"Curve ball, high and outside for ball one. So, the Dodgers are tied, 4-4. And the crowd well knows that with one swing of his bat, this fellow's capable of making it a brand-new game again. Just an absolutely gorgeous day here at Ebbets Field."

Steve Rogers opened his eyes as the sound of the announcer's voice broadcasted from an old radio near the open window. The air was stuffy, and the sky outside the flowing curtains was grey. There was a dull ache in Steve's head, and he felt stiff, heavy, and cold.

"Pete leans in. Here's the pitch. Swung on. A line to the right."

Steve wiggled his fingers as he listened to the game. He was laid on his back on a bed in his clothes- he'd crashed the plane into the ice. He remembered. Fighting Schmidt. Seeing him die. Not knowing how to safely land the bomb-laden Hydra plane. Shoving the controls forward as the icy tundra of somewhere other than New York flew towards him. Promising to meet Peggy for their dance.

"Three runs will score. Reiser heads to third. Durocher's going to wave him in. Here comes the relay, but they won't get him.

Steve winced as he slowly pushed himself up to sit on the side of the bed, listening to the game. He turned to look at the radio, panic beginning to overtake him. Steve remembered this game. This wasn't live. Why would they broadcast a game that was- what- four years old? He'd been there with Bucky.

Suddenly the door opened, and a pretty brunette woman walked in and smiled softly at Steve. Her lips were painted red and her hair was loose and curly. She closed the door behind her after greeting him, "Good morning," and he stared at her intently as she checked her watch, "Or should I say afternoon?"

"Where am I?

She seemed to hesitate for a moment, like she was trying to remember something, "You're in a recovery room in New York City."

Steve's eyes dropped, scanning the woman's uniform and finding it wrong. He couldn't figure out what bothered him about her, but it was wrong. "Where am I really?"

She let out a brief, nervous laugh as she smiled through her own panic, but Steve could see it was there as she spoke him barely above a whisper, "I'm afraid I don't understand." Her chest rose and fell slightly, but it was clear to Steve she was scared.

She should be.

"The game. It's from May, 1941, I know, cause I was there." Steve snarled, wondering who had him. He wore an SSR shirt, but he didn't believe for a minute he was in their care. As suspicious as this woman acted, Steve thought for a moment maybe he'd been captured by Hydra. He stood, narrowing his gaze on the woman as he approached slowly. Her eyes grew with her fear as he got closer, but she didn't make any move to run away.

"Captain Rogers…"

"Who are you?" Steve snapped as the door behind her popped open, and two men dressed completely in black appeared. He flinched, back stiffening as he looked between them. They had come to subdue him, and Steve wasn't about to let them take him alive.

As the men approached him quickly, Steve shoved them as hard as he could against the wall, and they shattered it easily. He saw that beyond the greyscale recovery room was a larger, darker room with no windows, like a prison.

Steve leapt over the broken wall and spun around to get a better look at his surroundings, seeing a set of double doors ahead of him before noticing the massive mural of the New York skyline that he'd seen out the windows. They were trying to trick him. He wasn't home.

He pushed his way through the doors, hearing the voice of the woman who had come to his recovery room echoing through the building. Steve paused when he realized nothing looked right. Everyone around him was dressed wrong and everything looked sleeker and newer.

In the moment he took to scan his surroundings, the men around him seemed to understand that the announcement was to catch him. Steve began running wildly as a dozen men dressed in black pursued him. One man jumped in front of Steve in an attempt to slow him down, but Steve elbowed him to the ground without hesitation.

Steve saw freedom outside and dodged several pedestrians who were passing the building he'd been held in. He paused for a moment in the middle of the street to try and get his bearings, but he had to get away. Once he was somewhere safe, he could figure out where he was. At this point, Steve wouldn't be surprised if he was on a different planet, as strange as his surroundings were.

