Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty

Chapter one:

A boy named Steve

The soldier began the day as he did every day, by hopping out of bed before the alarm clock even went off. It was four in the morning and he had only gone to sleep at midnight, but his body had told him that he had slept enough. His bedroom was sparse and Spartan, almost military in its utility. A simple bed with a thin mattress and a footlocker that held most of his personal belongings, such as they were. A wall locker where he secured his uniform and shield, as well as other equipment and tools of the trade. Some people called his uniform a "costume" but he had never preferred the term. He had worn many uniforms over the years, but the latest one had been manufactured by Stark Enterprises out of a combination of micro mail mesh and unstable molecules. It was, for the most part, bulletproof, fire proof, and insulated from electrical charges. It was warm in the wintertime and cool in the summertime, a marvel made possible by the genius of Reed Richards and Tony Stark. He was told once that it cost more than a Lexus to manufacture, and Tony had given him three of them. He had refused them at first until Tony began listing the times that he had saved his life, saved the nation, and saved the world. It made him feel guilty, and he wished that every American soldier was able to have one like it. It was 2004, and even 55 years after his war had ended he was still just a soldier. The only decoration on his wall was a wooden case holding a tri-folded American Flag.

The old soldier looked in the mirror as he brushed his teeth. He still didn't look a day over 35, and there were days that he wished that he felt like it. His body was a network of scars, from the war and the battles since. He had suffered injuries that would have crippled a normal man, but more often than not fought through them. Piledriver had broken his jaw during a battle with the Wrecking Crew, and he had proceeded to kick his ass in silence. He had both of his legs broken on Mount Olympus, so he had fought with his arms. Mr. Hyde had crushed his shoulder into powder, so he had driven the other one into his gut and knocked the wind out of him. The time he would never forget out of all the times he had faced the Hulk was when he had tried to choke the beast into unconsciousness. He had strangled Banner so hard that the choke hold broke his wrist, but he had kept squeezing. Even when the sarcastic reply came from the half-closed windpipe "Why, Captain, I didn't know you cared." The truth was he did care, and that is why he fought so hard. So much harder than anyone else ever would. He had no special healing power or bullet proof skin to protect him, only his courage. Through the pain the serum kept him going.

He emerged from the small bathroom showered and clean shaven. Avenger's Mansion was still quiet this time of the morning. Heroes that had often fought long into the night on their various adventures slept the sleep of the just. They all had their own adventures, he knew, up until the moment that they heard the words "Avengers Assemble!" and came together. They were the A-team. The varsity of Superheroes. He didn't have any of their powers, but for some reason they had accepted him for all of these years. What's more, they had given him a special place at their table. They all looked to him. He would never forget the time when Quasar had told him that he didn't feel worthy of being called one of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. He had given the young hero a pep talk, but he had really wanted to shake some sense into him You can fly to other galaxies, have been given the title "Protector of the Universe" and have the cosmic power to go toe to toe with the Silver Surfer or Thanos... AND YOU ARE TELLING ME YOU AREN'T WORTHY! He wondered how his Drill Instructors would have handled Wendell. Events like that were what kept him training like he was this morning. 10 mile run in less than 50 minutes. 20 sets of ten of each weight exercise in the Gym, many of which were at a weight that would be an Olympic weightlifter's max press. A grueling hour long Gymnastics session. By 0700, when Jarvis brought his lunch, he had done enough physical activity to kill or cripple a normal man. It never seemed to be enough.

"Is there anything else I can do for you, Sir?" Jarvis asked with his typical crispness.

"No, thank you, Jarvis." The soldier said, looking him right in the eye. He always did this, even though many of the Avengers would not meet the man's gaze while they were talking to him. Many of them were used to having servants. Jan, Hank, Tony, and many others had grown up wealthy. Thor, Hercules, and Namor were royalty even! Steve was not, even if the Avengers treated him like he was. He missed those days when he and Hawkeye would sneak into the kitchen to play Poker with Jarvis while the rest of the Avengers were hobnobbing in the Parlor. Jarvis, stripped of his Butler manner, was quite the British card shark. Hawkeye always cheated. That left him taking the most losses and being the butt of the most jokes.

"Steve?" He heard a quiet voice coming from the table where he was eating his breakfast. He looked down and saw Ant Man standing by his Orange Juice.

"Scott? What is it?"

"Shhhhh. I'm small with my speaker turned down so that nobody can hear us. I need to talk to you."

