Author's note: Merry Christmas, everyone! Hope you have a great holiday.

Chapter 10

Christmas came. Steve did what he had always done for Christmas since his mother had died, and started the day by visiting the gravesite of his mother and father at Holy Cross Cemetery. He had braced himself for the fact that the small, plain headstone with both their names inscribed would be weathered and undecorated, having gone unvisited for so many decades, but for some reason it had not even occurred to him that his own monument would be there beside theirs. His was much larger and nicer and seemed to be well-maintained, but it wasn't decorated with anything other than the standard flag for veterans. There was no one left alive who remembered him, either. He brushed away the snow on his parents' headstone and left a pair of poinsettias before leaving.

As usual, he had found a nearby charity that needed volunteers on Christmas Day. This year it was a veterans home that wanted people to serve Christmas dinner and keep company with the residents who didn't have family nearby to visit. He got to know several elderly veterans who had survived battles he remembered, and he spent hours listening to their stories. They were surprised by his interest, and that he knew so much about the time. He didn't tell them his story; it was too unbelievable, for one thing, and he wasn't sure he wanted the attention that was sure to follow.

Once he had been quietly flattered by the interest strangers had shown in him as the star of films and comic books, back before he had ever served a day in combat. He wasn't so sure he wanted that kind of scrutiny now. He wasn't himself. He wasn't Captain America, either. Whoever or whatever he was now, he needed time to figure it out before he could face any publicity.

Then again, maybe his celebrity days were over for good. So far no one had seemed to recognize him. He'd found Captain America materials on the internet, but maybe no one was looking it up anymore. It had all been so long ago. The world had forgotten him, and right now he was more relieved about that than regretful.

Sharon sat surrounded by the joyous noise of Uncle Mike's family at his home near Philadelphia, enjoying her Christmas dinner despite the fact that her parents were at the other end of the country visiting her brother this year, while she had come to Uncle Mike's out of a need to stay close to work.

Compared to her own smaller family, this house felt like it was packed to the rafters; in addition to Uncle Mike and Aunt Tien, all four of their children and their spouses had come for the holidays, plus all of their children. Sharon had lost count of how many grandchildren there were now — 15 or 16? — with the oldest in high school and the youngest probably just starting school. Sharon had been seated in the dining room, right at the seam between the table for the grownups and the table for the teenagers, which seemed apropos — she had always felt very in-betweeny in Mike's family, being younger than her cousins and yet older than her cousins' children. At least they hadn't relegated her to the little kids' table, where someone was upsetting their drink or knocking food onto the floor every five minutes, she thought with amusement.

They had just finished their feast, with everyone looking duly ridiculous wearing the paper hats that had come in their Christmas crackers, even the grown-ups. "First we spend Thanksgiving celebrating our journey to the New World to escape the redcoats. Then we turn around and do a British Christmas," Uncle Mike had explained to Sharon with a grin when she had first come in and saw the table loaded with roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and pigs in a blanket, and his youngest son Clint had quipped, switching effortlessly between the two accents: "God bless America, and God save the Queen!"

Now Sharon's cousin Natty, Mike's oldest, was going around pouring sparkling cider for everyone for a Christmas toast before they served the pudding. She was, without question, the most beautiful woman Sharon had ever seen, having inherited many of her Grandma Peggy's best features, plus the almond-shaped eyes and small white teeth of her Vietnamese mother. She had been a ballet dancer in her youth, and even in middle age retained that same willowy grace.

Uncle Mike picked up his glass and cleared his throat to get everyone's attention. "To absent family," he said once everyone had quieted down, and an uncharacteristic frown deepened between his eyebrows for a fleeting moment before he took a sip and the rest of the family followed suit.

He must miss his twin, Sharon guessed. "Do you ever get the whole family together all at once?" she ventured to ask into the relative quiet.

"With Sarah's family, too?" Aunt Tien asked. She still had a noticeable accent, although she had moved to America as a young woman.

"It's pretty chaotic when we do," Uncle Mike said, a smile lighting up his face again in a flash. "She has an even bigger family than ours."

"Drumroll please!" Sharon's cousin Sammy called out, a match hovering over the Christmas pudding, and as the youngest children enthusiastically drummed their hands on the table, she lit up the pudding and everyone ooohed and aaahed obligingly.

