As I said before, a line with only a comma on it does not necessarily indicate a time break, it's just me trying to bring the site's formatting more in line with mine.
Rogers jerked. He was lying on something soft, under a blanket, it was dark, he wasn't hurt. He relaxed again, with an effort. Just a dream. He breathed out slowly. Just a dream. He was in bed, something was over his eyes. He reached up to move it, then he remembered. He was blind. This wasn't his bed, it was a hospital bed in a SHIELD unit, they were trying to save his sight. He sat up. His eyes stung, they hadn't yesterday, or whenever he'd last woken up.
And Barton was dead. If they'd been fighting together, Barton would have been under his command. It had been his, Rogers's, responsibility to keep him alive whatever happened. And he knew Barton. He knew how much damage he could deal and how much he could take. Barton should have been well back from the fighting, he was effectively a sniper. Why had he put him anywhere near the main danger? Had he even done that, or had they been flanked, or had Barton moved without orders? Rogers buried his head in his hands, his eyes really did sting. He couldn't remember. He pulled the aliens that Loki had brought to Earth to the front of his mind, the strange smell of them, something between hot metal and singed hair, the way they moved… He could only remember them in New York. He'd seen trauma cause memory loss quite a few times, presumably that was what was going on. But it galled him, to have lost a man in combat and not remember how, not remember if he could have prevented it. After Bucky… he'd run that raid through his head a thousand times, looking for ways he could have made it safer, saved his friend. As much as it hurt to do that, he had to. He owed it to men he lost, he owed it to everyone he commanded, to try and make sure he didn't make the same mistake twice. There was no point in brooding over it right now. He couldn't review what he couldn't remember.
,
Was he in the same room? It wouldn't hurt to check. He got out of bed. He was steady on his feet. He paced the walls of the room clockwise, everything was as it had been yesterday, if it was yesterday, even the string he'd left by the right foot of the bed was still there, he hadn't managed to get the second knot undone. Maybe he should tie knots in it to count days, or treatment cycles or whatever. This was the second time he'd woken up in here, so two knots, close in to the post. He tucked the string away again and shook his head. The stinging wasn't going away any time soon.
Rogers was out of his routine. He hadn't prayed yet. He should rule to do it when he knotted the string, that way he was less likely to forget to do either one of them. He shuffled left on his knees a bit, clasped his hands and lent against the side of the bed. This still felt more normal than anything else did, he'd never used his eyes when he was praying.
"God, thank you that I'm still alive. Thank you that I'm not in pain to speak of, thank you that I'm safe here, thank you for putting me with people who've got the skills to help me. And thank you for calming me down yesterday. I know that fear means not trusting you to look after me when you've promised that you will, that you make all things work together for those who love you," Romans 8 somewhere. He couldn't exactly check. Even if he'd been able to get his hands on a Bible, he wouldn't have been able to read it. "and I'm sorry. Help me not to go back to that, help me to trust that you'll do what's best for me, even if that means being blind." He sighed. "God, help me believe that. I can't right now. I know you've given blind men their sight back before. God, I… I want to see. I don't know what use I am if I can't, so yeah, I guess I'm praying you'll heal me, but I know you gave me my sight-" He took a steadying breath. "-so it's yours to take away. I pray that if there are any of the aliens left on the loose," He heard the door unlatching. "they'd be caught quickly before they can do this to anyone else. In the name of Jesus, firstborn of creation, I pray. Amen." He heard the door close again and got to his feet.
"I didn't know you were a praying man." Nurse Grogan's voice.
"I always have been Ma'am. If God wants to talk to us, who are we to turn our backs?" There was a short silence.
"Does it help?" Without thinking, he tilted his head slightly, which had to look stupid since he couldn't see.
"If nothing else, it calms you down, and God tells us to pray to him, so for that reason alone we should." A slightly longer silence.
"Are you OK? Do you feel any different to yesterday? I brought you water in case." He heard her stepping forwards. He stepped round the bed and advanced cautiously.
"Thank you." He couldn't hear where she was so well now he was moving. He held out one hand, then felt a plastic cup in it.
"No worries. There's a straw." He found the straw and took a sip. "Anyway, how are you?"
"I still feel mostly fine, my eyes sting at the moment."
"When did that start?"
"When I woke up."
"OK, I'll talk to Doctor Ryman about that. Anything else you want to tell us?"
"I'm kind of hungry." He heard her draw breath.
"OK, since you're under anaesthetic so much, it's not the safest thing in the world for you to be eating right now."
"I'm guessing you've read my files."
"Some and some."
"OK, well it probably says in there that I need quite a bit more energy than most people. It doesn't seem to be a problem yet, but it could become one."
"You are on IV glucose all the time you're under, Captain." He nodded.
"OK, so long as you know. How long will it be until the next…"
"Quite a while. Twelve hours, to be exact. I'd go back to bed if I were you." Rogers sighed.
"OK." Grogan walked back to the door and left him alone again. He drained his water. He didn't need to find a wall to know which way to turn to get back to bed. Rogers lay down and pulled the blanket up over himself. His eyes were still stinging like mad. He'd forget about it soon enough.
