Mab wished that her doctor's office hallways were just a little bit wider. She only sort of noticed it when she was having a good day and could manage to get around with just a cane, but when she was in her sport-style wheelchair it became difficult to navigate the narrow halls. Sure, people jumped out of the way when she came around the corner, offering excessive apologies about 'being in her way', and holding doors open or offering to push her chair, but that in and of itself was exhausting.
Just once, she almost wished that someone would see her headed down the hallway and stand their ground. Maybe nod to her a 'one second, please' kind of motion and actually finish what they were doing before giving her the space to get around.
The social niceties required of her when someone went out of their way to be accommodating were just not worth it. More exhausting than pushing the chair around all day or standing in line at the store, a constant placating smile drained her of all reserves.
But, seen as a burden to society in the eyes of those too accustomed to fully-functioning bodies, that was her responsibility. Aside from the obvious, she was obligated to be perfect in all other ways they could conceive. Polite smiles, polite words, generally deferential, and never ever angry. She was not allowed to be angry.
"Let me get that for you!" a patient coming through the door she needed to exit offered, springing out of her way and holding the door open from the inside, unfortunately standing mostly in her way, and blocking the handicap door button that would have opened the door for her.
But Mab smiled gratefully, cheerfully adding "thank you!" as she barely managed to roll past him without crushing his toes. The corner of the door clipped her fingers as she failed to move them in time, taking a bit of skin from the back of her hand. A small price to pay.
Mab shook her hand to clear the tingles as she pulled up to the nurses' desk.
The nurse glanced at her briefly, sliding a sheet of paper within Mab's reach. "I've called the Cipro prescription into your pharmacy, and here are the orders for blood work. Do you need to schedule a follow-up appointment?"
"Yes, please," Mab smiled as she folded the lab orders into a square and slid it into the front pocket of her bag.
"Two weeks?"
"Three, please," Mab said, thinking about co-pays.
The nurse typed the change into her computer and handed Mab a reminder card. "Do you need me to call you a cab?"
The card joined her lab orders in Mab's bag. "No, thank you; I take the bus."
"Have a good day," the nurse said automatically.
"Thanks, you too," Mab supplied the standard reply, beating down any of her off-the-cuff responses that might elicit a genuine reaction. Burdens to society don't get to be funny, burdens should just smile and be polite and predictable.
Thankfully, the hallway and elevator were both empty and Mab got to enjoy a normal routine. The elevator car stopped just right at her floor without lurching up or down. She was able to move her chair smoothly, and all the buttons were at reasonable heights. The car stopped smoothly on the ground floor and met the arriving floor level just right. The doors out of the building had handicap buttons that still worked, giving Mab time to wrap her scarf neatly around her neck before braving the outdoors of New York City.
Mab was having a not-too-bad day. The bus arrived on time, and the wheelchair lift was one of the new ones so it was working pretty well. The bus driver knew the fast way of getting her chair clipped down, and no one grumbled about getting up out of the foldaway seats that made room for her.
Mab pulled a book out of the bag strapped to the back of her chair, conveniently covering the foldable handles in case anyone felt 'helpful' and grabbed at them, and chased her fingers along the pages until she found her slender bookmark saving her place.
Her ride was not-too-bad, almost pleasant, when the bus cruised to a stop and picked up two more passengers. The first took a few seconds to get his MTA card inserted right but got it eventually, and the second was clearly almost falling-down drunk at eleven in the morning.
Mab kept her eyes focused on her book, but kept tripping over a typo on the page that ruined her focus. Somehow, this made her less than invisible to the drunk who honed in on the easy prey as soon as the bus started moving again.
"Heyyyyyy meals on wheels! How's it goin'?" he laughed, managing to slur that as well.
Mab ignored him, keeping her eyes on her book and the typo.
He sauntered closer, leaning over to look at her book. "Looks real nice - can I borrow it when you're done?"