"Jump up on my shoulder." Steve said and continued eating.

Scott Lang leapt up onto Captain America's shoulder and looked right and left before he continued.

"How did you do it? Why did you do it?" He asked.

"What?"

"Go public. Let everybody know your secret identity?"

"I had to let all these terrorists know that I am just an American Soldier, not a personification of America."

"But you are... in more ways than you think!"

"I'm just a soldier."

"What about your friends? What about your family?"

"The Avengers are my only friends and family, and we can take care of ourselves. We take care of our own."

"I could never do what you did, Steve. When that manic tried to kill my Daughter... the thought of always having that over my head..."

"Do you want to know the truth, Scott?"

"What is that?"

"There is no Steve Rogers anymore. There is only Captain America. Steve Rogers and everyone he cared about died a long time ago, I just took a long time to figure that out."

Scott looked up into a pair of sad blue eyes that, from his perspective, seemed larger than life. The sadness in them seemed like it as well. Ever since the World Trade Center he had been like this. Would he ever be the same? He had come back to them, but would he stay with them? These are the things that he wanted to ask him the most, and the things that he couldn't ask.

"Sir?" Jarvis cleared his throat from the entrance.

"Yes Jarvis?" He replied, feeling Ant-man jump down from his shoulder.

"There is a Bernadette Rosenthal here to see you."

"Bernie." Steve said almost under his breath.

"Should I send the young lady in, sir?"

"Let her in, Jarvis."

What could Bernie possibly want? He had enough problems with Sharon and the thoughts of the Atlantean girl he had... been with. Women were the last thing on his mind right now. He hadn't even thought about Rachael in months. Bernie had been buried even deeper. He hoped that she was not in trouble. It had been well known at one time that Steve Rogers was her fiancé. If someone had shot their mouth off about that to the wrong person... maybe Scott was right about the decision that he had made. Maybe it was selfish and thoughtless. Bernie Rosenthal had been everything in his life once. Now, he had nearly forgotten all about her. Forgotten what revealing his secret might do to her.

"Steve!" She said without animosity as she crossed the room to him.

Jarvis had swept away the remains of his breakfast. Steve stood as she approached, suddenly aware of the state of his dress. Workout trunks and a muscle shirt might look good in bodybuilding mags but he was sure they were not proper wear to greet a guest in. He had been so shocked at hearing of her visit that he wasn't thinking of that. Then again, she had seen him naked many times so it was probably just false modesty going through his head. So sure and steady when facing down the Red Skull or Dr Doom, the oncoming brunette made his heart thump a conga beat. She looked good, so very good. What should he say? Should he extend his hand? Should he...

She solved the problem for him by hugging him, without a trace of hesitation, and he hugged her back.

"Oh, Steve." She said, still looking over his shoulder in the embrace.

"It's so good to see you." He said, hoping that he didn't sound robotic.

"It was so brave what you did! I've come by so many times wanting to tell you that, but you haven't been here! You've been on so many missions taking care of so many crisis situations that I thought that I would never get to tell you!"

"Brave..." Steve said.

"Brave! I know that you are the walking talking picture of bravery, but I'm so proud of you! You've opened up to the entire country and they still haven't stopped talking about it."

"Bernie..."

"That's why I'm here! I'm finally able to tell people that I knew all along, and everybody is seeing me differently. Business is picking up at my practice and my clients are top drawer. No more Stane international and Fisk imports calling up, but I could do without those anyway! I've gotten cases with Richmond enterprises, Oracle international, and that's just the beginning!"

She was gushing, but as she finally pulled back from the hug and looked in his eyes she trailed off as if choked. He wasn't happy for her. He wasn't happy at all. An hour ago he was pounding a heavy bag until the stuffing fell out of it and the chain broke. Anger turned to violence which became destruction. Then anger was gone. For now. Now there was nothing left but the rest of the day. Everything seemed to make sense then. Nothing made sense now.

"Bernie..." he said "I wished that you wouldn't tell anybody that you knew me."

"Steve... you're not making any sense. I'm not your girlfriend anymore, so it isn't like the Red Skull is going to try to kill me again. We had this conversation way back after that first time. We haven't been together in years... its just... it is good not to have to keep the secret anymore. Isn't it? Don't you feel relived?"

"I don't feel anything." He said, extracting himself from her embrace.