,
But he didn't. The longer he lay still, the more his eyes bothered him. More than anything else, the feeling reminded him of having been chopping up onions, then rubbing his eye, except it wasn't going away. And his stomach was starting to bother him. He knew for a fact he hadn't eaten anything for two days, and probably not for the previous three, since he'd been wounded. Adrenaline must have kept him from feeling it yesterday, he'd been pretty freaked to wake up tied down and blind with no idea where he was. He was pretty sure these people weren't going to hurt him. They could have killed him easily, but he was still alive and, all things considered, comfortable. Except for his blasted eyes.
This was pointless. He wasn't going to sleep, he knew he wasn't. He threw the blanket back and got out of bed. Without really deciding to, he started pacing the edge of the room, once at a walk each way, then he started running. This wasn't much good though. He didn't have the space, or the guts, to get any real speed up, he'd go crashing in to walls and he couldn't make himself do that repeatedly, even if it didn't really hurt. He stopped in the space behind the bed, furthest from the door and dropped to the ground on hands and knees. He set his arms a bit wider than his shoulders, angled his neck as though he was staring at a point about a yard ahead of him (he'd have to mind that he didn't drop his head, since he couldn't actually stare at a point), pushed his feet out behind him and started doing push-ups. This at least wouldn't make him collide with anything and it felt like a bit more effort. How long could he keep it up? He switched to diamond form after twenty, the pull moved from the front of his chest to the outside of his upper arms and along his back. He kept it up for three or four rounds, twenty normal push-ups, twenty diamond ones. He was breathing hard when he got up again, his heart going faster and harder. It felt good. He went two laps of the room each way to stretch his muscles out, then stopped again in the same place. What could he do next? Climbs and narrows. He dropped and started.
Rogers carried on for what felt like a couple of hours or more, jogging round the room a couple of times, then stopping and doing whatever exercise he thought of (he ran out of push up variations quite quickly) until he felt like he'd done enough, then jogging again. By the time he stopped, he was sweating and breathing harder. It was stuffy in here. He wanted to wash off, but there was no water in here, except the toilet and he wasn't that desperate. That was a thought though, he'd been here five days now, he hadn't washed himself in that time. Had someone else washed him or was he filthy? There wasn't a lot he could do about it right now either way. He sat back down on the bed, pulling the pillow up behind him. He'd made himself thirsty again and there was no way he knew of to get more water. He'd stopped feeling hungry though. He raised a hand towards his eyes, then stopped and lowered it. Rubbing his eyes was probably not a good idea. He had no idea what sort of state they were in, barring that they still stung and he couldn't see anything. He still didn't feel like he'd get to sleep. He might have read something or other, but since he couldn't see, that wasn't going to happen.
Rogers sighed. He was alone with his thoughts whether he liked it or not. And with God. If you asked God to walk with you, you were never alone. God understood how he felt right now, he knew what it was like inside Rogers's head. That thought made him feel less isolated.
He sat still for a long time, not doing anything, not really thinking anything, maybe he'd started to doze before restlessness kicked in again. He didn't feel that burning need to run any more, just a need not to sit still, and he was hungry again. He got up and paced aimlessly, listening hard. He'd spent a lot of yesterday, if it was yesterday, working the room out by touch, he'd kind of forgotten about sound. He'd heard an engine start earlier, a biggish one by the sound of it, probably one of those big black cars SHIELD used a lot. Near the door, there was the quiet hiss of a water pipe. They weren't in a city, they couldn't be. There was nowhere near enough background noise. Unless they were underground. No, the engine hadn't echoed enough. The car or truck or whatever had been outside, so they were probably in the middle of nowhere.
"Shines the name – Rodger Young
Fought and died for the men he marched among." He hadn't really decided to start singing. His voice was dry and a bit unsteady. It wasn't as though he had anything better to do. He sat back down on the bed and drew his knees up.
"To the everlasting glory of the Infantry
Lives the story of Private Rodger Young.
In an ambush lay a company of riflemen-
Just grenades against machine guns in the gloom
-" He sang the song through, with quite a lot of "something" in the verses, his voice warming up as he went. He'd forgotten the fifth verse completely. He had a feeling there was a fifth verse. He vaguely remembered Dugan getting up on a table in the mess and singing it very loudly after a successful raid. He'd found Dugan's grave in Oregon. He'd survived the war, gone on to work as a drill Sergeant once he was too old to run as a commando and died at home of a heart attack in his eighties. He could have done worse really.
"We're the D-day dodgers out in Italy,
Always on the vino, always on the spree," He doubted he'd remember all of this one either. He remembered a British driver teaching it to them on a long and muddy drive in the pouring rain when they were all wet and cold. It had been late in the war, but he'd been sitting on Bucky's right, so not that late. It must have been about a month before Bucky'd died.