The pudding and the trifle were served up, the richness of which was almost a punishment after such a big dinner. Hoping to give her stomach a chance to settle before attempting to eat any more, Sharon turned to Roger, the oldest of her cousins' children, and struck up a conversation, asking what his plans were after graduation this coming spring.

"I'm applying for an internship at Stark Industries," he answered readily, putting down his fork.

"Oh, really? In what?"

"Computer hacking." Sharon frowned a little, and he quickly added, "The white hat kind."

"Oh. I bet that's pretty competitive."

He nodded seriously. "It is. I'm really stressed out about it, to be honest."

"Well, if you don't make the cut, you could always come to S.H.I.E.L.D.," Sharon suggested. "We need people like that too."

Roger smiled a little. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is your calling, Aunt Sharon. Stark Industries is mine."

He spoke with such seriousness - almost a certainty coloring his words - that she was a little taken aback.

"Why, what's the difference?" she asked.

Roger took a long moment to answer. "It isn't just the hacking. I'm interested in the field of artificial intelligence," he said at last. "Tony Stark's on the cutting edge of that."

"Is he?" Sharon asked curiously.

"Sure, how do you think he runs his suits?"

She raised her eyebrows. "You think you're going to get your hands on an Iron Man suit?"

Roger laughed. "As an intern? Not likely. But I don't care about the hardware anyway," he added. "It's the software that interests me."

"I bet you can get that internship," Sharon said reassuringly. "And maybe you'll get to see your Uncle Harrison at Stark Tower sometimes when you go to work." She glanced up the table, where her cousin Harrison was deep in some discussion with Uncle Mike.

"I doubt it," Roger said. "Last time I asked him what Happy Hogan had him doing, he said he'd tell me... but then he'd have to kill me." He laughed easily.

"How about you?" Sharon asked Max, Roger's younger brother who was sitting across from her. "Do you know what you're doing yet? I guess you still have a few years to figure it out."

"A few," Max agreed. "But I know what I'm after. I'm going to study adoption law."

"Adoption law, huh?" Sharon repeated. "What gave you that idea?"

Max grew serious. "Because I have a family like this," he said quietly, "and I hate to think of other kids who won't." He cleared his throat. "There's a shortage of people qualified to help kids get placed. My Aunt Maggie back in England is already facilitating adoptions all over Europe. I wanted to be a part of it, too."

Sharon caught the eye of Janet, sitting next to Max, and said, "How about you? Planning to run for president of the United States?"

She was only joking, but to her surprise Janet answered readily: "Nope. I'm going to study medicine. Probably specialize in the nervous system. I'd like to help paralyzed people get their mobility back."

Sharon blinked a few times. "How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

What was it with the Carter children? Sharon had noticed it more and more over the last few visits she'd had with them: it was like they hit puberty and suddenly became as self-possessed as an adult. They all seemed to have inherited Aunt Peggy's fierce independence, yes, but it was more than that. More than anyone else she knew, the Carters were all driven by a rock-firm sense of purpose. They knew exactly what they wanted from life and they were relentless in pursuing it. Was it something about the way they were raised? Or genetic predisposition?

"Is there anyone at this table who doesn't know what they're doing when they grow up?" Sharon wondered out loud.

"Time's a valuable thing, Aunt Sharon," Roger said briefly. "Waste not."

By now everyone had finished their dessert, and some of the grownups began clearing the table while others took the younger children outside to keep them entertained and out of the way. Sharon started to help carry dishes into the kitchen, but then Uncle Mike pulled her aside to a quieter part of the house.

"So how is our old friend doing?" he asked.

Sharon had told Aunt Peggy about being assigned to Captain Rogers, and had already called her a couple of times since then to report on Rogers' doings. She didn't exactly have permission from Fury to be doing that, and she felt a little guilty about doing the double-agent routine - on her very first solo assignment, no less - but not guilty enough to stop. Aunt Peggy couldn't possibly put this information to bad use; her interest in Rogers was clearly personal.

And so, willingly, Sharon pulled out her phone and showed Uncle Mike the photo Agent Delgado had taken with a telephoto lens of Steve Rogers visiting the cemetery that morning. He looked at it in silence for a long moment.

"You know, we usually decorate those graves," he said at last, handing Sharon her phone back. "For Mom."

"Not this year?" Sharon asked.

He shook his head. "We had a feeling he would go. Didn't want to run into him."

