Chapter 11

Steve Rogers didn't come home from the driving range empty-handed. Maria Hill slipped up to the roof at the end of his driver's training to tell Sharon and Nick Fury that Rogers had actually cracked a smile when she had him try the Harley Davidson, and that he was a natural rider.

"He looks like he was born on two wheels," Hill had said with a smile.

Fury, without a moment's hesitation, told her to send it home with him.

Agent Hill shot Fury a slightly amused look. "Not only does Rogers not have a current drivers license," she pointed out wryly, "but he has never had one. He just told me he learned how to drive in the Army."

"Then run up to Records and have them print one out for him," Fury said impatiently. "Guy looks like Evel Knievel out there, I'm pretty sure he can handle the interstate."

"What birth date am I supposed to put on it?" Hill shot back.

Fury opened his mouth to retort, then paused, his brow suddenly creasing in a rare moment of hesitation.

"If you take his age," Sharon supplied, attracting both of their attention, "and count backward, it would be 1984."

Hill looked surprised. "Is he really that young?"

"From 1918 to 1945 is 27 years," Sharon confirmed. "Except he went missing a few months before his birthday, but of course he's been here a few months now," and then she added after another moment's thought, "although he hasn't reached his actual birthday yet — that's July 4th — so it really depends on how you count it..." She suddenly realized both Fury and Hill were giving her odd looks while she rattled on, and cleared her throat sheepishly. "Anyway. He's 27, more or less."

Rogers began to take the motorcycle out on the weekends, maneuvering it smoothly through the Manhattan traffic until he got out of the city proper and onto more unobstructed roads. Sharon followed him in an unmarked company car with the help of a tracker as he explored, and she sometimes caught sight of his expression when he rode that motorcycle: rare but unmistakable flashes of pure, unadulterated joy. She'd never seen that particular emotion from him before.

Sharon was surprised by how much he liked it. She had assumed that the motorcycle was just part of the Captain America persona, something the artists and filmmakers had added to his public image to make him look cool. In reality, it was a genuine interest of his. She was starting to realize that she didn't have a firm grasp of what was fiction and what was truth when it came to Steve Rogers.

Curious, she started to read biographies about him when she was on night watch. Eventually she asked Hill if she could have his internal file from his SSR days, and that turned out to be even more useful. It had more than a few surprises in it. Sharon had always assumed that the SSR had immediately recognized his potential when he was first rejected by the Army and ushered him straight into the ranks of candidates for Project Rebirth. But it turned out that Rogers had applied for the Army, not once, but five times, each time under a different home address. The future Captain America, forging papers. He was that desperate to fight. It was why he had come to Dr. Erskine's attention.

And it got even better. Sharon had often heard the story of his rescue of the 107th infantry, heroically charging in and single-handedly saving a lot of men who had been given up for dead. Captain America's first big moment on the world's stage.

Turned out, he'd been acting against orders. Upon his return after the successful completion of his mission, Colonel Phillips had given the order retroactively to save face. Sharon laughed out loud, reading it. Captain America, lauded for his patriotism, loyalty and dedication to duty, was a rebel. And what could be more American than that? He had his own moral compass, and he would follow it no matter the cost. Even if it meant breaking rules or disobeying orders. She saw the truth in a sudden flash of insight. No wonder Fury had seemed worried the day he'd given her this assignment. It wasn't just a waiting game for Rogers to recover from his trauma. Fury was actually afraid that he wouldn't be able to control this man even when he was stable.

Sometimes it was hard to reconcile the contrast between the half-broken man she saw before her and the towering figure she read about in the history books. But then she would catch a glimpse of what was hidden inside.

One February night Rogers was waiting at the platform for the train after spending an hour at a restaurant in the usual way, eating and then sketching. It was late, and some of the people waiting around on the platform looked... less than savory. Sharon, hanging back at a safe distance and well-disguised with a dark wig, was grateful for the comfort of both a gun and a taser rod tucked into her waistband under her jacket, just in case she needed to protect herself or Rogers. And then she laughed at herself for the thought. As if Rogers needed her protection from any petty mugger.

One of the more unpleasant-looking men loitering around the platform wandered around aimlessly until he slowed to a halt, staring at a woman not far from Sharon. He said something to her that Sharon didn't quite catch. The woman looked at him, startled, and then looked away again, swallowing nervously.

