4 – Ghost House – May 12, 2012

In her dreams the house was taken over by the wild, nature returning to reclaim every crack and crevice it could find a way in through. Aspen was walking up the overgrown pathway past the aspen tree that stood pale as a ghost. The front door opened as the porch protested under her feet. A light was on in the room and as Aspen entered, the room transformed into the clean, happy environment she had grown up in.

"Aspen, come join us," her mother said, looking up from where she sat on the floor. She and Aspen's father were settled around the coffee table in front of the fireplace working on a jigsaw puzzle. Aspen stood in the doorway, mouth agape. Her parents were just the same as she remembered, her mother with her long, flowing red hair and sparkling green eyes, her father with his dark hair and deep brown eyes. They both smiled invitingly at her until she came forward and crouched at the table.

"We can't seem to find all the edge pieces," her mother told her. "We can't keep everything together without those pieces. The whole thing will fall apart."

Aspen ran her fingers over the puzzle pieces noting something odd about them. Every piece had bits of a formula written on it. She looked up to give her parents a questioning look. Her mother held a finger up to her lips. "The pieces can't be put back in the box together," she told Aspen conspiratorially. "You have to break them up first. You don't want to make it too easy on the next person to try to solve it."

"But what if I can't find them all?" Aspen asked as her parents stood, leaving her alone with the puzzle.

"Everything you need, you have," her mother told her, still backing away. Aspen could no longer see her father. Her mother disappeared from sight.

"Wait! Don't go!" Aspen got to her feet and ran after her parents. They weren't in the kitchen. They must have gone upstairs. As she ran up the stairs, she noticed that the house was beginning to decay around her. The wallpaper began to peel away from the walls, and the carpet bared its threads before her. She reached the landing and looked around her. There was a light on in her childhood bedroom. Aspen took a step forward and then another, reaching out a hand to push the door open wider. She heard a giggle from the bed and looked over to see a young girl brushing her favorite doll's hair. The girl looked up at Aspen with green eyes, and Aspen realized it was a younger version of herself.

"What happened to you?" the younger version of herself asked.

"What do you mean?" Aspen asked in return.

"All those scars…"

Aspen looked down at her arms to see that they were covered in scars. Every inch of her bare skin was white and lined. She gasped, backing away as if she could escape her own arms.

"I'm frightened," the younger version of herself said. "Is that going to happen to me?" Aspen looked up, shaking her head. "Don't lie!" the little girl said. She threw the doll on the floor. "Mommy!" she screamed. The scream echoed in Aspen's head until she had to put her hands over her ears. The girl stood and seemed to transform before her very eyes. Now standing in front of her was Joseph Danners. Suddenly she was holding a gun and blood was blossoming out of a wound in his chest. He looked down at it and when he looked back up it was Aspen's mom that she was looking at. She put a hand to the wound and the blood stained the pale skin of her palm. Aspen's mom slumped to the floor.

"No, no!" Aspen screamed. "Mom!" She threw herself on the floor beside her mother, but her skin was ice cold to the touch as if she had been dead for ages. She had though, hadn't she? She'd died when Aspen was three. This was all an illusion. The room began to rot around her, the walls baring her to the biting air. She lay down on the floor next to her mother, letting the blood pool around her, soaking into her skin and her clothes.

"Aspen?" The voice that spoke was not her mother or her father. She opened her eyes to look up at the star-spangled sky. "Hey, you're dreaming."

She blinked her eyes open and the dream faded along with the starry sky. It was replaced by two worried blue eyes. "Steve?"

"You were crying out in your sleep," he told her, his voice groggy as if she had woken him up.

"I was in the Sunflower House," she said, sitting up a little. He was sitting on the edge of her bed. "It was a strange dream." She began to relay what she had dreamt to him, pausing at the end when she remembered what had happened in her old room. She finally got the courage to say it out loud. Steve listened quietly, hands folded in his lap. "It was just as disturbing as my dreams of New York if not more so," she said.

"It was just a dream, but I know how real dreams can feel."

She nodded. "Sorry to wake you," she said.

He shook his head. "Don't apologize," he told her. "Are you alright to go back to sleep?"

