Lemme tell ya, my bank account would look so much better if I owned Marvel. ;)
He was sweating so hard, very unlike his nature. The serum prevents him from ever overexerting his thermal capacity. He sweats less than anyone else because his system doesn't work that way. The soldier tires in short bursts, if he punches with full strength more than twenty times, he toils only for a few seconds before he gets back to his optimal self. This makes it impossible for him to ever be exhausted. His "I can do this all day" byword was made literally true after he undertook the super soldier project.
Small white discs were on points of his biceps and pectorals. He had a few of the circular tapes on his temple and forehead too. The ones on his head had a cord attached to them that led to a giant box that he thought was measuring his movements or of the like. He wasn't really sure. Times really have changed. He was told that Howard Stark created everything that was being used on him. It formed some sort of comfort, because of the familiarity. The captain heard that the surgeon who spearheaded the operation on him was the granddaughter of Doctor Erskine, the man who made him what he is today…or what he was yesterday. There's another point of comfort.
"It's so we can measure your vitals while you work," she said to him regarding the little electrode things they stuck on him. "To see if your system's recovered enough to be able to do what you did before." She was holding onto his file, which he got a chance to look at earlier. The German doctor's signatures and journals were attached to almost all of the papers on his biography. It was hard considering that the last time he remembered seeing the man was moments after he had transformed. And then the German doctor was shot right in front of him. Doctor Abigail Erskine, M.D., the woman in front of him, was reading through all that he wrote, what he expected Steve Rogers to turn out to be. Super strength. Super intelligence. Heightened speed. All the good stuff, Rogers thought in accordance. And as he went through the file, he saw that they were compiled by Margaret Carter. So sad as he was to have missed their dance, he grew even worse with the finding that she had passed. Not only was he brought to the future where he knew no one, but to find that he had missed the woman only by a few months took a toll on him. There was some resentment because the organization didn't find him sooner, but knowing him, didn't dwell on it because it wasn't their fault.
Peggy Carter's notes on his file were there only to concur that what Doctor Erskine thought Captain America was going to be were correct. The doctor today was just trying to see if Steve Rogers was still capable of all that were in his criteria.
His sweating, though, was a problem.
He was put in a training room, with dummies and simulations. The doctor and a few other scientists watched through a window as he fought whatever came to him. They told him that they spent time looking for his shield, but couldn't find it, so he was working on hand-to-hand combat at the moment.
"His agility is above the par. If anything, he's stronger than what Agent Carter explained him to be," said Erskine. Every hit on a punching bag was measured for power and strength, reaching superhuman levels as expected. At one point, a dummy was split in half. He was punching too much, scaring almost everyone in the building who saw him.
Why am I here? He said over and over again in his head. He didn't know what to think, or how to feel. They hadn't even shown him what the outside world looked like. So he punched and kicked what they threw at him in the training room.
"You're sweating because of your time in the ice. Your body's still trying to regulate as if you're still in that environment," Erskine said to him after his training. It explained why he was so cold and hot at the same time, like a fever, though he's not really allowed to get sick. The serum prohibits that. He did hear that the floor of the headquarters he was in was modulated a whole ten degrees colder than its usual to accommodate for him. The director with the eyepatch made it clear to him that he isn't held captive and he's free to roam the floor. And after they made sure that everything with him was perfect, he can go out and live whatever life he wanted, though the director did tell him that a job was open for him if he wanted it. It almost sounded like he was pleading for him to take the spot.
He wasn't surprised, he was built to be a weapon in the first place.
The food was surprisingly good, way better than the MREs back in the war. "We won." Those were the first words the director told him. He woke up in what looked like a private hospital room. The moment he opened his eyes in confusion, the director spoke to him. He doesn't recall his name, but he believes that it might have been Nick or something like that. Then he toured him around the floor. People in black roamed the halls; he was told that those were agents. "Agents of shield," said Fury. He looked at him with a reassuring smile, and something tells the soldier that the man doesn't do that very much. "Margaret Carter really wanted that name when she created this, as a tribute to you. So she labeled us that first before finding words to fit the acronym." The man laughed a little. It doesn't sound like he does that often either, Steve thought.