The man said something again, gesturing vigorously with his hands, but the woman didn't look up. Sharon edged a little closer, wanting to listen in and evaluate the threat. Persistently, the man kept tossing out comments at the woman. Some of it sounded vaguely lewd. Some of it made no sense at all. The woman didn't meet the man's eyes, trying her best to ignore his behavior, and Sharon shifted her weight, growing uncomfortable and wishing the guy would just move along. Something about his eyes did not look quite right.

He didn't move along. Instead, he slouched closer to the woman and started talking even louder. Now that she could hear him more clearly, Sharon realized that he was definitely being lewd. The woman stared at the ground, cheeks flushed, and clutched her purse more tightly. She was alone, and she obviously had no idea what to do.

Sharon longed to intervene, but knew she could do nothing to draw attention to herself, not with Rogers within sight. She looked over at a man in a suit standing near her. He had glanced over at the developing situation a couple of times, but showed no signs of getting ready to take any action on the woman's behalf. Instead, he was now keeping his eyes fixed firmly on his tablet. Everyone else on the platform seemed equally oblivious, although they had to be noticing what was happening. Sharon was irritated, and yet she couldn't quite blame them, either. Once, she had seen a man intervene in a situation like this, only to be roundly scolded by the victim for not minding his own business. Not to mention the unpleasantness that would follow if the harasser got violent and the police had to be called. No wonder no one wanted to step in. He might even be armed. Sometimes the crazies were.

Sharon glanced back over at Rogers, and started when she realized he had pushed off from the pillar he was leaning against and was walking straight over to the harasser with a purposeful gait. He came right up to the pair, inserting himself smoothly between them, and looked the guy straight in the eye.

"Stop," Rogers said, his deep voice carrying clearly across the platform.

Nervous, Sharon ducked her head slightly and put a hand up to hide her face, not wanting Rogers to get a good look at her. She'd never been this close to him before. She peeked at him through her fingers. His face was hard, and he suddenly looked threatening in a way he never had before. There were days at a time when Sharon almost forgot he was a super soldier, but this was definitely not one of those times. Her mind raced, wondering what to do. Could she somehow stop this from escalating? Fury wouldn't like it if Rogers made a public ruckus, no matter what the cause. It wasn't exactly the ideal way to reintroduce Captain America to society, and the timing was all wrong, anyway. He still wasn't ready for duty.

The man got up in Rogers' face, cutting loose with a voluble stream of vulgarities, insults and threats. Every muscle tense, Sharon reached behind her and rested a hand on the handle of her taser rod. That guy was clearly not in his right mind. She wasn't sure if it was drugs or mental illness, but no sane person would show that much hostility to someone who was clearly bigger and stronger than him. And Rogers was just standing there, calm as a summer's day, taking the abuse but not backing up a single inch.

The scene was attracting attention. The others waiting for the train were looking over, some nervous about what was brewing, some merely curious.

The guy kept yelling. He call Rogers a punk and a snitch. A cracker and a racist. Then he added a couple more epithets that made some of the bystanders gasp. A teenage boy standing near Sharon, laughing derisively, pulled out his phone and held it out, ready to start recording. Thinking quickly, Sharon swiftly walked past him, bumping his elbow and sending the phone skittering across the concrete.

"I'm so sorry," she said quickly, meeting the kid's glare with an apologetic glance, and she stooped to pick up the phone, contriving to pop the battery cover off as she did so. Pretending to be as slow and clumsy as she could, she handed the phone, the battery and the cover to the kid in pieces, ignoring his dirty looks, and then she glanced over at Rogers.

He took one step forward, getting uncomfortably close to the screaming guy. For the first time, his aggressor paused in his tirade, and instinctively took a step back. Rogers immediately took another step forward, and the guy backed up again. A look of fear wandered across his face, as if even through the fog of his impediments he was beginning to realize he might have made a mistake.

"I said, stop," Rogers repeated.

A sudden hush swept over everyone watching. The guy stared at Rogers, anger and doubt warring on his face, until finally, he lowered his gaze, turned, and wandered away, faking a defiant kind of devil-may-care attitude in his body language as he left.

Sharon relaxed her shoulders, feeling the tension drain away. All the people watching began to look back down at their phones. The woman who had been harassed closed her eyes for a moment, looking intensely relieved. Rogers looked back at her and met her eyes for a moment, and she nodded silently, as if to say "thank you." Satisfied, Rogers put his hands in his pockets and went back to leaning against his pillar.

