Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel.
A/N: I'm sure this has been done before, but I wanted to try my hand at it. Also, this is my first one-shot! I wrote it spontaneously in 2 hours.
When Beth got to work that day, she fully expected it to be a normal, low-key day. Well, as low-key as one can get when working at a cafe at the foot of Stark Tower.
Most of the patrons were tourists or fans of Iron Man who sat around for most of the day drinking coffee and other signature beverages, desperately waiting for a fleeting glimpse of Iron Man. Beth always smiled at them kindly. She had always been a Captain America fan herself.
She thought back to an odd exchange a few days earlier with an interesting man. He was odd in the way that he looked and spoke. Very old-fashioned. It was almost as if he had time-traveled from the forties to the modern day.
"Waiting on the big guy?" she had asked, approaching his table.
"Ma'am?" He had asked, a quizzical look on his face.
"Iron Man," she clarified, "a lot of people eat here just to see him fly by."
"Right," he said, nodding, almost as if he was reminding himself of something.
"Maybe another time," he stated, pulling out his wallet.
"The table's yours as long as you like," Beth said cheerfully, pouring him another cup of coffee, "Nobody's waiting on it."
"Plus we've got free wireless," she said, walking away.
"Radio?" She heard him ask.
She had looked back at him, confused. Who would ask that?
Beth enjoyed her job, certainly. But she had other ideas in mind. She needed to save up enough money to go to art school. Her parents thought it was a waste of time and money, but she wanted to follow her dreams, even if they gave her an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. So she had left her small town in the Midwest in order to pursue her dream. It turned out that her dream was expensive, so she found this job as a waitress. It wasn't always glamorous, but it had its perks, like seeing Iron Man daily and serving attractive but very old-fashioned men.
At the table she was serving, a family with a few young children suddenly looked up at the sky. She followed their gaze, watching as Iron Man flew into his tower. She shrugged. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen it before.
A few minutes later, they all heard a crash and watched as Tony Stark fell from the top of the Tower only to have his suit chase after and envelope him mid-fall. Beth shrugged again. Tony Stark had a reputation for being reckless. It wasn't all that unexpected for him to jump out of his tower just to test a new design.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang from high up. Beth looked up and felt her stomach twist at the sight. There was a large black hole in the otherwise tranquil blue sky. And there were what she could only assume to be aliens coming out of it.
She ran into the diner, hoping her fellow waitresses and their customers were right on her heels. She didn't stop until she got to the window and looked out. There were alien ships flying all over the place, shooting everyone that they could see, and a big blue beam creating the hole in the sky coming from the top of Stark Tower. She had never seen anything like it.
Beth silently watched the chaos continue outside the window.
All of a sudden, an alien shot at them and the glass of the window broke.
Beth wasted no time. She immediately ran out the diner's front door and into the battle. She had no idea what she would do when she got out there. She just needed to get away.
She gasped as a man, a civilian like herself, was shot in front of her. She ran, and continued to run until she found what she deemed to be safe. A toppled over car. She would be safe enough behind it until she figured out what else to do.
—
Am I safe? Beth thought, sitting up in a pile of rubble. She decided to find a better place to hide, and stealthily found her way through more of the rubble. The battle seemed largely over, or at least it had moved on to another part of the city.
She continued to run, ducking every time she heard a distant gunshot. She thought of her brother, a marine who had been injured in Afghanistan. At least Johnny had been trained to fight. Beth just wanted to hide, to be safe.
She slowly picked her way through a fallen arch. I used to walk past the building this was on every day, she thought sadly, remembering how she had wished she could draw it but never had the time.
Then she came across a fallen ship with a dead alien. I wonder who he was, she thought just as another ship flew overhead.
She then looked over and saw a police officer motioning for her to join him. She was about to when he was shot down. She gasped, horror in the pit of her stomach. She fought the urge to scream as an alien came at her and dragged her away.
—
Beth breathed heavily as she was shoved into a room stuffed with people. She warily looked around, searching desperately for an exit. She had been very claustrophobic ever since her brother shut her in a closet when they were younger in a stupid childish game. She never got over her fear of the dark or enclosed places, though.