"Why not? Maybe he would like to meet you."

Uncle Mike was a long time answering. "It's Mom's wish."

And he left it at that, going over to help Aunt Tien set up some board games for the older grandkids. Sharon ended up joining them, and pretty soon they were all laughing and talking animatedly as they played, so that she gradually forgot how sorry she was that she didn't get to see her own parents and brother this year. Mike's family was always welcoming to her, and all things considered, it had been a pretty good Christmas.

Later, when she was walking down the hall on the way to the bathroom, she happened to overhear Uncle Mike's voice faintly through the wall as she passed his bedroom.

"I know, Mom, I know," she heard him say in a placating tone. "I feel the same way. But it's only this year. Next Christmas he'll be with Nat."

She assumed at first that he was talking about Captain Rogers - she knew Mike would pass along to his mother the update she'd given him - but what did that have to do with her cousin Natty? Why would she of all people even meet Captain Rogers, much less spend a holiday with him?

She must have misunderstood. Uncle Mike must have been talking about someone else.

After Christmas passed and January went by, Sharon became familiar with Rogers' pattern. Several weeks of good days, followed by two or three bad days, filled with increasingly desperate attempts to make himself sleep. Sometimes he ran, and sometimes he went to the boxing gym he'd joined and took his frustrations out on a punching bag. Maria Hill checked up on him from time to time.

One of his worst bouts came after he stumbled across a reference to 9/11 in the newspaper and then spent hours researching it online. Sharon felt more than a little distress of her own, watching Rogers watch the old video footage of the Twin Towers coming down with a horror-stricken expression on his face. The next day he checked out a book from the library about the Patriot Act, and Sharon noted with a little confusion that it seemed to disturb him as much as the attacks themselves had. He read the book straight through in one day, and the next day, after yet another sleepless night, he'd called up Fury and started a heated discussion that started off with the accusation: "You told me we weren't at war anymore!" and ended with a barrage of pointed questions about exactly how many civic rights had been given away in the aftermath of the attacks, and at what cost. It had ended with Fury telling Rogers with some impatience to calm down and go get some sleep before hanging up perfunctorily, and in response Rogers slammed down the phone with such uncharacteristic rage on his face that Sharon was taken aback.

He never succumbed to inactivity. Even on his worst days he would still get out of the apartment and stick to his routines. But on those days it was clear from the wounded-dog expression on his face and his total disinterest in striking up conversations with people that he was only going through the motions.

One day, he did something new and took public transportation all the way to Brooklyn. Intrigued, Sharon followed him, being careful not to be seen. Brooklyn was his home turf, she knew. He'd lived here since he was a baby, right up until the moment he left to join the Army. Rogers walked up and down the snowy streets, stopping from time to time to study various buildings. She had a feeling things probably didn't look very familiar to his eyes.

On a hunch, she pulled out her phone and started Googling the addresses he was pausing at, along with search terms like "1920" or "1930," the decades of his childhood and youth. She got lots of interesting photos. Little corner shops marked with big signs that read "Luncheonette: Drugs, Candy, Soda" or "Victoria Hatters." Places to get suits pressed. Muddy Brooklyn streets being paved with brick by Irish immigrant workers. Sharon looked up at that, curious; Rogers' parents had been Irish immigrants. Had his father taken part in that project? But of course the bricks had long ago been replaced by asphalt, and all the charming little shops had been replaced by sprawling big-box stores. Even Ebbets Field was now gone, and towering apartment buildings had taken its place.

After he got back home, he sketched. And the next chance she got, Sharon flipped through his notebook and saw that he'd made a large sketch of his old neighborhood. Half of it was drawn in the past, and half in the present day. The past side was drawn in clean and airy lines, while the present day was drawn with thick strokes that made it look dark and soulless. It wasn't hard to see what he thought of the changes.

A few days later Agent Rodriguez reported that Rogers had bought himself a suit and tie. That night he had another bad night, his first in several weeks... but in the morning, when Sharon was on duty, he got up anyway and went to Mass in his new clothes, something he'd never done before. Sharon took it as a hopeful sign: if he could take comfort from worship, or even become a part of a church community, maybe it would help with his symptoms. She didn't go inside herself; churches were some of the hardest places to blend in, since there were always people on the lookout for visitors to welcome, but she waited outside and listened in. It sounded like a nice service, and afterward she heard a woman talking to Rogers, asking him about himself. They chatted for a few minutes, and then she heard Rogers ask the woman: "Is the service always like that?"

