Happy Birthday, Steve Rogers.
Steve braced himself against the rocking of the subway as he slouched further into his seat. It was mostly empty, just him and a harried mother attempting to calm her fussing child. His hands convulsively clenched around the box that some dark-suited SHIELD agent had shoved at him as he was – finally – allowed to leave the building where they'd been keeping him and trying to acclimate him to the fact that it was 2012, not 1944.
He had hated it.
It wasn't the idea that the world had changed so much. It wasn't the idea that everybody he knew was dead or old. It wasn't even the idea that he wasn't allowed to leave the building, and his days were very carefully scheduled.
It was that everybody treated him like some relic, some…thing that could fall apart as soon as you spit on it. People walked up to him just to stare, and then hurried off. Somebody even had the gall to ask for his autograph, calling him the biggest hero the world had ever seen. Sure, Steve had given it to the kid – and how that kid was even allowed to work for these people, he looked like he should have been in high school still – Steve didn't know.
The sound of the child's cries changed, and Steve glanced over. The child had gone from its mother's lap to the floor, and its mother was just shaking her head with a smile. Standing up, she grabbed the child's hand and slowly started moving to the door. Glancing out the window, Steve held back his sigh. He'd accidentally gotten on the wrong subway, so while it was going to Brooklyn, it was taking longer than his other options. They'd just crossed the East River.
Taking another look at the address on the envelope holding the keys to his new apartment, Steve had to wonder just how SHIELD had managed it. And why. He was perfectly agreeable to visiting the gym a mile away, even if it had all sorts of things that he was still trying to figure out how to use. Finally letting himself inside the building, he gently lowered the box of papers to the floor. "That's why." His voice startled him, and he had to laugh at how jumpy he was. A gym that he was much more comfortable with than what was at SHIELD met his eyes, and he slowly walked around, smelling the chalk dust and worn leather, the scents of countless men – and women, he reminded himself – that had worked out here over the years.
Suddenly eager, he grabbed the box and headed for the stairs. If the people at SHIELD had been able to find him this, he was suddenly feeling encouraged that they wouldn't simply stick him in a place where he couldn't even figure out the lights. Climbing the steps two at a time, Steve balanced the box on his hip and unlocked the door to his new home. Opening it, he laughed again.
It wasn't home, but he thought that one day, it could be.