She keeps contact with Dr. Erskine. He's a kind, kind man that takes her under his wing and teaches her so many things, one by one. Sometimes he swings by the hospital, always with files on his hands, she never sees what they contain but it is not unusual to see him wandering the halls, hands behind his back, hat and jacket always on place.
Sometimes, she sees him on the street and they stop to chat for a while, always near the Antiques shop. He's a good man that always asks after Steve, asks how he's doing, if he's been sick lately and offers advice in case he is. He never, not even once, looks at her like she's crazy when she tells him of Steve.
He invites her for coffee some days and paints a picture of Germany in her mind, before the war, before he was forced to leave. He tells her of his two youngest children and his wife, always a far-away look on his face that makes her assume they're dead. She tells him of her wishes to visit Ireland and Italy even though there is no one there for her. Other times they talk about the United States and the home he has made for himself here, even though it always feels empty.
She tries all her accents with him, the soft French she once heard on the radio, the Irish she heard while growing up, the posh English of her favorite British actress and the harsher German she imitates from him. He gives names to the things around her in his mother tongue and she tries to imitate the way they roll off his tongue and successes.
It's August of 1942 when Dr. Erskine offers her the new job. He invites her to his apartment in Queens and God, she knows she should be more careful, should be more alert and not trust someone so easily, but she calls Steve to tell him she'll be home later than usual and goes anyway.
He serves her tea because she doesn't really drink that much coffee and, once they both have cups steaming in front of them, they start speaking.
"I need you to understand, Lucie, that I ask this of you because I trust you" he starts, but it does not put her at ease "Maybe I should start from the begining. I was twenty five the first time I married. Not as young as you were when you married, but, well…our daughter was born a year later. Tiny thing, she was. Esme" the doctor takes off his glases and cleans them with the inside of his jacket, taking a few breaths before he continues "She was very much like your Steven. Sickly. Weak. But kind. Oh, my Esme was very kind. She didn't live past her tenth birthday, you see. It destroyed my wife's heart. No matter what we did, no matter what we tried, she still got very sick, year after year " Dr. Erskine lifts his eyes and looks right into hers, pain clear as day even decades later "I do believe a broken heart can kill you, Mrs. Rogers. It did to my wife and I must admit part of it was my fault. Now, you must understand. I had just lost my only daughter. I threw myself into work after that. I couldn't think of another child suffering like my baby did"
Dr. Erskine stands, his tea untouched, and goes for a file. He sits again, this time by her side instead of in front.
"I married again" he countinues, opening his jacket and taking out a picture "Greta was a kind woman. She gave me two beautiful children. Klaus and Marlene" he gives her the picture and she takes it slowly. It's a little bent on the corners, but it only shows it's well loved. There are two children, close on age, around eight and ten. "You would have liked Marlene. She had….cheek, I believe you call it?" he chuckles to himself, druming his fingers on the file "Hitler heard of my work. He didn't let us escape. I believe it was an outbreak of typhus…"
They're quiet for a little while before she speaks.
"How did you? Escape, I mean" she dries a lone tear that has made its way down her cheek and puts down the photograph.
"An Agent from the Strategic Scientif Reserve rescued me. Which is, actually, what I should have been telling you about. Now, if you decline, you must remain quiet about it. It is, after all, a goverment secret".
Proyect Rebirth is supposed to create super soldiers, men with perfect bodies and perfect health, stronger, faster, better. Dr. Erskine would need a nurse to asist him on the procedure and for that he wanted her. Of course, she wouldn't be just a nurse. That would be just one part of her job. If she acepted, she would be an Agent.
Agent Lucia Rogers of the Strategic Scientific Reserve.
That is not what makes her say yes.
"This is but the start, Lucie. If they aprove it, it won't be for soldiers after the war is won"
They just don't want any more Esmes.
"So…ummm…" she tries to start that night, while Steve is drawing at their table. Their light is crappy at best and usually he would go sit by the window, but that day it had been different. From her spot, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen, she can't see his face very well, a blur at best- but she can imagine the way his lashes look, long and dark as they frame his blue, blue eyes. She can imagine the way a frown would rest lightly on his face, a result of the concentration with which he draws-she can't really see him, but she has seen him so many times before there is nothing new for her, nothing she can't recall from memory.
"Something wrong?" he sets down the pencil on the table and focuses on her "Is it about…?" he doesn't finish his question, but his eyes travel down to her belly.
"No…no, it's about something else" and she really tries not to sound disappointed because this is what they chose after hours of discussion, dammit, it had been her goddamn idea, she shouldn't be feeling the hollow feeling in her chest, shouldn't feel disappointment down to her marrow.
But she does.
She leaves her place by the doorframe and sits in front of him, taking his hands in hers. It's a small gesture but she has always felt good with his long, cold fingers against hers.
