Disclaimer (do we still have to do these?): All characters and most everything in this universe belongs to Marvel. Original characters belong to me.
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A month later, he was back in her office. A week before, a barrage of lab assistants had poked and prodded him, taking vial after vial of his blood for an assortment of tests. Now, thankfully clad in his regular clothes, he awaited the results.
A gentle knock on the door precipitated Dr. Spring's entry.
"Good morning, Captain," she smiled politely, "How are we feeling today?"
He nodded, as usual, "Just fine, Doc."
She told him that the tests were fine, that everything had been as expected for someone with his special abilities, who had been through what he had been through.
"'What I've been through'?" he asked. Something in him bristled at the phrase. It was the kind of thing that people said to him after his mother died and he was left alone.
The doctor nodded, "Your body's been through a lot. Can't be easy."
He shrugged. A lump grew at the back of his throat. He struggled to keep his face neutral, frustrated at his inability to control himself under this woman's unflinching gaze, which seemed to see right through him.
She looked him up and down, her arms settled across her chest. "Have you ever been to the natural history museum?"
He shrugged, "Yeah. Not for years, though." He cringed inwardly as soon as he said it, but she just gave him a small smile.
"No kidding. Let's go."
"What?"
"Right now. Come on, grab your jacket." She shrugged off her lab coat and grabbed a jacket off a hook on the wall.
On the walk to the museum, she asked him what he remembered about the city. He talked about his studies at the Auburndale Art School in Brooklyn, and how he used to wander through the boroughs of Manhattan watching the architecture change from building to building, neighborhood to neighborhood. He pointed out the neo-Gothic spires of the Woolworth building, the Renaissance-style gables of the Dakota, told her about how his mother would bring him into the city to watch the construction of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. He went on and on about the new buildings, too: the audacious curves of the Guggenheim Museum and the unreal 8 Spruce Street skyscraper.
As they meandered across Central Park, she bought them Styrofoam cups of coffee from a cart. He tried to pay, out of gentlemanly habit, but she made a crack about doctors' salaries being more than superheroes' and pulled out her wallet.
He told her about standing in bread lines while his mother took in laundry from their neighbors. When she asked, he told her that his mother died. But he didn't tell her about the months he had watched her cough her lungs out. He didn't tell her about holding her hand as she died, or feeling her fingers grow cold between his.
When she asked, he told her about the odd jobs he had taken once he was left alone. He told her about the tiny apartment in Brooklyn he had shared with Bucky. About Coney Island and the awful dates Bucky would set him up on.
She listened to him. Whenever he paused, she asked him to tell her more, tell her everything. The memory of Peggy's jibes about his inability to talk to women floated forward in his mind. She had been right then, but now it seemed it was all he could do to stop talking.
They wandered through the museum quietly, but never left each other's side. In the soft glow of the dioramas, Steve caught a glance of her, the scene before them reflecting off her glasses. He was overcome with an unsettled feeling, like seeing a teacher out of school.
"You know," he began, "I don't even know your name."
She turned to him, smiling politely. "It's Anne. But don't let anyone hear you call me that."
He laughed and nodded.
It was late afternoon when they left. On the walk back, feeling guilty for his monopolization of their earlier conversation, he asked her where she had come from.
She told him that she'd grown up in California. That her parents were old hippies living in a house crowded with knickknacks near San Francisco. She explained what "hippies" were, and why her father was still a good man even though he had burned his draft card. She told him about studying at Berkeley, and how her friends had accused her of selling her soul when she took a job with S.H.I.E.L.D.
Back at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, they parted quietly. Steve felt a strange sense of regret as he left her.
As a chilly autumn turned into a chillier winter, Steve steadily found himself looking forward to his appointments with Dr. Spring. After checking his pulse and blood pressure, she would let him dress and they would sit in her tiny, cluttered office with mismatched mugs of instant coffee. It was there that he discovered that he still had a deep well of war stories: funny ones that made her laugh, and sad ones that made her squeeze his hand as they said goodbye.
She gave him homework: modern albums and history books, trying to help him catch him up on all that he had missed. Over time, he found himself understanding more of Tony Stark's jokes, and deemed the effort a success.
In return, she asked him to take her on tours of all the art museums in New York, telling her about each painting, what it meant, pointing out his favorites. It inspired him to turn the second bedroom in his S.H.I.E.L.D.-purchased apartment in Brooklyn into a studio.
In October, a dispute between Natasha Romanoff and her assigned physician forced Fury to reassign Anne to her care. Steve's medical care would transfer to the direction of a Dr. Abernathy.
Steve frowned when Anne told him. But she just shrugged. "I think it's better this way," she said, "Being friends with your doctor, at least at S.H.I.E.L.D. is kind of frowned-upon."
It made him smile to hear her say it. The idea that there was someone in this strange, new world who thought of him as a friend, and who he could think of as a friend, made his heart swell.
Gradually, they saw more and more of each other outside of the headquarters building. Anne found a theater in the city that played old movies. She showed him how to operate the electronics S.H.I.E.L.D. had furnished his apartment with. He despised modern television, but the night she brought over microwave popcorn and I Love Lucy on DVD, they had laughed together for hours.
On another night, she brought over Chinese takeout, a bottle of wine, and a bag full of movies. Curled on his sofa, she listened with rapt attention as he explained that alcohol had no effect on him.
"Does it bother you?" she asked then, "Being different?"
He licked his lips, thinking for a moment. "Yeah. I suppose so. Not much I can do about it, though."
"Do you ever wish you hadn't taken the serum?"
"No. Never. You didn't know me before all this," he gestured vaguely at his modified body, "but I didn't exactly have a lot going for me."
Anne frowned. "I don't believe that. They wouldn't have picked you if that was true."
As soon as she said it, he knew that it was exactly the kind of thing Peggy would have said.
He smiled, shrugged it off and asked her to start the movie (remote controls still weren't his strong suit). But it was the first time Steve wondered what it would be like to touch her, to be closer to her: this woman who could see the sadness in him when no one else could.