"I'll try." Steve smiled before returning to his own bed. Aspen shut her eyes, but images of her mother falling to the floor of the bedroom kept filling her mind. She tossed and turned, but she couldn't let go of the nightmare. Finally she sat back up, staring into the darkness of the room. She'd never been afraid of the dark before, but right now she could feel the oppressive weight of the dark. She glanced over at Steve, but she couldn't tell if he was asleep again or not. She was beginning to feel trapped with the walls of her own memories pressing in around her. She got out of her bed and moved over to Steve's bed, throwing caution to the wind and slipping under the blankets next to him like a child during a thunderstorm. He seemed to half wake enough to move over, giving her enough room to huddle next to him, head buried under his chin. He moved to wrap an arm around her. Aspen nodded off to sleep, Steve's closeness keeping her nightmares at bay. Whatever reserves they'd had earlier, whatever awkwardness, was now replaced by their mutual need for closeness whether they understood why they felt this or not. Neither was bothered by nightmares the rest of the night though the residual loneliness of the Sunflower House chased Aspen through her dreams.

…

When Steve awoke, he became fully aware that at some point during the night Aspen had crawled in beside him, curling up against him. His left arm was draped over her, and her head was tucked against his shoulder. Her red curls were splayed out across his shirt, and in sleep she looked more peaceful than she had been in a long time. It struck him that he should feel completely nervous. He was sleeping next to a girl after all. He'd barely kissed a girl let alone been this close to one before. He knew that times had changed and boundaries had come down, but he couldn't help the twinge of nerves at her closeness. He didn't quite know how to act around her sometimes, but he felt comfortable around her in a way that made him decide it didn't matter that they overstepped the boundaries he was used to.

As he looked down at Aspen now, his heart picked up a beat. She was so similar to Peggy and yet her own unique person. She was strong and confident like Peggy was, but there was a vulnerable side to her he had never seen in Peggy. Aspen had been forced to fend for herself most of her life but sometimes she needed someone to give her a helping hand, to help her get through the nightmares and bad memories. That she had chosen him to be this person to help her meant more to him than he could say. She meant more to him than he could say.

The revelation struck him then and there as she slept beside him. Aspen wasn't like any other girl he'd ever met. She had never looked at him like he was someone different despite the fact that he was, in fact, very different. She'd just accepted him the way he was when that was what he needed most. She'd been his friend from the start, taking an interest in his life and his well-being. She cared about him as he cared about her. He cared very much for her, he realized. More than he had realized. He reached his left hand up and brushed a strand of her hair away from her face. She stirred, unconsciously lifting her own hand to meet his. Her green eyes opened, and she smiled slowly at him as she blinked away sleep. She let go of his hand as if realizing for the first time she had taken it.

"Sorry," she said at once. "I didn't mean to be such a child last night. I just kept seeing my dream over and over. Even the corners of the room were beginning to frighten me. I'm turning into a nervous wreck."

He was feeling like a nervous wreck suddenly. This was Aspen though. He'd never felt this nervous around her before. "It's alright," he managed to get out.

Aspen laid her head back on the pillow, freeing up his shoulder. He gave her a little space, hoping she didn't think he was being awkward. The clock on the bedside table read 7:25. "I was thinking about the dream you had last night," he said carefully after a time.

"Oh?"

"What you were saying about your parents working on a puzzle. What your mom said."

"'The pieces can't be put back in the box together. You have to break them up first. You don't want to make it too easy on the next person to try to solve it,'" Aspen quoted. "You think she was referring to the different components of the formula?"

"Why not? Your subconscious was thinking about what we're trying to find. It makes sense."

She sat up and nodded. "That does. My parents serum was trying to harness the undiscovered skills and instincts of the parts of the brain we don't use, but the subconscious is already a powerful part of the mind. It was telling me to look at this like a puzzle. My parents scattered their work on purpose. What my aunt had was just the rudimentary foundations for their work. If Danners did sell some of the papers to some enemy organization, then it might be possible to replicate. My parents were brilliant scientists, but they aren't alone in the world. But if they hid something vital, only they would have known after years of research… A lot of people have tried to replicate the Super Soldier Serum after all and a few of those attempts went really wrong. No one else succeeded." He realized she must be thinking of Bruce Banner. "Clearly they're missing a vital element."

"I'm not sure what was in it," Steve admitted.

"Did they plan on only using the serum on you?" she asked. He noticed her eyes brushed over the muscles on his arms before returning to his face. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling self-conscious. Sometimes he forgot he wasn't still the skinny boy he had been before all of this. It was hard to get used to a completely new body even if he'd had it for years now.