"Like what?" the woman asked.

"Backwards," Rogers said. "The priest facing us instead of God. Everything in English."

"Oh, that?" The woman sounded surprised. "Haven't you ever been to a Novus Ordo service?"

"I... guess not," he said, sounding a little stunned.

"Well, they're everywhere. I don't know how you avoided it so long."

Sharon tipped her head back and blew out a sigh. She was Anglican herself, like her parents, but she'd heard her Catholic friends talking about this. Something they'd changed decades ago to make the service more accessible. A lot of Catholics liked it, but a lot of traditionalists didn't, believing that the beauty of the Latin Mass had been lost.

Great, she thought. We can't even get church right for him.

Rogers got back on the subway, headed in the direction of his apartment. Looking at his hunched shoulders as he stared moodily out the window, Sharon wasn't holding her breath about his chances of sleeping tonight. She was starting to get a feel for the kinds of things that set him off. Watching him from the other end of the car, she got to wondering if maybe it was possible to head off one of his episodes once it started brewing. If they could distract him somehow, or break into his solitude... Impulsively, she called Agent Hill and asked her just that.

Hill agreed that it was worth a try, and so Rogers had hardly walked through the door of his apartment when Hill called him and asked him if an agent could pick him up and bring him in for some training. Pretty soon a S.H.I.E.L.D. car came and picked him up. Sharon waited patiently in the lobby, and a few minutes later another agent pulled up in another car, and took her too. Fury had asked her to come in and make a report while Rogers was occupied.

The car didn't take Sharon to Manhattan Headquarters, but to the driving range S.H.I.E.L.D. maintained on the outskirts of the city. Fury met her as soon as she walked through the door and led her up to the rooftop, where they had a good view of the driving range. Hill was down below, showing Rogers a variety of vehicles and, presumably, explaining to him the changes in technology over the decades.

"So what's the problem with him, really, Agent 13?" Fury asked, hands on hips as he watched Rogers below starting up a Jeep, with Hill in the passenger seat. "Is it the post-traumatic stress, or is he just having trouble dealing with the culture shock?"

"I think they're feeding off each other," Sharon said. She'd had a lot of time to think about this. "It's a vicious cycle. Sometimes he takes things in stride, but a lot of times..." She trailed off.

"He hates our world, Fury," she finally said, too weary and frustrated to try to sugar-coat it. "He died to save us, or at least he meant to, and now we've gone and spoiled everything he tried to save."

"Good," Fury said firmly. "The sooner we can brush the bloom off that pathological idealism of his, the better. He needs to wake up and join the real world."

He left the rooftop to take a phone call and left Sharon alone. She watched Rogers maneuver the Jeep around the obstacle course for a while, and then, glancing around to make sure she was really alone, she called Aunt Peggy. It was a little early in the morning in England, but she answered. After the pleasantries, Sharon filled her in on Rogers' recent progress.

"We disappoint him, Aunt Peggy," she concluded, and she couldn't help but feel it as a personal failing, although she knew it wasn't rational. "He hates what we've done with our freedom."

"He doesn't hate us," Aunt Peggy said calmly. "Darling, it's always been hard for older generations to accept the changes in the world. I know something of what he's feeling - I think all of my generation does - but the rest of us were eased into the changes gradually. We had time to accept them, time to see it all in perspective. Time to see the good as well as the bad. He'll get there eventually."

"It's just that this is really hard to watch," Sharon said. "He's so unhappy. I think he thinks he doesn't belong here."

Aunt Peggy took a long time to answer, and when she did, she sounded tearful. "Whether he knows it or not, he does belong here. When he left me... when he left us, when he went missing... it was hard to accept, but I see now that it happened for a purpose. This time is when he's needed most." She took in a shaky breath, and then spoke more firmly. "Right now he's paying a price. But if you know him as I do, Sharon, you know that he wouldn't hesitate for a second to pay any price, once he knew what was at stake."

"What's at stake?" Sharon repeated, trying to understand. Was Aunt Peggy having a memory lapse?

"He's a shield," Aunt Peggy said. "And he'll protect us. Whatever it takes."

TO BE CONTINUED

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