"It's a shame y'all couldn't find the shield though," the soldier responded with half a smile in remembrance. The director nodded in agreement. He showed him the training facilities, there must have been more than twenty rooms dedicated solely for training. The food place was extremely large. Then they headed to the offices of those overlooking everyone on the floor. Nick Fury's was at a different floor partly because he oversaw the whole building.
Then he was showed to his room. Something tells him that they don't do this for everyone. It wasn't large, just a bed and a dresser full of black clothes that he had seen agents wear. There were a few pairs of white shirts and gray sweats, probably for running. There was a picture of him, Bucky, and a few other soldiers on a bedside table. The Howling Commandos, he smiled at the memory. Another frame had him and his mom before he was experimented on. "We wanted to put those there to make it feel a little bit more like home," said the director. A part of the soldier feels like it wasn't Nick's idea, but put him at ease nonetheless. Right next to the pictures were a giant book. "And that's a little something to get you started on catching up to the twenty-first century." He tabled reading the book for later, just because he wasn't comfortable at the moment to begin that yet. It was too surreal. He saw his suit laid on the bed last. "And we had to cut that off of you in order to operate, but someone sewed it back together. We did our best to preserve it." The soldier nodded in understanding, sitting next to the suit and setting it on his lap to marvel at what had been given to him.
A week later and he's now sitting on a table eating 2012 food, in a 2012 facility, full of 2012 people after training in a 2012 room with 2012 doctors. It was very hard to believe. And he didn't know what to do. It's not like they're holding him prisoner or anything, but because he was limited to the floor in order for them to make sure that he's perfect, there aren't a lot of options. So he ate his food and went back for seconds, thirds and a fourth, noticing the person giving him the food having his fleeting excitement every time. It made the soldier chuckle.
He went back to his room, after, laying on the bed and staring at the ceiling. He missed Peggy and Howie. He smiled at the fact that they created this, whatever this building and this mission and this organization stood for that he's living now. Peggy always wanted to fight wrong and be heard. She wanted to change the world and save everyone in it, almost more than he did. Steve shed a tear at the thought that she succeeded—or is succeeding with the ongoing accomplishments of the institution, or so he has read. She gave the mantle to Director Fury, the soldier gaining trust in the man because Agent Carter wouldn't fail at appointing her successor.
There was something else on the bedside table that he took notice after the first time Fury had shown him his room. It was a compass that held Peggy's picture, something he had carried with him in all of his missions during the war, and the only thing he carried with him as he crashed the jet into the arctic. That picture was his last memory before his comatose. He can't believe they saved it. Her picture was washed because of the initial wetness, until drying later when the soldier was stuck in ice, he was told. The freezing preserved much of the image.
Then he saw his picture with Bucky and the rest of the soldiers he saved that one night from the HYDRA base.
The soldier cried like he had never before. It was mounting with the week's events. Every day that he lived in this millennia was a dose of reality he shouldn't be a part of. Then growing was a resentment of the people who had saved him. Why did they have to do that? Go the extra mile for saving someone who should be dead. Steve thought that every day, even though deep down he knew that he was wrong and he had a sense of gratitude to the people who saved him. His dissonant thoughts were akin to his character, but a newfound world, placing the man out of time, was hard to grasp even for the most thankful of people. Part of him understands the work of doctors and of the hopeful people who had looked up to the Captain America of the second world war. But he wasn't that man anymore. The people that made him who he was were no longer with him. There was a disconnect with time, that he felt he cannot be who he was without Peggy and Howard and Bucky and his mom. Captain America was a people, not one man. The hero was made possible by the people, Steve thought. And so his selflessness was even more defined to this day, owing every bit of his life to the people of today and the people of yesterday. It was a conflict within himself that made it difficult to think of what he is supposed to be. Was there a purpose?
Peggy would want me to be a part of this. Of whatever it is that she created. He sniffed the tears away, smiling at the pictures he spends hours staring at every day. Steve walked out of his room and into the showers, taking a towel with him and a pair of sweatpants to change into.
It was another day and he woke up doing the same thing he had done the in the past week. He goes over to his wardrobe, changes into the black cargo pants that he was given and one of the black shirts. He had noticed that his were a bit different. There was a faint star on the chest of all his shirts, something very distinct that lets him know that people really created everything in this room special for him. The Captain put on black boots and a belt he had been provided with and walked to the room of food for breakfast.