He turned his back on her and walked toward a pair of comfortable couches.

"Sit down." He said, hoping that it didn't sound like an order. He had been barking orders so long, from the battlefields of Europe to the far reaches of the Kree empire, that it was second nature to him. He was a man used to having his commands followed.

She sat down opposite him and looked concerned. It was that same look that Scott had given him earlier, and Jarvis had been giving him all week. Jan and Hank too. All of them that had that perceptive nature, but all of them afraid to ask that simple question that was the first thing to Bernie's lips.

"What is it Steve, What's wrong?"

Those words were like a torpedo hitting a dam. If he were not a man from another era he would have started crying. But real men don't cry, he told himself, no matter what. Especially not in front of a woman.

"I don't know who Steve Rogers is, Bernie."

"What?" She seemed shocked.

"What good is it to tell people my real name when it is just a name? It isn't a person anymore. Just an image."

"I know who you are, Steve. You are the finest man I've even known..."

"When I knew you it was different. I think it was the hotline that started it all. You were there. I was getting calls 24 hours a day and seven days a week all over the country. I would go and help, but I could never do enough. Then the government took that away from me, and the uniform. Gave it to someone else, and I just ran away. I didn't know who I was, so I put on another uniform and kept on doing what I was doing. I got it back, and I was all right again for a while, but you were gone and Steve Rogers was gone with you. I died, came back, died again and came back again. The Government took my uniform again and kicked me out of the country to boot. I got it back, but by then I didn't even know who Captain America was anymore. I was just... going through the motions."

"Steve..." Bernie had started crying for him.

"I'm still just going through the motions, Bernie. I am taking everything a day at a time but I've seen too much and done so much. I feel so old and I can't tell anyone, can't show a bit of weakness. I... felt something for a while... with a woman... and she..." Steve couldn't continue.

"I killed a man, Bernie. I killed him with my bare hands." It was the only thing he could think to tell her. He couldn't tell her about the naked blue skin, the sea like motion of the lovemaking, or the salty taste of the lips under hair brushed with sand. He couldn't tell her about the blood, or the screaming, or what it brought back in him. Where it came from, or who's responsibility it was. The leering Red Skull had almost destroyed the whole country from within. How would anybody feel the slightest bit of pity for the broken heart of one old soldier.

"Why are you telling me this, Steve?" She said.

"Because I can't tell anybody else. I can't tell them the rest either. I was with you but I never told you either. They all only know the comic book version, but they've never asked about the war. Or before the war. Everybody had a picture in their head of who I am, because that is the image that I have put out there for them, but they don't know the truth."

"Your actions have always spoken louder than your words, Steve. As eloquent as those words are." She said with a smile. "Do you need to tell someone who you really are, Steve? You can tell me. You can trust me."

Steven Grant Rogers heard the ring of truth in her words, and knew that if he didn't tell her the story now it might never be told. How could she know, how could any of them know, that all of this started with a skinny, gawky little boy named Steve?


Bernadette Rosenthal had not always been a high priced lawyer with her eyes clearly focused on success. She had only recently graduated from law school, in fact. When she had seen Steve Rogers for the first time all those years ago she was a post-grad dropout without any direction in life. Since she didn't want to go to law school like her father wanted or marry a millionaire like her mother wanted she had no idea what she wanted for herself. Steve Rogers, for better or for worse, had changed that forever. They became friends, then lovers, partners, fiancés, and now… who knew? They could have been something, that much was true. That was the past. But it seemed that was exactly the trouble. The past was tearing Steve apart. Something he wouldn't or couldn't say. As they walked through central park, she waited for him to say what that was. They talked about old times, and friends dearly missed. Good old Sam Wilson, Arnie Roth, Jack Monroe, and a dozen others. It all felt like they were skirting the issue. None of that was the problem. They had been through all of that together, and none of it was a mystery to her. This was something that he insisted that nobody knew.

They entered the section of Central Park called Freedom's Rest, and suddenly she knew why they had walked here. Standing in the center of the small fenced-in plaza stood a twelve foot tall bronze statue of Captain America with a bald eagle resting on his arm. The stern and jutting jaw was complete with the unique cleft in the chin that gave his profile such gravity. She remembered reading somewhere that the cast had been molded by Alicia Masters, and for a moment could imagine the blind sculptress' slender hands caressing Steve's face. It prompted a moment of irrational bile-refluxing envy that almost matched the occasion of her meeting with that pink-haired slut he had dated on the rebound. Oh, how she had tired so hard to be polite to that trash. What ever happened to her? It was shortly after that meeting that this monument had been dedicated. Steve was missing and presumed dead, and the country had mourned. That was before the country had found out what it was really like to mourn.

