herself over her naïveté when she figured not everyone she killed belonged to the other side. They'd just gotten in the way of whoever's offer she'd taken and made targets of themselves. She wasn't the most cunning person, and she'd never played the political game in her old life, but she learned fast and with the serum, she learned fast. She's never gonna let anyone use her like that again—waste Dr. Erskine's hard work and make a lie out of her vow to protect America.

So she took the dancing monkey offer, but kept in mind that this wasn't what she was gonna keep doing.

And then she overhears the news about Bucky, a few weeks earlier than when she was in regular camp, and she knows that this is it.

Convincing Peggy and Stark wasn't that easy. Peggy wasn't really impressed. She'd been the one to tell her that there were bigger things waiting for her, but she'd also been the one to see most of the stupidity she'd enacted and frankly, she wouldn't trust her either. Stark more so. He'd always been the one wondering why Erskine picked her and when she accepted the senator's offer, he'd been pretty disgusted. Said stuff about being brainless and a waste. Not that she didn't disagree.

But she wasn't gonna be the one to tell him what the other alternatives had been, and she'd never cared about what other people thought anyway.

In the end, all that mattered was that she was on her way to HYDRA and Bucky.

xXXx

Bucky always falls.

No matter what she does, Bucky always falls.

Off the mountain, off the railing, over a tree root and into the line of fire. Out the window of a building onto the burning roadside. Protecting her, protecting Dum Dum, protecting any one of the Howling Commandos. Protecting little children, women, and wounded civilians. He'd always been her hero, but she knows now that he's not just hers.

And that she can't be his at all.

She can't stop him from falling.

She's Captain America and big and strong and fast and superhuman.

But she can't keep him from falling.

She tried to but he never listens to her. She tried to but she never catches him. She tried to but they're outnumbered, outgunned, and she never sees it coming.

Even when she does in that split second of a moment just before, he falls anyway.

They're seven of them including her and barely enough and she only gets them six—just the Howling Commandos and her—and she can't do enough with seven to save him. She can barely do enough to keep all of them alive. She plans and plans and makes stuff up on the fly and tries to absorb most of the damage, but it isn't enough.

She tries and she tries but it isn't enough even she goes back again and again and again and again. Even though it's harder to die with her enhanced body and enhanced healing so she has to shoot herself in the head thrice and sometimes four times.

She's tried not being Captain America, tries not to let the stage name from before follow her. Maybe not having a conspicuous name would help. Maybe not donning the fancy target of a uniform would help.

But Captain America she must be or nothing.

Captain America is better than nothing, and so she is Captain America. It's always Captain America. Not Private Rogers. Not some other fancy name.

Captain because she's just smart enough to take command of them seven but not more. America because that's what she swore to protect, what she swears by, and nobody can tell her differently.

It's not all bad. The times before Bucky falls are almost happy. She spends more time with the SSR and Howard and Peggy. She gets a shield and then a new one that can bounce like a Frisbee and decides to put away the gun.

Peggy doesn't always shoot her, but she does often enough. She gets surprise-kissed by enough women that she's sort of resigned. And Howard's still a bastard enough to make fun.

She knows Peggy likes her that way, and it sounds so childish saying it like that but she doesn't know the line between adult and child anymore, not with the way she see-saws between them so often. She'd be tempted to say she's always adult now, but that's not true, there's a difference—she just can't tell anymore. But she's not sure how to respond because she feels something for her, but it's confusing because she's a she and she's always liked guys but now, apparently, Peggy too. Howard—the bastard—doesn't help because he just flirts with everyone and keeps nudging her and laughing.

Fucking fondue.

But she's always there when Bucky falls.

She never knows how to go on when Bucky falls. But then one time immediately after, when she's drinking and drinking in hopes she'd catch a break, Morita comes up behind her and thumps her on the back and goes, "Orders, Captain?" because he knows drink does nothing for her and she looks around and sees that she still has five others.

Bucky was the first and Bucky was the one who kept her sane through those first years.

But now she's in her second years so she guesses she can't have Bucky anymore.

She goes back one last time and watches him fall off the mountain just barely out of reach and then she curls back her outstretched hand and punches the guy who did it off. Then, she throws her shield at half a dozen of them hard enough to break bones.

Broken bones can kill. She doesn't care enough right now.

Then she goes back to camp and tells everyone.

And everyone comes over to give her a thump on the back in lieu of a beer and all five of them go, "Orders, Captain?" and she goes, "Let's finish those sorry sons of bitches."

Howard helps. Because Howard's a magnificent bastard, but he's also a friend. Somewhat. She doesn't know what's with all the hitting on her (and she knows he's hitting on her, she just plays the oblivious card, they could go to jail after all) but he's loyal. So he helps and they bang and clang their way to the base where she drives the first of many fists into Schmidt's red face.

The Red Skull is a slippery bastard though, and she still has men under her charge, so he gets away again and again. Sometimes it's her who gets away, but if she could just get that one chance…

But Schmidt's getting away again and she's alone this time. Wasn't going to let that happen the bastard is the reason so many are dead and like hell if she's going to let him get away.