"No, they meant to make an army of Super Soldiers. They were supposed to march against the Nazis. That never happened though. Somehow one of Schmidt's men got into the lab. He set off an explosion after Doctor Erskine injected me with the serum and then shot the doctor. He stole the last vial of serum, but I managed to catch up to him. The serum vial broke, and he ended up taking a cyanide tablet before I could get any answers out of him. He was working for Hydra, that's all I knew. Without the serum and without Doctor Erskine, I became the only successful experiment." He hated that word. He wasn't a lab experiment; he was a person. "The Army didn't want one man, they wanted an army, so I was given the option of going into a lab to be experimented on or selling war bonds as Captain America."

"And thus the legend was born. I bet they regretted not taking you into the Army right away after you saved those soldiers."

"Maybe so. It wasn't ever about proving anything for me. It was about serving my country like the other men out there. I didn't want to sit at home while people were laying down their lives." He looked up at Aspen to find her staring at him with a look he couldn't read on her face. "What?" he asked.

"You! You're just so…" She seemed to struggle for the word. "Good. Not a lot of people are as willing as you to just lay down their lives. I've said it before. Just the way you talk… It's one of the things I love about you."

His mind got hung up on her last words. One of the things I love about you. She must have said something else because she said his name several times before his mind kicked back in and processed what she was saying.

"When did you want to head out?" she asked.

"Whenever you're ready," he said, feeling a little flustered. Why was he suddenly so nervous around her? Maybe it was her proximity. As they sat up, their legs touched and he was fully aware of how little he'd been around women in his life.

"I know it will look different in the daylight, but I keep seeing my dream over and over," Aspen said. "It took this pure and happy image I had of my childhood home and broke that down until it was ruined."

"Sometimes the happiest of memories only exist in the memories themselves," he said, thinking back to Peggy. "In reality whatever goodness you were clinging onto is gone, but if the memory is still there then you still have it."

"With lives like ours, we can't really rely on things sticking around, can we?" she asked.

"I guess not. But I hope that will change." It occurred to him that he couldn't stand the thought of not being around Aspen. She'd become such a big part of his life. He couldn't imagine a day without her. Even on the few days they hadn't seen each other in the last week, she had called him or texted him. The thought of losing her or even being apart from her was like a physical pain. She was the anchor he was clinging to in this new life.

Aspen nodded. "I'm going to get dressed. They serve breakfast downstairs and then we can head out." She got up and grabbed some clothes before heading into the bathroom. Steve tossed on his clothes and waited for Aspen to get ready. When she emerged from the bathroom they walked down to get breakfast together. The other guests cast them a lot of looks as they passed through the line, so they took their bagels and cream cheese packs outside and ate them as they walked toward the Sunflower House.

The house looked less lonely in the morning. The rain had stopped overnight and the sun was showing itself, bringing out the curling edges of yellow paint that still remained. Aspen stopped at the aspen tree in the front yard, running her hands over the bark. If her parents had taken the bark they'd sent her from this tree, it had long ago healed over. The bark, though weathered, was flawless and showed no signs of tampering. Steve kept watch on the surrounding streets while Aspen studied the tree, keeping his senses alert for anyone who might be watching them. The street was quiet though.

"Here!" Aspen cried out, and Steve turned around to see her slipping her fingers into a slot on the side of the tree. "There was a secret panel." She pulled her fingers out and held up a long brass key.

"What does it go to?" he asked.

"I don't know." Aspen frowned. "Wait, I remember how the basement always used to be off limits. Dad said it was for work. I bet they kept some equipment down there. There might even be a computer. And I bet there's a locked door that only this key opens."

"It's worth checking out."

They entered the house again, Aspen unlocking the door. Despite the backdoor having been forced open, she'd still locked the front door before leaving the day before. He saw Aspen's hesitation as they entered. He wanted to reach out to comfort her, but she moved into the next room, reaching out to open a door in the kitchen that he hadn't noticed before. They peered down into a gaping dark hole that led down into the basement. "The electricity has been turned off, so we'll have to use my phone," Aspen said, taking out her phone. Steve had no idea what she meant, but a moment later a light streamed from the tip of her phone like a flashlight. Aspen put a hand on the banister and started down the stairs. They groaned under her slight weight, and Steve hesitated to follow.