"What do you think of it?" Bernie said, breaking the silence and pushing away her thoughts of Alicia Masters, Rachael Leighton, and death.

"I think it is heinous." Steve finally said.

It had been the last response she was expecting.

"I am surprised that it hasn't been destroyed by some Super Villain or disaster after all this time. There have been times when I wished that it had been."

"It… it is just a monument to your…"

"They just dedicated a national monument in Washington DC that is the only one that I will ever need… the one for all the veterans of the war. I was only one soldier in it, and I got a monument before the rest of them. It… was never right. They were dead for 50 years and I was only presumed dead for a couple of months."

He seemed thoroughly miserable.

"Steve… you are so very important to so many people."

"So were they."

"Is this why you are feeling the way that you are? Survivor's Guilt?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Steve seemed ready to say something, then stopped and bit his bottom lip. Hard. He looked up at the statue and then looked at Bernie. She drew closer to him and put one arm around his waist. He did the same and they looked at the monument together. Sunlight glinted off the bronze and somehow Bernie found herself picking it apart. The body of the statue did not do justice to the man that she was holding against her. I guess that is one thing Alicia never got the chance to feel.

"You've done so much, Steve. You've saved the country and the world and you don't have anything to feel guilty about."

"I don't feel guilty." Steve said "I feel alone."

"What do you mean?"

"They're all gone, Bernie. Gone in body or gone in mind, but gone."

"Who?"

"My generation." Steve said "There are nothing left of them but monuments… and me. Nothing I can ever do will bring them back."

"What are you saying, Steve?"

"I've loved too long, Bernie. Lived too long and seen too much. I've lived long enough." He said in a straightforward tone, looking up at the face of the monument.

Bernie was horrified.

"I… I shouldn't have said that." Steve said when he saw her reaction. "I didn't mean that. I meant to say that… it is this life I'm living that I don't want to live anymore. But I know I can't quit. There… isn't any quit in me."

Bernie tried to say something, but was stunned by what he had said. He continued to regard the monument, but she had totally forgotten it was there.

"Maybe we should sit down." She finally said in her best Lawyer/Client privilege voice. She felt like she was playing a role, but then again aren't we all?

She looked at him as he sat down on a nearby bench, and it seemed like he was playing a role too. He was dressed in navy blue slacks, baby blue dress shirt, and a black tie. He was carrying his old battered portfolio case, but she knew that there was not a single drawing in it. There was only a battered yet indestructible shield. This wasn't the Steve she had known. This wasn't the sensitive comic book artist that would throw on a costume, get into character, and save the world. This was that character wearing Steve's skin, and not very comfortable doing it. Doing it for her benefit. Who knew how long it had been since the last time he wore those dress shoes?

They sat down carefully, not desiring to sit in anything sticky like discarded gum or worse. He looked so very tired to her, in ways more than physical. He had gone through the wringer while they were together, but had never seemed quite this wrung out.

"Tell me about them, Steve." She said.

"Who?"

"The ones that you miss." She hoped maybe that talking about them would make them come alive for him again. If only for a moment he could step off of this dark path he was walking… maybe he wouldn't go back.

"It is a hard story to tell, Bernie." Steve said "I don't even know where to start."

"Start at the beginning." She said with a smile.

It all seemed so obvious for her, but where was the beginning? It had to be that day. It had to be the day that changed it all. The first of many days that would change his life.

"When I was 10 years old… I found out that a man can't fly." Steve began his tale.


If he were to write a brief biography of himself it would read like this: Steven Grant Rogers was born on June 14th 1921 in Boston, MA. Moved to New York City September 1924. Started school 1926 and graduated 1938. Seeing Newsreel footage of the Nazi occupation of Europe he went to his local Army recruitment office and tried to enlist. Determined to be unfit for service he volunteered to be a guinea pig in a secret experiment to become a super soldier. It succeeded, the professor who innovated the process was assassinated, and he became the only super soldier. That was the story that everybody knew led to that star-spangled crime fighter in red, white, and blue bursting onto the scene. There was so much more to the story, though, and it was a hard story to tell.