He ran as fast as his legs could take him, easily passing by the cars that drove alongside him. No matter where he ran though, Steve couldn't find anything that looked normal or familiar, until he ran out of the road and stopped, looking around and realizing he was in Times Square. He panted as he took in his surroundings, feeling his panic settle into dread. Everything was electric and bright and loud. Vivid colored pictures played on all the buildings. The women standing on the sidewalks wore scandalously revealing clothing, despite the misty weather.

Three large, black vehicles slid to a stop in front of Steve, and when he turned around, he realized another four more had blocked him in on the other side. A half dozen men in black uniforms appeared with their hands up, but Steve noticed none of them pulled a gun on him. Another handful of men in nice suits got out of the cars and pushed the bystanders back, giving him space to breath. The last man, a looming figure in a flowing black trench coat and an eye patch approached Steve confidently as Captain America wished he had just died like he'd planned on.

"I'm Colonel Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. You would have known it as the Strategic Scientific Reserve."

As much as Steve appreciated how open and honest Colonel Fury was being, he still didn't appreciate being handled. Annoyance laced Steve's voice, and as much as he knew he should show respect to his superior, Steve couldn't hold back his frustrations, "Where am I?"

"46th and Broadway." Fury answered casually, and Steve looked around, guessing it looked somewhat familiar, if he tried to remember hard enough. He wanted to find something familiar, because Steve knew if he was home in his New York, Peggy, Howard, and Phillips would surely have been there to greet him. The fact that Peggy wasn't there to greet him when he awoke terrified him worst of all. If he wasn't dead, then she surely was, and that was so much worse.

Fury's demeanor softened as he seemed to realize how frustrated Steve was becoming, "I'm sorry about that little show back there. We didn't know what kind of mental state you might be in, so we thought it would be best to break it to you slowly."

Steve could see that Fury felt sorry for him. His chest felt tight as he dreaded his own question, but he had to know, "Break what?"

"You've been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years."

Steve looked around again, processing what Colonel Fury had said. He was seventy years in the future. The reason everything looked so different- the reason nobody he knew had come to greet him… Steve realized they were all probably dead, which prodded his next question, "How am I alive?"

Nick Fury looked downright sad as he stumbled to find the right words, and Steve felt his stomach plummet as he began to realize everything he knew and loved was gone. "Umm, to be honest with you, we don't really know." Fury said solemnly, "The docs say it was suspended animation. Could be Doctor Erskine's formula, the extreme cold. We don't really know."

"What about the war?" Steve asked quickly, praying that his sacrifice had been for something. If he had crashed into the ice for nothing… if he'd slept away his life for the Axis to win, Steve didn't know what he'd do. "Did we win?"

He sighed when Fury answered, "Hell yes, unconditional surrender. Taking down Hydra was a big part of that." Steve noticed Nick Fury pause, considering what he wanted to say next, "The world hasn't really changed all that much. There's still a lot of work to be done. The world could still use a man like you, Cap."

Fury extended his hand for Steve to shake, and it wasn't lost on the soldier that Colonel Fury hadn't once called him by his name, but instead referred to him strictly as his moniker. That said, if SHIELD was the new SSR, Steve didn't have any reason not to trust Fury. It wasn't like he had anywhere else to go.

He placed his hand in Fury's and the Director of SHIELD assured him, "There's a place here for you."

Steve wasn't so sure, but he was increasingly aware he didn't have a choice. He didn't know what was worse: being forced to be Captain America in a world he didn't recognize or being let loose to be Steve Rogers in a world where nobody cared about him.

He turned to look around Times Square, needing a moment with his own thoughts. He messed up. He should have landed the plane, or jumped out of the plane, or done something else. Steve knew he was going to die, but if he had known, if he'd even considered the possibility of surviving the crash, he would have taken that way out. He could have had a life after the war. He could have had Peggy. He wondered if Peggy went to the Stork Club anyway to look for him, hoping against hope he'd found a way back to her. Steve felt terrible knowing he could have gotten home if he had only tried.

"You sure you're alright?" Fury asked from behind Steve.

"Yeah… yeah, it's just-" Steve paused, feeling his breath catch in his throat, "I had a date."