"How have you been feeling?" The doctor asked him, as she does every day. He was sitting on top of a gurney. He goes into this makeshift hospital room that they created on the floor, because they couldn't always bring him down to medical; his clearance didn't allow for that. These were special circumstances also, considering that they needed to check on him three times a day.
"The same," he responded. He felt a little cooler than usual, though. The doctor took that into account, smiling at her checklist. He didn't really understand what that means. She said that he didn't have to do any strenuous activity for the day, even though she knows that he would go against that anyway because working out was the only way he can blow off steam. So all she said was that he pull his punches, because no physical tests will be done on him.
He headed out of the room to go to the only training room he was familiar with, except it was occupied ever since the doctors took away the machines that were supposed to be measuring him. The room was now open for anyone and no longer restricted to him. There was a wave of reassurance overcoming him. It was a sign that they felt he was reaching normality (or as normal as it can get for a superhuman). He stood in the room with glass windows where the doctors would usually be when he would be on the scaffold, training. He crosses his arms and watches a spectacle. There were two agents, dressed in the same black that everyone else was. He noticed that their shirts were different and special, like his. On their chests were faint symbols and shapes that he didn't really have a name for. One looked like a chevron arrow and the other was just…unexplainable. Their symbols had dark colors, though. The woman's was red and the man's was purple. Steve looked down at his shirt, seeing that his was gray. They were all there as a distinction, but not enough for really anyone else to notice. Considering he has enhanced sight, though, the shapes sniped at him like a snake.
The woman was giving the man a run for his money. They looked completely matched. No one wins, no one loses. He feels that the only way anyone could ever win is to catch the other on a mistake, but something tells him that both were pretty perfect in combat.
"My greatest agents," said a familiar voice. He didn't turn, but felt Fury stand next to him and watch the same thing that he was. "Everyone calls them STRIKE Team: Delta."
The soldier remained silent, taking in the woman's combos on the man. She landed a hit on his cheek, surprising him and making the spectating Rogers smile. That doesn't look like it happens often. Fury clicks a button that allows them both to hear everything going on inside the training room.
"Come on, Barton. That was very lame of you," she said with a smirk. Cap hears the name.
Agent Barton just laughs as the two walk in circles to size each other up, both in a defensive stance. Their fighting techniques were different and complex, but somehow each's defensive tactic was able to match another. It's as if kick boxing defense could ever work against tae kwon do offense, which is something Steve was not used to seeing. The training was impeccable. Each agent hints at a different martial art with every move. It's something that the soldier does himself, but never really saw anyone else perform.
"I've never seen anything like it" were the first words he said to Fury.
"With time came the growth of different arts in fighting. People learned them all and put them together, ever since your popularity back in the 40s," said the director.
Back in the 40s. He still wasn't used to that. The 40s seemed like it was yesterday.
He watched as Barton landed an elbow on the woman's stomach. "You're no match, Romanoff," he says. The woman didn't flinch much at the hit and continued to smile. The talk seemed facetious, considering that to the Captain's eyes, she was most definitely a match. She finds herself in a lock, with Barton on the offense, but finds a ways to kick his legs out from other him. She flips frontward and catches him pinned to the ground with his neck between her hands and her other arms getting ready to punch. It stopped in midair though as she backed off.
Barton shakes it off and stands, as both are sizing each other up once again.
"They're the only ones who can train together," said Fury. "Anyone else who tries to go against them are pretty much dead." It was like he was trying to get Rogers in the ring with one of them. The soldier sensed that. Fury was trying to get a kick out of the soldier's competitive side, except he didn't have one. He's too humble of a person to.
Steve shook his head as he smiled at the two in front of him. "Six years and you still can't finish it," said the man.
"You know that I would have long ago, but who's gonna work with me if you're dead," said Romanoff with a smile followed by a grunt as she throws kicks that the other fends off perfectly.
"Aw, is that your way of saying you'll miss me?" He takes the woman's head and flips her, similar to what he had done before. She retaliates, instead of submitting like he had—when he was pinned—by rolling over and grabbing his leg from under him. He jumped straight up to prevent being pinned again.
"No, there's just no one else competent enough," she said with a smirk.
"That's a compliment, you know," Barton said as they traded punches.
Steve knew he wanted to be a part of this. Not the fighting, or the banter, but whatever this was. And in Peggy's name he says something to the director after a long time of silence between them.
"I'll do it."