He had wandered down to the east river, as if he could douse himself in it and become clean again. Even in those days the water was too dirty for that. Even were it clean, the slope was too treacherous to travel down. It was 1931, and he had just found out that a man could not fly. The brown stains on his school clothes looked like mud, but they weren't. They weren't, and people would ask questions. His parents and his brother would ask, and he would have no answers for them. What could he say? What could he tell them when he walked back from school covered in blood?

He should have been playing stickball with his friends in front of the tenement where he had lived since he was 3 years old, but he was afraid to go there. Afraid of the questions. Not just the questions that he would be asked, but the ones that he had. He was too young to understand, living in a time not totally innocent yet so different from our own. He just looked down into the river and watched the eddy and the current, trying to make sense of things himself. In that way, that little boy very much reflected the man he would become. If you walked by him on the street, you would not think that this skinny little kid named Steve could ever be a hero, much less a super hero, but that was what destiny had planned for him, and this day was the first day of that destiny.

He had been walking home from school when he had seen it. Something so wondrous to even pull him out of his daydreaming. He heard the people around him gasp, and he looked up to see what he couldn't believe. A man was flying through the air up in the shadows of the skyscrapers sailing through the air like an angel in a stained glass window. He marveled at it for a moment, but then he heard someone scream. The man flying through the air was only flying downward, and as he got closer it seemed to be coming faster. Steve didn't even have time to cry out before the high-end automobile parked beside him exploded into shards of glass and metal as the plummeting man struck it like a meteor. The wetness that sprayed Steve stung his eyes and almost blinded him. It was a moment before he looked down and realized that it was blood. All of this had happened in a few moments, but it seemed to last forever.

"Poor Bastard." He heard somebody mumble behind him.

"He jumped!"

"Must be a stock broker... maybe a banker..."

"What a mess."

He looked around and was horrified at the look on everyone's faces. A look of understanding. He didn't understand at all. He was confused. He could see the face of the man staring at him through the broken window of the car. His face told nothing. It was nothing. Whatever was alive there, whatever spark made it smile or frown, was gone. He did not look asleep. He looked artificial, like one of those wax dummies he saw at the museum. There was blood everywhere, and everybody was just walking around it and going about their business as a police siren approached. Steve was as frozen then as he would be in the decades after the war. Frozen and stunned. The man had blue eyes just like his father, staring right through him and into who knows where? They were cloudy with a lack of life. People in the movies died with their eyes closed… and maybe that was a good thing.

So here he was, by the river, looking down and trying to find some way to get clean. He had walked the wrong way after that, confused and in a daze. He wasn't close to home, and it was getting late in the day. He didn't have a watch, so he didn't know how late, and there was no one to ask. He wiped his face again and again with the handkerchief that he took with him to school. It scraped off some of the brown flecks on his face and only left small brown smudges on the hanky. He decided to go home, because the river had no answers for him. There was only one person who could have the answers. He began the long walk home, leaving the handkerchief floating on the river.

It was getting dark when he got home, but his mother was busy in the kitchen and did not seem too concerned with where he had been. His father, as always, had been in his study. His big brother Frank had just come home from work and sat in the chair next to the living room table with his neck flung back. His hands were black with ink, and looked like they were touched with death or something equally bad. He had dark circles under his eyes and they were very bloodshot. He looked too old to be 13. He hardly looked at Steve as the boy blundered past him on the way to the washroom. He washed his hands and face before changing his clothes to the more comfortable ones he wore at home. He wondered what his mother would say about the stains on his shirt. She probably wouldn't say anything. She was saying less and less these days. She seemed to be shrinking right before him. Maybe it was an optical illusion, because he was growing and he was staying the same. Maybe it was something else. She was getting smaller inside, and he was afraid that one day she would disappear altogether.

Steve looked into the small kitchen where his mother toiled , back to the living room where his brother relaxed. Neither one of them paid him any mind. To some it would seem unusual, but to Steve this was normal. His father would have the answers. His father always had the answers. He looked to the study door, wanting so much to talk to his father but knowing too well the consequences for opening that door. The yelling, the blazing blue eyes, and the iron hard grip. Beware the Jabberwock, my son, the teeth that bite the claws that catch… it went through his mind, half formed fear and half made rhymes from who knows where. His father would know, for when he wasn't writing in his study he was reading. He just hoped that he could talk to him before he started drinking. Jack Rogers always seemed so much less all-wise and all knowing when he had been drinking.