"Have I ever told you about Dr. Erskine?"
"The man you were meeting today? Lucy, did he do something?" Steve leans over, like he only wants to protect her from whatever Dr. Erskine could have done to her.
"Nothing wrong, I promise you. He offered me a job" she says, and she thinks that Steve knows that she already accepted. He's always been good at reading her, far better than she is at reading him, but she thinks it must be because he is far more complex than she is.
"A private practice?"
"Not really. It's government job. Can't really tell you much, but it's for a project he has" and she really, really doesn't want to tell that she might as well be working with the military because God, that's just so unfair, isn't it? But they have no secrets, no secrets at all, at least on her side, so she continues despite the knot she feels on her stomach "I…I won't work just on the project, though. They couldn't really hire me just as a nurse" she starts playing with Steve's fingers, tracing the length of them. She turns around his wedding ring, silver and plain, and thinks of her name on the inside of it.
"Promise me you'll be safe?" Steve asks, closing his hand on a fist so she'll stop playing with it and look at him.
"I'll take care of myself. I promise you" she says, but doesn't promises safeness.
They make her quit her job at the hospital. It doesn't sit well with her at all, but there's not much she can do about it. She complies and starts shadowing Dr. Erskine some mornings and reporting to the SSR headquarters in New York when not with him. James has been back for a while by then, but doesn't notice the change until he goes to the hospital to pick her up so all of them can go out and she's not there. She has to lie then, and it leaves an horrible aftertaste saying she has gotten a new job in the government and making up some details that are false.
They have a small firing range under the office floors and they teach her how to shoot small pistols, big rifles, revolvers that fit just fine on the side of her tight and she gets good at it; maybe not as good as she knows James is, but maybe close enough that she'll get there with time.
He had, once, taught her how to aim. They had used small pebbles and aimed at trees, specific knots in the wood and specific leaves. By the time the sun had set, James had laughed, ruffled her hair and called her a natural. She hadn't really believed it, because he was just so much better.
She tries knives and gives up halfway through. She has trouble making them stick, and focuses on other things despite knowing that knives are more useful.
They teach her how to fight and how to use her weight and stature into her favor, and in the free days, she teaches it to Steve. Skinny, small Steve who learns to go for a different center of gravity; skinny, small Steve who learns how to hit precisely and efficiently. Skinny, small Steve who starts to learn how to fight with a body that can't fight like James tried to teach him. She's not a professional, not by a long shot, but she's lasting more and more against bigger and better agents, so when Steve flips her over and the carpeted ground of their small living room kicks the air out of her lungs, when he drops to his knees and asks if she's okay, she laughs and kisses him.
Despite the war, or maybe because of it, the SSR is not short staffed. Which puts her on desk duty and never on the field, no matter how much she wants anything but it, because she should just "leave field duty to the professionals, darling", no matter if she's been training for seven months straight with the one goal of getting out there and they've been there for less than five.
Steve is more than understanding, and it warms her heart the fact that he has a warm bath for her when he knows she has to train for longer than necessary, and how he massages her muscles when she can't take much more pain. He worships the new shapes her body starts to develop, the way her stomach is firm under his lips and her calves iron under his hands, the way her arms look toned and her thighs defined when she's over him.
Dr. Erskine spends most of his time getting things ready from the procedure rather than perfecting the formula. While not yet synthetized for the first super soldier, test have left him satisfied and convinced it is ready. And Lucy can't fight against it, not really, because despite the fact that she has worked on a hospital for years now, she has little medical knowledge, much less scientific.
She knows how to take blood pressure and what its normal ranges are. She knows how to draw blood and how to transport it. She knows how to put the injections and what most of them do, but she's not the kind of nurse Sarah Rogers was, not by a long shot. She never studied for it, never got a degree that said she was a nurse. Hell, she didn't even get a high school degree. She never got anything but practical knowledge, which means that, really, she's little more than a caretaker, and that was fine with her, because she liked the way older people talked to her when she went to check on them, she liked the way little kids laughed and marveled over her hair when she helped clean them, and she liked knowing that the things she did helped the hospital function.
But it also means that she doesn't know how to sew a wound, and her anatomy is far too general. It means she's not really suited for the job, and she tells so to Dr. Erskine.
"I've told you to call me Abe, fräulein" he answers, sitting in front of a microscope, just waiting. "I think you are suited, Lucie. You won't be the only one there when the procedure happens, and what you know is just enough. Not to mention that I've heard good things from the headquarters" she gives him a half smile, not really convinced. And then "Do you want to learn?"
I'm so sorry for all the time I was away, I have no excuse. But but but, I have a one shot that I'll try to post soon, so keep an eye out those who want to know Delmar's daughter.
Also, almost 200 follows? This is insane, thank you so much to everyone who is still here!