Mab bit the inside of her cheek, taking shallow breaths to avoid inhaling the strong smell of alcohol pouring from his mouth. Her lungs rebelled as a result, making her cough to force her to breathe.
"Hey," the drunk slurred, waving his hand in front of her face, "I'm talkin' to you - you deaf, too?"
Mab kept her eyes lowered even as his fingers brushed against her nose, doing her best to play the good New Yorker and ignore it. It's easy to pick a target that can't just get up and move to another seat. She did not look up and try to make eye contact with anyone else on the bus; relatively useless, anyway. New Yorkers didn't interfere unless blood was shed, and even that was highly variable.
The drunk swore at her. "Frigid bitch-"
And someone interrupted by stepping into the narrow space between her and the drunk, forcing the inebriated man to step back or else get plowed directly into the side of the bus. "Oh hi - funny seeing you here!"
Mab looked up at the calm address, her mouth falling slightly open as a rebuttal died in her mouth, teeth clicking shut. She's only seen the second passenger out of the corner of her eye as he'd boarded but now she was getting a good look at the face hiding under a baseball cap and behind thick glasses.
He was definitely addressing her, and as she opened her mouth to inform him he'd definitely mistaken her for someone else because there was no way in hell he knew her, he gave her a very meaningful look from behind wide-rimmed glasses. The man, whose face she knew without any possibility of mistake and even around that terrible disguise, had positioned himself between her and the rambling drunk on purpose.
She was being rescued.
"Oh, hi!" she greeted with too much enthusiasm, trying to play along. "Funny seeing you here, yeah!"
He glanced sideways at the drunk, who seemed too intimidated to try and shove his way back towards Mab. He gave her another meaningful look. "Are you headed to the library, too?" Do you need help?
Mab could play along better now that the initial shock had worn off. "I am, actually." Yes, please.
He nodded as if giving it measured thought. "I'll keep you company if you don't mind. I know how hard that thing can be to get on and off the bus." Do you need me to do something?
Mab shook her head. "I've got the routine down by now, you just stand there and look pretty." You're doing great.
He smiled. "You know, I thought I might be mistaking someone else for you, but then I said to myself: 'Steve, you've known her for a long time'." My name's Steve.
Mab smiled, thinking to herself: Oh, I know. "Well, there's only one Mab in a flashy wheelchair."
Steve pulled the yellow cord to alert the driver to their stop and waited patiently as the driver unclipped her chair. Mab hadn't thought too much about how long the whole process took until that moment when she had someone waiting on her.
Steve exited the side door while Mab slowly descended to the curb and had come up to the front before her wheels ever touched concrete. Chivalry isn't dead, Mab thought, it just got put on ice for a while.
"Thank you," Mab sighed as the bus pulled away from the curb. "I really appreciate you stepping in."
"Steve," he introduced again, holding out a hand.
"Mab," she replied, wiping the tire-dirt of her chair off on hands onto her jeans before taking his hand. "I hope I didn't mess up your plans for the day."
He tucked his hands in his jacket pockets. "Not at all - I'm picking up books for a friend."
This is kind of wild, Mab thought. "Well, I appreciate it. Have a good one," she said as she turned away, headed for 42nd street.
"You're not going inside?" Steve asked, following only a step.
"Wheelchair access is around on the 42nd street side," she explained patiently.
His ears turned a little red. "Oh, sorry, I-"
"Please don't apologize," Mab interrupted sharply, even as she plastered on another friendly social smile. She simply couldn't stand hearing any more apologies, especially not from him. "You didn't know. It's fine." She rolled forward and back a bit, a fun motion that usually distracted people out of whatever conversational rut she was suffering through. "You have a good day, Steve."
"Thanks. You, uh… you too." He waved.
Mab thought for a moment about either thanking him for his service or acknowledging his status overall but decided against it. He deserved to be invisible sometimes, too. He wasn't wearing fake glasses and a baseball cap because he wanted to be fawned over on public transit.