He couldn't talk to his brother. What would he say to him? He was still just a kid too. His mom would just ruffle his hair and say "That's nice sweetie. Do your chores and don't forget your homework." and pretend that everything was all right like she always did. Sometimes it was like he could hear her constant, silent scream in everything she did. It was time to do his chores, so he cleaned his room and folded his clothes. Everything was carefully placed in the drawers of his dresser so that they would not be mixed up with any of Frank's things. His older brother was very adamant about Steve keeping away from his things. Steve was a very neat little boy, because all of his life that had been required of him. He made sure that the sheets and blanket pulled over his bed was pulled tight under the mattress, pulling out all the wrinkles. He made sure that his few toys, such as they were, were where they were supposed to be.

He sat down at his little study desk, the one that Frank had used until he left school, and pretended to read all the while waiting for the sound of his father's den door opening. When he looked down at the book all that he saw was the dead man's cloudy eyes looking at him. Looking through him. Silently telling him the things that no little boy should have to hear. The sound did not come until nearly dinner, and he almost jumped out of his little chair and ran to the living room. Then he saw that it was too late. His father's constant look of stern , focused concentration was gone and replaced by that relaxed and euphoric look. He had not been writing in there today. He had not been working. He had been drinking.

Around the dinner table they sat, saying next to nothing. His father hardly ate, but did not complain about the cooking as he often did when he was in one of his moods toward his wife. They ate and exchanged pleasantries so artificial that they would be called plastic by our generation. There they sat like department store mannequins having their bodies posed by an invisible force, a sappy ventriloquist talking for them in falsetto tones. His beautiful mother that would never get to use that beauty for anything but being a mother. His father, a skinny blond and blue eyed apparition of what Steve was doomed to become. His brother, taking more to his mother's side of the family. Handsome and rugged with big shoulders and thick arms. He had shoulders that could support the weight that had been put on them, and still carry some more. Meet the Rogers, people! Look at how happy they are! Ten cents please, and move along. Steve's whole world seemed to turn blue to his eyes, but at least it was an improvement to how the world have looked since that man fell from the sky.

Since then the world had been a dark red.


Steve never went to play stickball with the boys after school. He had tried a day or two, but he had always been picked last and sometimes told to go away when he was the odd man out. It wasn't just that he was small for his age. It wasn't just that he still had a little of that Boston accent that made him incongruous to the native New Yorkers. There was something wrong with him. He tried to swing the stick just like they showed him but he missed every time. He was awkward and clumsy, and didn't want to admit how hard it was for him to read the chalkboard at school because then he would have to wear glasses like his dad. They couldn't afford glasses for him. He was wearing Frank's old worn-out shoes, and they were not made for running around a stickball lot. They were made for going to school, just like Steve. Sometimes it seemed that the world had no use for him save to walk back and forth to Ms. Rawlins' school house. Like that man in Greek myth who had to push the boulder up the hill both ways.

He always told his mom or his brother, on the occasions that they asked, that he was playing with the other boys on the block. But he wasn't. Every day after school Steve went to the park and pulled out a piece of paper, draping it over a textbook. Not far from the bench where Steve and Bernie would look up at a bronze statue of his very own costumed likeness, Steve would draw everything that came by. It was the only moments of peace in his life. Somehow all the complexities and contradictions of life lost themselves in the flow. The world flowed through his eye, into his brain, through his body and into the pencil he held in his hand. Somehow, when it appeared on the paper it was better than life. More solid and more real somehow. Flawless and drained of the evil and inequity. He could not put words to it, but sometimes the blurry image he saw with his poor eyesight blurred even more with the tears in his eyes.

Birds perching on statues. People walking by laughing. One time a girl was just standing there, throwing seeds to the birds, and he drew her too. Sometimes it did not matter if they stayed or stood still. Sometimes it was better if they didn't, because then he could use the eye in his mind that remembered them the way that they should be. The way that the whole world should be. A world without slums or poverty, or clumsy weaklings. He drew until his eyes squinted in the sun and his hand hurt, and then he drew some more. When he felt like he had drawn enough, he got up and left as quietly as he had come. No one paid him any notice, as even in those days New York had bigger and better things to do. There was a recession going on, haven't you heard? So and so lost his whole life savings! Even the Rothschild's and the Carnegies are feeling the pinch! Oh, woe to the spirit of America it is dying. Steve knew nothing about it, because he had always been poor. He didn't know anything else.


