My Christmas gift to you...an alternate universe where Steve is still alive.

What If...Sarah and Joseph Rogers Had More Compatible Genes?

Steve stared at the phone in his hand. His first instinct was to call Kinley. He could occasionally count on her to get him out of trouble without making him feel too bad about it. But she and her husband were out of town for their anniversary this week. Steve considered calling Harry or Wilson…then thought better of it. They disapproved of pretty much his entire existence, but especially his tendency to let his fists rule his head. That left only one person. Steve braced himself for the mother of all lectures and called Addison.

~0~

"Your hair is too long," she remarked.

Steve ignored the comment. After years of military haircut regulations, he'd let it grow out past his ears. And he loved it. His beard too. "Thank you for bailing me out," he said sincerely.

"I've only been doing that for thirty some years." She opened the driver's side door of her car and slid inside. Steve, fearing she'd actually drive away and leave him alone in the parking lot, raced into the passenger seat. Addison started driving in silence. He waited for the questions and the stern talking-to. It took her nearly ten minutes to work up to it.

"Stevie, why would you do something like this?"

He gritted his teeth at the nickname and the genuine concern in her voice. It frustrated him to no end that she still saw him as her baby brother who needed to be kept out of trouble and scolded when he found it anyway. She and the others did a shit job keeping him out of trouble, but they had the scolding part down pat.

"I didn't do it because of anything," he grunted. "It just happened."

"Violence doesn't just happen."

Steve scowled. Because she was right. His time in the army had taught him the many, many reasons for violence. It never just happened. But in the heat of the moment, it had felt like some other entity took over his body. Steve didn't mean to hit the guy, but as he sat there listening to all the horrible things he said, rage filled him from bottom to top and then boiled over. He barely even registered the feel of bone cracking beneath his fist, but he heard it, and he heard the cops' shouts, and the next thing he knew he was handcuffed in the back of a police car with blood staining his knuckles.

Addison glanced at him with a knowing look in her eyes. "What did he say? To make you hit him?"

"I don't even remember," he confessed.

"Yes you do."

"I don't want to repeat it."

"Summarize."

"He said something about how it would be better to just leave soldiers overseas because all they bring back is their shell shock and their medical bills and their drain on the economy." Steve would never forget the exact phrase this man had uttered that finally pulled his trigger: "If you're not going to come home in a flag-draped coffin, don't come home at all." He'd never heard a more fucked up statement. It baffled and enraged him how anybody living in this free country could think so little of the very people who fought to keep it that way.

"I see. And you couldn't have…I don't know…told him off? Or, even better, ignored his ignorant ass?"

"I've tried that before. Words never work on these sorts of people. And I could never just ignore something that horrible."

"Evidently, words don't work on you either. How many times do I have to tell you to stop it? This isn't the Army, Steve, you can't just go around picking fights with anyone who says or does something you disapprove of. You attacking this guy does nothing to help anybody."

"Maybe it helped me."

"It definitely did not. You have no outlet for your anger except hurting people, and you never have. At least when you were young, you weren't quite so easily angered."

Steve had no retort for that.

Addison continued. "Honestly, whatever happened to little Yankee Doodle who drew people pictures to cheer them up when they were sad?"

Steve wanted to hit her for using yet another patronizing nickname from his youth, but he restrained himself because she was driving and he didn't want to endanger them both. See, he could exercise restraint when he wanted to. As for her question, he knew the answer without having to think about it. "The army happened."

She shook her head. "Sometimes I wish you'd never joined the army. They messed you up good, Stevie."

"When you're an accident, you have to figure out some way to pay for college. It seemed like the easiest way through." That, and he thought following in his father's footsteps would make him proud.

Her put-upon sigh nearly shook the entire car. "For the last time, you were not an accident. Jesus, how are you still on that?"

"It's no coincidence that I'm a full six years younger than Kinley when the rest of you are only two years apart. If Mom and Dad wanted five, they would've done it sooner."

"Harry and Wilson force-fed you that lie until you believed it. I thought you were old enough now not to fall for their bullshit."

"It's not bullshit."

"No, it's definitely bullshit. But that's not the point. Is that what this is about? You act out for attention, because you think our parents didn't want you to exist in the first place? What exactly are you trying to prove?"

"I'm not trying to prove anything."

"Right. You were just fighting injustice like some kind of spandexed superhero."

"That's not true. Addison, I'm no hero. And don't give me any of that "but you fought for our country" bullshit. It was just a job. I worked for the government, and some of the things they made me do I wish I could forget."

She ran her tongue over her teeth the way she always did when she was thinking hard about something unpleasant. "Have you considered going to counseling? Or finding a support group? Or, hell, getting that PTSD diagnosis you almost certainly have and working on fixing the root of the problem?"

