I apologise for not making this clearer at the outset. This is set two months after Avengers Assemble.

Rogers lost track of time. Not having any idea whether it was night or day was disorientating. He'd drunk the water dry, he'd been told that his eating anything was risky because of the anaesthesia. He'd been sustained on IV fluids for days now ("though that's not easy with you, Captain. You clot fast and clog the lines up unless we spike everything with twice as much Heparin"). He was starving hungry. A piece of string had been tied between the foot of the bed and the screened toilet in the corner of the room. He'd been given a pillow and a blanket and left alone. He was lying flat on the bed, unable to sleep. The panic at first discovering he'd been blinded had gone, it was more like dread now, powerless dread. He just had to trust in the people taking care of him, and God, obviously. He sat up, pushing the blanket away. There was no point lying still if he couldn't rest. He got off the bed and laid his left hand on the wall. How big was the room? What else was in it? He held his right hand out in front of him so he wouldn't walk in to a wall and began to walk forwards, away from the bed, counting his paces aloud.

"One, two, three, four," He felt the wall ahead of him. "five." His left shoulder was in a corner, he was facing the wall. He quarter-turned right and started again.

"One, two, three, four, five, six," He felt a wall with his outstretched hand and something sticking half an inch out from the wall with his left. He ran his hand up, following the ridge almost as high as he could reach, then it turned away from him along the wall. On the far side of the ridge, there was a grove, a deep grove between the ridge and something that felt different to the wall and moved a tiny bit when he touched it. He ran his hand down. Something metal and bent, a door handle. He'd found the door. That might be useful. Another pace on was the next corner. Five and a half paces of bare wall later, he found the screen, light, movable cloth, he imagined it to be blue, in front of the toilet. There was a string here. He'd feel a bit of an idiot if he tripped over it. It hung fairly loosely, about six inches off the ground. He went back to the wall next to the toilet. It ought to be about seven paces to the next corner and, yes, it was. So two back to bed? Yes. He caught his shin on the metal frame of the bed when he tried to take a third. He climbed over the bed and went round again, faster this time, then again without the hand out in front of him, then again without a hand on the wall. That didn't go so well at first. Apparently walking in straight lines is harder when you can't see where you're going. He tried the other way four or five times, then sat down on the end of the bed. How could he make this harder? He could do it faster, start running. He'd run headlong in to something at some point, but who cared? He didn't break easily.

He set off clockwise at a fast walk. His paces were longer at this speed, so he did quite a lot of hitting walls at first. He missed the comforting weight of his shield on his arm. What had they done with it? He'd ask when someone next came in. Bit by bit, Rogers picked the pace up, vaulting the bed, jumping the string between the bed and the toilet. It felt good to get his blood moving, to just push himself a bit. He felt more alive, more like himself. Could he run this the other way, anticlockwise? It couldn't be much harder. Could he do it at this speed? Not so much. On the first lap, he ran headlong in the bed and landed flat on top of it, his head and arms hanging down the far side. Well, he couldn't have picked a softer place to land if he'd tried. He righted himself, smiling. He was OK. In spite of his eyes, he was mostly OK. However bad this was right now, it could be a lot worse. He could still stand up, he could still run, he could still think, he still had all his limbs, he was still alive. He ought to be grateful for that. He kind of was. He started running again, a fraction slower this time.

Rogers lost count of laps somewhere over forty, then decided that it was stupid to have to keep jumping over the guide string. Undoing the knots at either end of it was not easy without seeing them. It took him a frustratingly long time to work out that the knot by the screen was a doubled eight knot, then to undo it and realise that the other knot was completely different. He'd made a mess of it trying to undo it like an eight knot and started trying to undo his mistake when there was a knock at the door.

"Captain?" Nurse Grogan was back.

"Come in." He bundled the string up and got to his feet as he heard the door open.

"You're up?" He nodded, turning his head towards her voice.

"I'm not good at doing nothing."

"OK, well the doctor is ready for you now. I've got a wheelchair for you here." Rogers drew breath slowly. To let himself be wheeled was to let himself lose track of where he was entirely. And he hated being treated like an invalid, though right now he was one.

"If it's all the same to you Ma'am, I'd rather take your arm and walk." She didn't reply for a moment. "Look, I've been on my feet most of the time I've been awake, I feel fine."

"OK then." He stepped towards her, one hand outstretched. "Did you untie the string?" She took his hand in hers and put it on her forearm. She was maybe eight inches shorter than him, moderate to slim build.

"Yeah, I don't think I need it any more." She took a step forward. He followed her.

"Man do you learn fast." She said, as though to herself. She led him through what must have been the doorway. The floor felt different on the other side of the door. She twisted to close the door behind him, then set off again. This was easy, actually, to follow her lead and match her paces. The nurse had the sense to walk far enough left that he didn't hit the wall. He could do this and talk at the same time.

"Hey, do you know what they did with my shield?"

"Ah… I think Fury had it put in storage until you're fit to use it again. Why?"

"I'm just kind of attached to it. I just wanted to know it was safe."

"It is safe, Captain, don't you worry. Turning left." He followed her lead, just making his steps a bit longer. About eight steps further on, they turned right, about the same angle as the left turn, so this corridor was parallel to the one his room was on. Voices ahead, mostly men, talking quietly.

"We're nearly there, Captain." Grogan said. He nodded his assent. The floor was different here, rougher, colder. The men's voices had stopped. "OK, the threshold sticks up a little bit." He picked his feet up a bit higher. The floor changed again to smooth, cool lino.

"Captain."

"Doctor Ryman?" He wasn't entirely sure.

"Yes, still me, and Doctors O'Brady and Michaels." Rogers would have nodded to them if he'd had the first idea where they were. "We sent Grogan with a wheelchair. Did she decide she couldn't be bothered to push you?" Rogers smiled. Ryman was quite obviously joking.

"No Sir, I prefer to walk."

"OK then, if you could come and lie down on the table for us, we'll get you under, then we can start." He was about to object that he had no idea where the table was, then Grogan led him forwards again.

"About your hip height, six feet ahead and a bit left." He put the hand that wasn't on her arm out in front of him and found the edge of the table, then the far side, then the ends. No one seemed to mind him taking his time.

"Do you want it lower?" Grogan asked.

"No, I'm OK." He jumped up and lay down on his back. This felt really vulnerable. He just had to trust them.

"Michaels, can you draw up 220 migs of Propofol, just give it slowly, OK? Brady, set that up." Presumably Ryman had pointed. This was kind of scary. "OK Captain, once you're out, and we're sure you're out, we'll have a look at your eyes and based on that decide what we're going to do. You've had no headache, stiff neck…"

"No Sir. Apart from my eyes, I feel fine."

"Are your eyes hurting you right now."

"No Sir."

"OK, lets use the vein in his foot, his cephalics have taken a lot of crap in the past few days."

"Try not to flinch Captain." One of the other doctors, O'Brady or Michaels said, as someone pressed firmly on his foot. A pin-prick, whatever they'd stuck in him stung. "OK, it's in."

"The drug'll take a minute or two to kick in, Captain. Just try to relax." This he did not like; lying still and waiting to be knocked out by a bunch of people he'd literally never seen. Though if they'd wanted him dead, they'd have shot him. Thinking felt like too much effort, he couldn't really feel much any more. He just had to trust them. He seemed to be floating above the table, not lying on it. Strange light shimmered all around him. He remembered nothing more.

Please review