She kisses Peggy, salutes Colonel Philips, and runs with her heart pounding. It always pounds when she's going to die, it never stopped doing that.

She grabs for the blue thing in Schmidt's hands and he…breaks down, and the last of what she sees is exactly that colour.

She'll go back this time—she goes back even after she turns twenty-two—but at least Bucky'd be there to meet her again. She'll go back, kiss her mama, maybe even kiss Bucky, and make damned sure to survive killing Schmidt the next time.

xXXx

When the blue fades and she awakens, she knows she didn't die. It's a mess of disappointment and relief, but it's the same thing she's been going through for so long that she sweeps it aside easily.

She opens her eyes and the radio blares on about a baseball game that…you've got to be kidding her.

She parts her lips slightly and tastes the air and what do you know? She's not back home. It's not anywhere she's been either—not the mountains or the forests or camp or HYDRA—so she must've been captured by some idiot who managed to fish her up from the sea and thinks he's got himself a supersoldier.

Well he's got a supersoldier alright.

She blinks and sits up and scratches her head like she's dazed, but not really because it's easy enough to escape when they don't know to shackle her down with the strongest chains or drug her to the gills. It'll be easy enough to knock out or kill the guards with the little bare-hand Dum Dum taught her. One dozen, two dozen, it's all the same to her now. Only the Red Skull had been any different.

She wonders whether Peggy's looking for her. The only girl she kissed, and probably the only girl she could fall in love with.

The woman who enters is dressed like a nurse but the stitches in her uniform are strange. The fabric of the thing is right but not really—she knows because she's been in enough hospital camps to know. She used to give out the Purple Hearts, after all.

She tells her she's in Recovery, but that's obviously a lie. The words roll of her tongue too smoothly and she's too tensed to be a nurse. It's a little thing, being as ma was a nurse and she's visited hospitals before, but it's enough.

So she sighs and tells her to stop the charade. She's Captain America, but even as Steve Rogers she isn't stupid. She tells her to please stop and come clean ma'am or she'll have to hurt her because Captain America is a gentleman, but she has no qualms hitting enemies.

And of course, Miss Fake Nurse calls the guards—barely a dozen, really?—and it's time to get down to business. She chops at necks before they can aim their guns and the armour stings her hand a little more than usual but they go down all the same.

She debates picking up a gun just in case, but the thing looks strange and she already decided not to use guns unless she has no choice and right now, the moron who has her captive doesn't look like he merits one.

So she turns and jogs away instead.

xXXx

She's back in her time. In her time—the one before she was Steve. The memories of it are mixed now, but no question—she's in her past. Which is, apparently, the future.

The Howling Commandos are all dead. So she's lost not just Bucky, but all of them.

Seventy years. She's been frozen—they said she'd been frozen—for seventy years. It's ridiculous but that's what it is and she knows better than to say it's impossible. Dr. Erskine used to do the impossible every day. Howard could do it every other day, sometimes more when he wasn't busy flirting. (Flying cars. They still don't have it right now.)

(Seventy years. She's been picked up and dropped back by fate again. Seventy years. Everyone she knows is dead.)

The man who 'owns' her now (and she's not oblivious to the fact that she's someone's pet again) is Director Fury of SHIELD. The long version of the name is awkward, like someone really wanted to use the acronym, but she's not one to make fun when she's useless in naming things herself. She's also not completely ruling out the fact that Peggy started it and that might be one of her funny jokes again.

Peggy's dead now. Too.

Peggy started SHIELD, but obviously it has its own agenda now. There are a few who may be on her side, like Agent Coulson, but again, the people around her want her for something.

She remembers the fighting of the war as Sergeant Rogers and how it never ended. She's actually really tired of fighting now. Bucky's gone and the Commandos are gone and Peggy's gone and even Howard is gone. She swore to protect America but really, she knew she wanted to protect Buck first. And then the other guys and then Peggy but now…

Now they want her to protect an America who dropped bombs on Japan and fights proxy wars in other countries and entered a Cold War with the USSR—Russia, now—and elected a president for two terms who said 'Either you're with us, or you're against us'.

That's…

She wants to stop. Wants to rest and truthfully, wants to die for real. Doesn't want to keep coming back and returning to whatever this is that fate is keeping her here for. She's just a soldier, but Director Fury talks about saving worlds and Agent Coulson keeps calling her superhero. She's not even a hero. Not like Bucky.

Then they tell her about Anthony Stark, Howard's son. Like a grown man with his own life who she doesn't even know matters, just because she knew his father. Like it means something.

She knew Howard and he was a friend, yes, but she doesn't know Anthony Stark.

But they tell her that they spent a lot of resources fishing her up from the sea and the ice and, yeah, that isn't even subtle. She's so frustrated and tired and pissed off, that she goes into the gym and breaks all their punching bags before she accidentally kills someone.


So...thoughts? I'm kind of betting I made a lot of mistakes to canon because I haven't watched or read anything except some wiki pages. Either way, I hoped you guys enjoyed that. :)

Memory25