"For the last time, I don't have PTSD." God, she brought it up every time he mentioned so much as a headache. Anything he said or did that wasn't sunshine and rainbows she assumed was the lingering result of trauma.

"I think any medical professional would disagree."

"Well, I don't want to see a medical professional because I'm fine. Maybe all these things you keep attributing to acronyms are actually just me, have you ever thought of that? That I'm just a short-tempered asshole because I'm a short-tempered asshole?"

"You're not an asshole," she said flatly. She didn't put up any argument about the short-tempered part.

"Then why do you keep talking to me like I am?"

"I'm not. I'm talking to you like you're my little brother that I just bailed out of jail for assaulting a man."

Steve crossed his arms and grumbled. None of his siblings ever called him their brother. Always little brother, or baby brother, or wee lad, as Harry and Wilson had taken to calling him after a family vacation to Scotland. It fueled the constant desire to prove himself that had propelled him through his entire life. He'd never catch up to them in age, but he could in accomplishment.

Addison took the exit that would take them towards her house, not his apartment. Steve opened his mouth to protest, but she took her right hand off the wheel and gestured for him to shut the hell up.

He refused to be silenced that easily. "Is that how this works? You bail me out of jail just to put me in time-out at your place?"

"No. I'm not your mother."

"Coulda fooled me."

She said nothing else the entire way there. Addison lived a mere thirty minutes from their childhood home in Wheaton, New Jersey. During his fourteen years in the army, Steve had lived on base in North Carolina, Missouri, and Colorado, but now that he was out, he'd returned reluctantly to his home state.

Addison pulled into her driveway and stepped out of the car without a word. Steve climbed out and followed her inside. She opened the fridge and thrust a bottle of water into his hand, even though he was perfectly sober. He'd only had one drink before the…incident. After closing the fridge, she headed upstairs with the parting remark of, "Don't break anything."

Steve's fist clenched around the water bottle. He opened it and started sipping anyway while looking at the cluttered fridge in front of him. Addison wasn't married, nor did she have any children, yet she still covered her fridge in pictures held aloft by an assortment of magnets, all U.S. state-themed. The fridge was the busiest place in a kitchen, so anything posted here must've been something she wanted to look at often. Steve let his eyes flit over the photos. Front and center stood a picture of the entire family at Steve's graduation from West Point. It was one of the only pictures of all seven of them in existence. The magnet holding this one was shaped like New Jersey—home.

Only five other states were represented here. New York, where Kinley had been living ever since college at Columbia; Maryland, where both Harry and Wilson resided in order to commute to D.C.; and three more: North Carolina, Missouri, and Colorado. Each of these pinned a much older photo featuring the five of them. There was Addison's high school graduation, Harry and Wilson's confirmation, the Christmas they got an electric scooter that he wasn't allowed to ride because he was too young—he'd snuck on it anyway, and didn't even crash—one Easter from when he was about three or four, and what must've been his birth. At least, he assumed he was the bundle in ten-year-old Addison's arms. They were all dressed in red, white, and blue. Kinley had a noisemaker between her lips, and Harry and Wilson were both wearing Uncle Sam style hats. Steve couldn't help but chuckle. The only thing stronger than his identity as the youngest sibling was his identity as the one born on the Fourth of July.

He stared even longer at that oldest picture, realizing that a bunch of other photos was stuck behind it. Steve put the water bottle down and removed the magnet holding the stack in place. There were several pictures, and Steve wasn't in any of them. They featured only his older siblings. He flipped each over to check their dates, and realized they were all taken during one of his many deployments. Steve flipped them back and looked more closely at the familiar faces. Their smiles weren't nearly as big and bright as the others on the fridge, those with all five of them.

His first instinct was to attribute this solely to the stress of adulthood. Grown-ups didn't have nearly as much reason to smile as children did. But deep in his gut he knew that wasn't it. Addison confirmed his suspicions.

"We miss you when you're gone," she said. Steve jolted, nearly dropping the photo, and turned to find her leaning against the door jamb.

His heart pumped a wave of pure self-loathing through his bloodstream. "I can't imagine why," he muttered.

"Steve."

It wasn't her usual scolding tone. Nor the one she used to use when she wanted to boss him around. He'd only heard this particular tone from her in one context: coming home from overseas. The only times Steve had ever felt like a real part of his own family—something more than just the littlest one, the one always getting into trouble, the one whose attempts to fit in with his siblings were never more than adorable—was after he'd been separate from it for months at a time.

"I spent the first eighteen years of your life trying to protect you. We all did. And then you grew up, and we couldn't do that anymore. The past fourteen years, it's been you protecting us. You may not consider yourself a hero, Steve," Addison continued. "But you're our hero."

I saw a Tumblr post that said Steve Rogers has major youngest child energy and I couldn't get it out of my head. So...I wrote this.