Steve continued to tell the story and the world of Steve's youth came alive for Bernie. She could see the skyscrapers that remained to this day, but now were smog-stained dinosaurs instead of the brand new marvels that Steve had seen with young eyes. She could smell streets that for two centuries had been used for horse drawn carriages, and that odor was not yet inundated with the stench of those newfangled automobiles. Every man on the street was wearing a dark suit and tie with a hat, and even occasionally a bowler hat like this was jolly old England. The autos went putt putt instead of vroom vroom and nobody had ever heard of crack houses, urban blight, or suburban sprawl. At the same time he painted an entirely different picture of it in his words, and how it progressively got so much worse. At the end it seemed like everything was coming apart. Starvation, bread lines, and riots in the streets. Intolerance, hatred, racism, and crime rampaging through daily life like an alternate version of the four horsemen. In the middle of all this chaos was a little boy named Steve. She could see that little boy now, scared of the whole world but in love with it too.

"What happened to them all?" She asked.

"Who?"

"Your family. Your parents and your brother."

Steve closed his eyes as if collecting his thoughts.

"They are all dead and gone, Bernie."

Somehow she had known that, but looking at Steve's still-young face it was hard to believe that his parents would have cleared a hundred years old decades ago and that his brother would not be far behind. She wondered if he had any more family. Anyone at all to make him feel attached to this world.

"What were they like?" She asked.

"My mother was a saint. My father was the devil. My brother was a hero." He said, perhaps too simply, but it was all he could think to say.


"Bitch!" Jonathan Rogers screamed.

"Jack… not in front of Stevie…" Margaret Rogers begged.

"If I've told you once I've told you a thousand times to stay out of my study! I work my fingers to the bone all day typing obituaries for that stupid newspaper and all that I ask is that you give me a few hours of piece so that I can write something of substance! Something that will sell! Something that will get us out of this slum!"

"Jack…" She cried

"Shut up!" He screamed

"Stevie… wanted to see you…"

John Rogers continued to rave as if he hadn't even heard her. He screamed until she was backing up against the wall, getting smaller and smaller, closing in on herself. Once , she had made the mistake of calling him John instead of Jack. She had hit the ground before Steve even saw his father move, the sound like the cracking of a whip. She had learned better than to stand up to him like that, even in such a small way. Instead, when he yelled, she got smaller so he could feel bigger until the storm passed. That was how she survived her marriage to Jack Rogers. Steve survived by being invisible. Neither of them realized that he had calmly walked out of the room. He wasn't even crying, like he would have when he was younger. He should never have told her that he needed to talk to dad. Just like she always did, she wanted to try and fix everything. Some things just couldn't be fixed.

The fight died down to some sharp words, then finally murmured promises that could perhaps be contrition. Steve would never know, because he wouldn't listen. He had heard it all before. Instead he walked out the door and went to the window in the hall. Outside the boys were playing stickball and the girls were watching the boys playing stickball. Men didn't cry. He wouldn't cry. He couldn't cry. If he started crying he didn't know if he would ever stop.

"What's up Stevie?"

He turned to see his brother Frank walking down the hallway. He had just got back from work.

"Again." was all Steve said, and Frank knew perfectly well what he meant.

"Let's go for a walk, Stevie." His big brother said.

They took a walk around the block, looking at the stickball game as they went by. None of the kids that saw Steve even called out for him to join the game as he walked by. Steve walked with his hands jammed deep down in his pockets and looked at the ground, as if there was something that could trip him. Frank told him about his day working on the printing press at the paper where dad wrote his succinct little obituary columns. He would heave the big heavy stacks of papers and bundle them with twine before delivering them to the news stands across the city. It was hard work that Steve knew he couldn't do, yet his brother could do it easily. Frank was even starting to look like a man. When he looked in the mirror at his buck teeth and cow licks, Steve wondered if he ever would.

"Don't worry about all this, Stevie." Frank said "You'll see that it will all turn out all right. Mom and dad love each other. They love us too. It's just the world they hate. I didn't understand when I was your age, but I do now."

"Frankie?" Steve almost whispered.

"What?"

"If I tell you something… something secret… do you promise not to tell anyone?"

"What is it?"

"I saw a dead man the other day."

"Stevie? Are you sure?"

"Yeah, Frankie."

"What happened?"

"He… jumped off a building."