Taking a deep breath, Sharon felt her heart rate begin to go back down. Cautiously, she looked back at Rogers, and tried to contain her amazement.

Fury had spoken of Rogers' black-and-white thinking as a liability, something to be scrubbed away at the earliest opportunity. But Sharon felt a sudden rush of shame sweep over her. Rogers hadn't worried about what would happen to him, or how he would look in front of everyone, or whether some recording of the event would get put online and go viral, where his actions could be taken out of context or misconstrued in the glaring heat of the public stage. He was familiar enough with the internet now that he must have known of the phenomenon and the havoc it could wreak in someone's life. Instead, he had simply done the right thing, no other considerations required, while the rest of them had stood around, dithering. Hoping the problem would just go away.

That was when Sharon realized: our world of gray has made cowards of us all.

She assumed that Rogers wouldn't sleep that night. He must have been shaken by the encounter. But as she watched him go back to his apartment, she was surprised to see that he looked completely at peace. He went to bed at the normal time, and in the morning he began his morning routine looking well-rested and almost happy. Almost as if the encounter had helped him more than hurt him.

Sometimes he could surprise her like that.

April came, and there came a few warm days that got everyone in the city to come out in their short sleeves, hopeful that another New York City winter was over at last. Steve was more than ready to join them.

Things had been better lately. It had been four weeks now since he'd had an episode, the longest he had gone yet. He was cautiously hopeful that maybe the worst was over. Maybe he was finally making progress. And lately, he'd been thinking a lot about his future.

In some ways, as strange as it seemed, he missed the war. He missed having a reason to get up every morning, missed the sense of purpose that had driven him day by day. But he was starting to realize that even if his "accident" had never occurred, he still would have lost that purpose. The war would have ended. He would have gone home along with all the other soldiers, and he would have had to find something to do with his life.

Once he had had a clear picture of his future, or at least what he hoped would be his future. He had long ago made up his mind that once the war was over, he would pursue Peggy. To England, to America, it didn't matter. He would have made her his sweetheart, if he could, and then his wife. Family, stability... everything he had ever wanted.

That dream was now dead in the water. Instead he was stuck here, by turns obsessing over the past and just trying to survive moment by moment in the present. His future was a vast blank space, and that worried him.

He knew it was past time for him to accept reality: Peggy was lost to him. She had been precious and unique, but she was gone. There was no going back. Maybe the best way to honor her memory was to stick to his original plan. Find someone else to settle down with.

A part of him strenuously resisted the thought. He had some inkling that maybe he would never really be over Peggy, that she had left such an impression on his soul that no woman could possibly live up to her memory. But there was another part of him that could not help but notice when he passed a pretty woman on the street. They looked at him now, in a way they never had before his transformation. Sometimes they talked to him, and he couldn't help but wonder whether things might proceed past small talk with some of them if he only made an effort. He could admit it to himself: he was lonely.

He didn't even have any friends, not really. Maria Hill came to see him sometimes and was unfailingly kind, but it was her job to check up on him. It had been several months now since he had spoken to Gabe. At some point Steve had deliberately chosen to stop calling him with questions about all the new things he was learning, realizing that he was never going to adjust to the modern world and become independent if he leaned on Gabe too much for help. That decision — combined with the sporadic bad episodes that tended to leave him totally disinterested in socializing until it had run its course — meant that the friendship had died a natural death. And while he still checked on the elderly Pearl next door from time to time, and occasionally visited the veterans down at the nursing home, they were acquaintances that barely skimmed the surface. He needed something of substance, something with depth.

Maybe if he belonged to someone, it would fill in the hole in his heart. Maybe it would help with his symptoms. If he got well enough, Fury would let him go to work and earn his wages, and then he really would be back to normal.

Other people got over people and met new people. How many times had Bucky gotten over some girl or other? Each time a relationship had fallen apart, Bucky would mope around for a few days or even a few weeks, and then suddenly he'd be putting on a suit and going out to the dance club and coming back with a new pretty girl on his arm, all smiles, like nothing had happened. Why couldn't Steve do that? It had been five months now. Bucky never would have waited that long to move on.

That empty future yawned before him like a chasm with no bottom, but Steve knew he had to steel himself for the jump and find out what was waiting for him.

I can do this, he told himself firmly. I can do this.

TO BE CONTINUED

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