She'd feel bad later about being short with him, but that was a problem for future-Mab. Present-mab was getting tired of human interaction and social niceties and needed a new book to distract herself. Something well-edited so she couldn't be interrupted by typos.
Mab chuckled under her breath as she picked up speed to better negotiate the wheelchair ramp. What was Captain America doing on public transit, anyway?
Steve's neck reminded him that he'd been staring up at the ceiling for a little too long as he stood in the library's grand entrance. It was exactly the distraction he'd been hoping for. The compound felt cramped at the corners, and the empty tower felt too… empty.
Tony had offered him a range of cars to choose from for his 'wild joyride in the city', but Steve honestly just preferred the bus. There were more buses and trains available now than when he was a kid, but it was still basically the same. Smelled the same, anyway.
The public library was also still the same. A little cleaner on the inside than he remembered - no more cigarette smoke adding a film to the upper surfaces. It was nicer this way.
Steve sighed and fished a slip of paper out of his pocket - he'd made a list of books that might be a nice escape for Ginny Ellis, and he should probably get around to finding them.
The library was a comforting maze with levels that didn't get more confusing or labyrinthian the deeper he explored. There were no safety gates and guards with oversized rifles and prisoners with defeated expressions. Instead, there were computers, and study alcoves, and rows upon rows of carefully preserved books.
Everything in its best place, sorted, aligned as tightly as military ranks. Steve traced the nearly identical labels, digits increasing and decreasing to provide a coded roadmap to knowledge.
Maps led to plenty more than just knowledge, Steve thought. We've got thirty-five miles of unmapped territory between us and the nearest forward base. He could taste the evergreen air, smell the gun oil. He missed the certainty of the older times; the assurance and clarity of it.
"Excuse me," a voice prompted, "can I get around you?"
Steve jerked out of his memory violently, almost dropping the books in his arms. I'm so sorry," he apologized profusely, stepping to the side.
The voice interrupting his distraction was immediately familiar - the handicapped young woman from the bus. She nearly skimmed his trousers with the black and yellow wheelchair as she rolled past, giving him a wry smile. "You apologize a lot for things that aren't your fault?"
Her question, sharp but not biting or vicious, carried a taste of that vintage wit he missed from the old commandos. "Just how I was raised, ma'am."
"Sure do love being called 'ma'am'. Makes me feel all youthful and spry." Mab glanced at a slip of paper, tracing the air with her finger as she counted the numbers in reverse. Her face fell as her finger traced higher, and finally completely out of her reach.
"Which book can I get for you?" Steve asked.
"No, I can-" she started to say.
Steve glanced at the book's call number, clearly visible on her slip of paper at his angle, and grabbed the book from the shelf. "It's okay to ask for help, you know. " He glanced at the cover. "I really don't know anything about poetry," he said as he handed her the book.
Dark anger shadowed her face, but it was swiftly replaced with a practiced banal smile that completely failed to reach her eyes. A muscle on her jaw tightened, revealing the anger hiding behind the mild upturn of her lips that pretended to be friendly.
Uh-oh. Somehow, he'd said something very, very wrong.
"Thank you," she said slowly, dangerously, even veiled in a smile, "for your help." She looked down at the book he'd handed her.
"I said something stupid, didn't I?" Steve asked bluntly. "It's amazing how quickly I can put my foot in my mouth around women."
The fake smile fell from her face as his comment drew her attention upwards again. Her surprise morphed into a smile, a real one that twisted her mouth into a sly grin. She leaped on the opportunity to make a joke. "What's amazing is that you can reach; it's so far away."
Steve laughed, and someone in the next aisle over shushed him angrily. "Sorry," he whispered back.
"Well, you either 'get it' or... you don't." Mab held up the book. "Poetry, I mean." A blue cover promised poems about the sea.
Steve crossed his arms, looking up at the wide selection of books. "Any suggestions where I could start?"