"On purpose?"

"That's what everybody said." Steve said miserably.

"Was he… like all messed up?"

"Yeah."

"Geez, Steve. Why didn't you say anything about it before?"

"Because… I don't know."

"Did you tell anyone else?"

"No, Frankie. I wanted to talk to dad, but… you know."

"Is that what's been bothering you?"

"You noticed?"

"Kinda."

"I just don't understand why."

"Why?"

"Why he did it."

They walked for a bit, coming back to the entrance of the tenement. They stood there for a bit, unsure if they should go in. Frank patted Steve on the shoulder and pulled him gently in the direction of the door.


Steve's dad was a member of a lost generation. John Rogers had gone to France in 1916 and never came back. Who had come back was Jack Rogers, who was an entirely different person. John Rogers might as well have been another of those 120,000 bodies that littered the ground at the end of the Meuse Argonne offensive. For a time he had stayed in France, along with Hemmingway and a crowd of other wits, but before long he had to come home. Margaret was waiting for him, and he knew from experience how rare that was. He had won her with his poetry, and since that day could write poetry no more. To write poetry you needed to understand beauty, and that understanding was gone from him.

The thunder of 1.2 million troops rumbling across no man's land still echoed in his mind when it was quiet. Jack never wanted it to be quiet, which is the real reason that he had moved here. He couldn't stand the quiet times, or the silent screams that only he could hear. He hated war with all of his heart, and every short story and novel he wrote railed against it, told the truth of how it destroyed even the bravest and most courageous of men. Yet they invariably came back to him with that yellow letter on the front. He took that yellow letter and tacked it to the wall with all the others. People didn't want the truth. They wanted the cowboy myth.

Steve watched his father read the newspaper, scowling at the news that obviously displeased him so much. At least he hadn't been drinking today. He finally scraped up the courage to tell him about the day that he saw the man die, the words falling tremulously from his lips as those hard blue eyes stared at him. Somehow he managed to finish, and by then his father was leaning back in his chair with a distant look in his eyes.

"You saw him?" Jack Roger's asked.

"Who?" Steve asked softly.

"The dead man."

"Yes."

"I saw so many." He said, closing his eyes "Back in the war. So many who begged and prayed and wanted so very much to live… no matter how badly they were…"

Steve's father fell quiet.

"Dad?" Steve asked, finally getting to the question that he couldn't put away "Why did he do it?"

"Steve… you have to understand. Life is a gift, and it doesn't belong to you. Your life belongs to your mother and father and country… and to God."

More silence.

"That man that you saw was a coward. He threw that gift away. He gave up."

Steve took those words from his father and made them the truth. He put them in a box and chained it shut, throwing it deeply into the ocean of his heart. He would never be that man. He would never give up, never quit, and never turn his back on the life that had been given him. Not as long as he lived.


The beeping from his pocket pulled Steve out of his story, and before he even thought of it his hand had reached and pulled out the Avengers ID card. Pushing a concealed button on it, his face turned into a mug shot of Jarvis that was moving.

"I'm here." He said simply.

"Sir, I am to inform you that there is a matter that requires your immediate attention." Jarvis said without further ado.

"I'm on my way, Jarvis." Steve said.

He turned to Bernie with regret in his eyes. How many times had they played out this scene? How many times would they? After all these years, their relationship dead and buried, it was still the same old song.

"I have to go."

"I know."

"I'll… I'll call you as soon as I can. I don't know how long it will be."

"That is ok Steve. If you need to talk call any time, day or night."

With no further words, or need for them, Steve picked up the portfolio that held his shield and walked briskly in the direction of Avengers mansion. There was an empty feeling in Bernie's heart. She had heard that it was bad, but she had no idea how bad. She picked up her cell phone and dialed the number that she had gotten a call from just yesterday. The call that had made her come see Steve in the first place.

"This is Bernie… It is worse than you thought…. I'll do what I can, but I don't think I'm going to be able to do it alone… Oh… You will? Thank you… Yes… I'll do what I can… Goodbye."

She put away the cell phone and sighed. She needed to get back to the office. There was work that she was neglecting, but she had never loved another man in this world like she loved Steve Rogers. She never would either, though even she did not know that. She had to help him, would do anything to help him, even if that meant duplicity.

Even if that meant betrayal.

Next: A Time of Decision

How did a boy named Steve become the man who would be a hero? Read on next week, true believer!