She knew she would probably die today, as the aliens were pointing their guns at the crowd. She made her way to the back, hoping that if she was farther back, she could slip out before they started shooting. She was almost there when she felt something crunch beneath her foot.
Beth looked down. Underneath her foot was a simple pair of glasses. As she picked them up, she wondered who they belonged to and whether or not they were still alive. Today had been horrible. She was certain that many good people were dead.
Just then, an alien activated a device she was certain was a bomb. As it ticked away the remaining seconds she had to live, someone came into the window and began to fight the aliens.
She stared open-mouthed as he threw an alien over the railing.
"Everyone clear out!" Captain America yelled, and began fighting off an alien who grabbed him and put him in a headlock.
Beth ducked as the bomb went off, expecting to die. But instead, she heard glass breaking.
She lifted her head, and, seeing that it was all clear, ran to the nearest door. She had to know if the Captain was alright, not that there was anything she do to help him if he wasn't.
Beth picked her way through the crowd to the nearest door and began pounding on it. Several men joined her and they quickly got it open.
She ran out of the building quickly, looking back once. When she did, she couldn't believe who she saw.
It was Captain America, bleeding and battle-worn. But it was also that odd man she had met that one day at the diner. And suddenly, it made sense. His old-fashioned oddities and mannerisms, the fact that he called her "ma'am" and didn't immediately know who "the big guy" was.
And he had saved her. Her, a nobody from the Midwest who selfishly wanted to paint so she could make a fortune. Well, no more. If a man from 1945 could save her, someone who he had never met from 2012, then she could help others. She could serve too.
—
"Some questions are being asked about the Avengers themselves. Their sudden appearance and equally sudden disappearance…." The news reporter looked at her with a gleam in his eye.
"What? That this is all somehow their fault?" Beth asked incredulously into the microphone that had been shoved into her face.
"Captain America saved my life," she said smiling, "Wherever he is, and wherever they all are, I would just…I would want to say thank you."
—
"Mom?" she asked, picking up the phone in her apartment that had miraculously survived.
"Beth?!" the voice on the other end answered. "Thank goodness you're alive! Are you okay?"
"Yes, Mom. I'm fine," she answered quietly.
"Thank goodness!" her mom said again, quickly rambling about various family members who had called, worried for Beth's safety.
"Mom?" she asked, interrupting.
"Yes, honey?" Her mom replied, sensing the urgency in her tone.
"I don't want to be an artist anymore."
"Why not?"
"The only reason I was doing it was for fame and fortune. It doesn't make me happy."
"Okay…"
"I've decided that I want to help people. Someone who didn't need to be there today saved my life. I will never get to formally thank him, but I think I can pay it forward. I want to go to nursing school instead."
"That's a wonderful idea, honey," her mom replied and Beth could hear the smile in her voice, "You have always had such a caring heart."
—
13 Years Later…
Steve reluctantly sat on the hospital bed to have his wounds tended to. His friend had just died saving the universe and there was absolutely nothing he could have done about it.
"Thank you," a blonde nurse said as she stitched up a particularly bad cut.
"For what?" he asked, his heart broken for the man he had called friend.
"For my life."
He looked up, meeting her blue eyes with his own.
"What?" he asked.
"For my life," she repeated simply. "You saved my life in the first Battle of New York. I never got the chance to properly thank you."
He shrugged. "For all the good it did," he stated bitterly, in the depths of sorrow.
"Look at me," she commanded.
He looked immediately, feeling like a cadet again under the mercy of a certain Agent Carter.
"You did so much good that day. Because of you, I have my life. My husband has his. If you had not been there, our children would not be alive today. So thank you," she said, handing him a photograph.
In it was the nurse, smiling and holding two newborn babies. Sitting next to her was a young man holding a toddler girl who was not looking at the camera, but was instead enraptured by the newborns. Next to him was a young boy with a cheesy grin on his face. He turned it over. On the back it read: "Thank you. Without you, we would not be alive. Love, Beth and Family."
Steve looked up again, tears in his eyes, only to find that the blonde nurse had left. He smiled, knowing that even though in that moment it felt like it was all for nothing, he really had made a difference. They had made a difference.
And with that, he decided to take a friend's advice. To get some life of his own.