"I think it's-" Whatever Aspen was going to say was cut off by a tremendous groan and then the sound of splintering wood. Aspen's eyes widened before the stairs gave way, too rotten to hold. Aspen went tumbling downward with a gasp.

"Aspen!" Steve tried to grab her, but it happened so quickly. One second she was there, the next she wasn't. For a second he was reminded of Bucky falling before he could reach him. The light bounced as the cell phone hit the ground. It left a shallow circle of light, but he couldn't see Aspen at all. "Aspen!" he called out again. He cursed the lack of light.

"I'm alright," he heard Aspen call up to him, her voice muffled. She coughed. He imagined it was dusty down there especially after the stairs collapsing. "I think I hurt my leg though. I landed hard."

"Hang on, I'm coming down," he told her.

"There might be a flashlight in the kitchen cupboard," Aspen told him. "Check there."

Steve ran into the kitchen, pulling open the cupboard doors. He finally found an old flashlight in one of the drawers. He was relieved when it flickered on. It dimly illuminated the broken stairs. He looked down further and saw the vague outline of Aspen lying on the floor of the basement. He judged the distance down and decided to leap instead of trying the stairs. He took a deep breath and jumped, landing with a thump on the basement floor. He went over to Aspen at once, setting down the flashlight so that he could see her and crouching down at her side. She looked up at him, hair coated in dust. She groaned.

"My leg is killing me," she told him. "I should have seen that coming."

"Can you sit up?" he asked.

"I'll try," she said, pushing herself up with her hands and sliding her legs so that they were in front of her. The pain was visible on her face. "How are we going to get back out again?" she asked him. He looked back up at the stairs. That wasn't going to be easy. Aspen certainly wasn't going to be doing any climbing.

"We'll worry about that later." He looked around the basement, using the flashlight as a guide. "There," he said, pointing. A solid metal door stood along a wall, out of place in such a house. Aspen held the key out to him, grabbing her cell phone from where it lay on the ground. Steve brought the key to the door and inserted it. It was a little sticky from years of disuse, but it turned and the door gave a resounding click as it unlocked. He looked back at Aspen. "Can you walk?"

"I can try." He helped her get to her feet. She leaned her weight on his arm, trying to avoid stepping on her injured leg for too long. Steve reached out and opened the door. Their light flooded another set of stairs – this time solid concrete – that led straight down into darkness.

"Fun. Wow. This is just what I imagined doing," Aspen said. "I had no idea my house had a creepy subbasement."

"It's almost like a bunker," Steve said. "Built to withstand just about anything."

"I feel like if I try to walk down those stairs I am going to die or fall or both." He could hear the frustration in her voice.

"Let me see what's at the bottom. I can come back and carry you down." By the way she bit her lip, he could tell she didn't like the idea of being carried down the stairs, but she gave a nod after a minute.

"Okay," she said. "Be careful."

Steve aimed the flashlight down the stairs and took them slowly. At the bottom of the ten stairs, another metal door was illuminated. The same key fit when he tried it and he pushed it open to find a room filled with scientific equipment. Dust swirled up as the door swung inward. Everything was layered in a thick coating of dust, but at least that told them no one had found their way in here since 1994. He returned up to the basement to tell Aspen what he had found.

"Did you see a computer anywhere?" she asked eagerly.

"Come see for yourself." She obliged as he scooped her up, carefully lifting her down the stairs while she held the flashlight out before them. He set her back on her feet within the room, and she stood taking the lab in, eyes eager. She scanned the room with the flashlight and stopped when the light hit a computer. It was different from the sleek laptop SHIELD had given Steve and the one Aspen used. It was shaped more like a box and had a separate keyboard.

"There," Aspen said. "My parents would have had a generator down here to keep everything working even during a power outage." She kept moving the flashlight around the room. "There!" She stopped at a large piece of equipment. "See that red lever?" she asked. Steve nodded. "Pull that down and see what happens." She kept the light trained on the machine while Steve went over and pulled the lever. Electricity thrummed and the light overhead flickered on.

"Well that would have been useful sooner," Aspen said. There was a beep across the room, and they looked over to see that the computer had turned on. A bar flashed onto the screen asking for a password. Aspen let out a curse that surprised Steve. She laughed at the look of alarm on his face. "Sorry. Will you help me over there?"