"Well, if you don't mind having your guts ripped out by a short poem, then Neil Hilborn is a great place to start." Mab rolled backward a bit, reaching down to grab a book with a coiled snake on the cover.
"Thanks?" he said cautiously, adjusting his fake glasses.
"You're allowed to say 'no, thanks', by the way," Mab said, withdrawing her proffered book slightly.
"No," Steve said hurriedly, tugging it out of her grip, "I wouldn't have asked."
"Really?" Mab raised an eyebrow.
"No, ma'- Mab." Steve course-corrected.
"And here I was thinking you called me ma'am because you'd forgotten my name." She rocked forward and back in the chair like Steve might see most people shift from foot-to-foot. "It was nice meeting you, Steve."
"Can I walk you out?" he asked automatically, wincing as he tripped over severely-outdated mannerisms.
"I think I know the way, besides," she grinned, and Steve couldn't help but smile with her, "I can always follow my tire tracks back if I get lost."
"Yes ma'am," he agreed, but corrected a little too loudly: "Dammit - Mab!"
"Shh!" the angry patron in the next aisle hissed at him.
"Yeah, Steve; where are your manners?" Mab agreed, pressing her index finger to her lips as her eyes sparkled with laughter before she vanished around the edge of the aisle.
Steve sighed in resignation. He could defeat an army of aliens from space but not the rules of the library. He tapped his selected books on the edge of a shelf, smiling in spite of himself.
Paul pulled the bus up to the stop in front of the New York Public Library and opened the doors as the bus crouched down to make the step up easier. He saw the girl in the wheelchair waiting near the back of the pack rather than at the front like she was supposed to be.
He grimaced; he'd been hoping to get through the shift without having to work the new lift system. His luck was pretty bad that day, it seemed. Paul got out of his seat to flip up the adjustable seats and make room for her chair. Some old man grumbled about losing his seat but stopped when Paul shot him a dirty look.
He took a deep breath as he sat back in his chair, both hands on the lift controls. It seemed fairly straightforward and almost identical to the last system. He just had to push the red button and twist there… and the lift slowly extended from the front door, reaching for the curb.
Immensely proud of himself, Paul's smile slipped as the young lady stayed on the curb, looking back at the library with an amused grin on her face.
"You getting on?" Paul asked, doing his best to be patient.
"Yes, sorry," she turned, face flushed. She rolled her black-and-yellow sport-style wheelchair onto the lift panel and grasped the handles on either side.
Okay, so… green button to lift it? Paul guessed. The mechanics ground against each other in complaint as Paul fudged with the controls, switching the controls to work in the correct direction as fast as possible. "Sorry, sorry," he mumbled as she rolled into the main aisle.
"No problem, thanks for picking me up." She beamed a warm smile, and Paul felt a little better.
"Let me scan that for you," he offered. She surrendered the subsidized pass and he scanned it in, barely glancing over to make sure it went through before he followed her to the side of the bus to strap her chair down for the ride.
A/N: When was the last time I did a legit MeetCute? The answer to that is… 2016. Steve thinks fake glasses and a hat are enough to be a real disguise. Buddy…your face is all over everywhere. Mab recognized you instantly. Get a better disguise.
I've been frustrated by this story for a minute, and actually sat down and completely rewrote my outline. I've done it before in stories that I pitch a chapter and rewrite from scratch when it gets frustrating (most notably, RITD's "escape velocity"), but this was the first total plot overhaul I've ever done. The plot is much smoother now, and though there's a lot of work to do I feel like I've got a solid footing to give you something good and satisfying to wrap up Steve's version of history (his AU, lol).
I'm aaaaaaalmost done with my Yu Yu Hakusho fanfic trilogy, and then I'll be able to focus on one character at a time.
I love my reviewers! kade32, LisaPark, Flours, huffle-bibin, and Sulia Serafine!
PLEASE REVIEW! This story is hard and reviews are encouraging.