There had been a lot of songs in The War, some of them he didn't care to repeat. He remembered Bucky standing on a crate of something in camp once and singing 'Hitler has only got one ball' like a show girl, just to see if he could get away with it. He'd ended up conducting a chorus of about three squadrons worth of men. Rogers shook his head and smiled. That'd been quite early on, not long after Bucky'd been put back on active duty. Rogers had got an earful from a superior officer then too, about how on earth he expected to run precision raids with a bunch of soldiers that out of control. He'd given his answer so many times he felt like a broken record by the start of '45:
"Sir, while they're in the field, they'd charge a machine gun in the open alone if I told them to. Nobody can stand to attention the whole time, and while they're safe enough, so long as they're not doing any harm, I don't mind them messing about." Some officers had ordered his men to stop anyway, others had ordered him to give the order, others had let them alone.
Rogers shook his head and gritted his teeth at the stinging in his eyes. A lot of men had been blinded and worse in those years. He'd been lucky to escape as long as he had, except being frozen for the better part of a lifetime. He knew very well that life as a soldier was dangerous. He'd known that when he'd first tried to sign up in 1940. He'd been willing to risk life and limb then, what made him so special now? Soldiers died, soldiers were wounded, often beyond repair, and he didn't know that there was no way back, not yet anyway. He'd felt a bit better while he'd been singing.
"When peace like a river attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, thou has taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul." The guy who'd written that had just lost all four of his daughters, all still children. To keep on trusting God through that much… He kept on singing, he was pretty sure the verses were in the wrong order, and he seemed to have sung some bits twice. He'd got to the last chorus, or what he thought was the last chorus, when there was a tap on the door.
"Captain?" Was that Doctor Ryman?
"Just a second." Rogers got off the bed and walked over to the door, feeling the wall in front of him for the door frame, then the door handle. He opened the door. There was a moment's silence.
"You can sing too." That was Doctor Ryman.
"Well there's not a lot else I can do in here."
"Any other hidden talents?"
"I used to sketch. More people did that before photographs were easy." Rogers stepped back to let the doctor in, waited until he'd passed him, then closed the door again.
"Used to. You might well again, we're not giving up on you yet." Rogers drew breath slowly.
"Thank you."
"I think America owes you that much. Anyway, Nurse Grogan said your eyes were bothering you." Rogers nodded.
"They're not that bad, but…"
"And they didn't yesterday?"
"No Sir." Doctor Ryman huffed softly.
"It won't be for much longer. We're getting ready for treatment now; it'll be a quarter hour or so. We'll up the Bupivacaine dose this time around." Rogers had no idea what that meant, so just nodded.
"Nurse Grogan said that I can't eat anything at the moment."
"Well she's right. You're under general for hours every day. Why? You hungry?"
"Yeah, very." He huffed again.
"I guess that IV glucose doesn't fill you up, even if it keeps you going. I'll have a think, see what we can do. It won't be this side of the next treatment now, but we'll see what we can do." Doctor Ryman's feet moved towards the door. Rogers opened it again for him.
"Thank you."
"I'll see you in fifteen." Rogers closed the door after him, then leant his head against the door. They were pretty kind, this lot. Like almost everyone at SHIELD, they were focused on what they were there to do, they wanted to get things done, but they seemed to be genuinely interested in keeping him comfortable. Fury had set up the fake 1945 ward in an effort to spare him the shock, so maybe that wasn't so new. On the other hand, Rogers had wondered in the past if Fury had known that the game on the radio was in the wrong year and had put it on to see how quick on the uptake he was. What would Fury do if Rogers asked him outright? That might be interesting. Maybe he'd ask the next time he saw – the next time he and Fury met. Rogers turned away from the door towards the bed. He pulled the blanket back, shook the pillow out and set it down against what he judged to be the middle of the head of the bed, picked the blanket up, shook it off, then paused. This might be harder to do blind. He found a short edge and folded the blanket lengthways, picking up the other end and trying to get it square. He laid the fold down the middle of the bed and unfolded it. That should be about right. He bent down and found the free edge and ran his hand along. It got nearer the floor as it went. He grabbed the higher end and pulled it down. That was better. He leant back against the wall beside the bed. He still had a few minutes to wait.
A tap at the door.
"Captain?" Grogan's voice
"Coming." He followed the wall round to the door, but she'd opened it by the time he got there.
"Ready to go?"
"Yeah." She took his hand and guided it to her arm, then started walking. He was less wary this time, he trusted her not to walk him in to a wall. "Just a question." He started after a minute. "How am I being kept clean?"
"We've been taking care of that while you're under, though we could head towards you doing it yourself if you like."
"It can't be that difficult. Just give me water and soap and I'll figure it out." She hesitated.
"OK. I guess we can try. Turning left." They walked in near silence the rest of the way. Something was humming loudly somewhere to their left by the time the floor went rough and cold. Rogers thought nothing of it. He found the table, lay down when he was asked, then waited for the needle. He knew to expect to feel like he was floating, he knew to expect the shimmering light, the only light he'd seen for days now, he knew to expect the gathering dark.
The songs quoted here, in order, are: The Ballad of Rodger Young, D-day Dodgers, and It is well with my soul.
Reviews still welcome; thank you to my two guest reviewers so far. I'm sorry I can't reply to you personally.