He nodded, putting an arm around her waist. She put her arm over his shoulder, and they walked over to the chair in front of the old computer. Aspen sat down and stared at the screen. "Password, password." She began to type. She hit 'enter,' but a message came up telling her that it was an invalid password. She kept typing, chewing on her lip while she tried password after password.

"Damnit!" she shouted after the tenth password she tried. "Why lead me all this way, nearly to my death, just to have me run into a dead end?"

"Did they leave a clue about the password anywhere?" he asked.

"All I have is this." Aspen pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket. Steve recognized it as the address on the package Aspen had received ten years late.

"What about Clause, Indiana?" he asked.

"Doesn't exist."

"Would that be a password?" he asked.

She tried it, but it came up as invalid. "Why would they address it to a city that doesn't exist?" she asked. "Unless it's code like the coordinates. My parents loved puzzles. I'm rubbish at that sort of thing though."

"Maybe it's a clue that you would understand. Somehow." He wasn't sure how, but he knew her parents wouldn't have made this impossible.

"I know science, that's about it."

"Would the letters stand for anything in scientific terms?" he asked.

Aspen was quiet for a long moment. Then she looked up at him, eyes wide. "What did you just say?" she asked.

"I asked if the letters could stand for anything in scientific terms."

"That's it!" She pulled a pen out of her jacket pocket and started scribbling on the page. Steve looked down to see what she was writing.

Clause, IN

Cl, Au, Se, In

Chlorine, Gold, Selenium, Indium

17-79-34-49

"The table of elements! They're elemental symbols! They each coordinate with the number of the element." She looked so excited in that moment that Steve had to grin. She typed the numbers into the computer. 'Access granted' the screen read before taking her to another screen. She took the floppy disk out of her pocket and inserted it into a slot on the computer. A message reading: 'Recognized location, accessing files' lit up the screen. Files popped up a moment later, and Aspen bent closer to the computer, eyes taking in everything.

"This is…this is incredible," she said.

"What is it?"

"My parents work."

"All of it?"

She nodded mutely. "I'm going to transfer this to my phone." She pulled out her phone and a cord, connecting it to the computer. "These old computer aren't meant to have cell phones hooked into them, but this cord will fit into any outlet," Aspen explained. It took nearly ten minutes for all the data to transfer to her phone. She typed a few things into her phone before turning to Steve. "I made the information password protected using SHIELD security, so it should be safe. If you ever need to access the information, the password is the date we met. I figured it was something we'd both know but not many other people would."

Steve blinked. That day would forever remain etched into his mind. He remembered the moment he'd become aware of Aspen standing behind him looking at his sketch of the city. He remembered turning around, on guard and suspicious, the look in her green eyes when she realized she had startled him. At first he'd thought she was just another SHIELD employee who wanted something from him, but then he'd realized she was different. The light in her eyes when she spoke to him, the genuine interest she showed. She actually wanted to get to know Steve, not Captain America. She'd wanted to know the real him. In that moment he'd wanted to know her too.

"I have what I need," Aspen told him. She pulled the floppy disk out and shut down the computer. "Let's get back to the hotel so I can look closer. I need to get some ice for my leg. I can feel it swelling around the ankle." She looked around the windowless room. "This is the part where we have to figure out how to get out of here. Can you just kick down the wall?" He thought she was being serious for a moment until she gave him a small smile.

"There was a window up in the main basement. Small, but I think we should both be able to fit out of it. Let me help you up the stairs." Aspen let him lift her again, putting an arm around his neck. He set her gently down when they reached the top of the stairs and walked over to the window. With a grunt, he forced it open, breaking the lock in the process. He pushed a dusty table under the window. "I'll lift you up, but you're going to have to pull yourself out." She nodded as he walked over and put his arms around her, lifting her onto the table. It wasn't an easy process for Aspen with her hurt leg, but she managed to get out of the window. He followed, barely fitting his broad shoulders through it. When they were both out, they sat on the back lawn for a long time while Aspen collected her breath. Her face was white, and she looked like she was in a lot of pain. "Can you make it back to the hotel?" Steve asked. "Can we call a taxi?"

Aspen nodded, pulling out her phone. She dialed a number and held the phone to her ear. A moment later she gave the address. "Alright. They'll be here soon. Can you help me to the sidewalk?" Steve nodded, helping her up. He grasped her around the waist and she put her arm around his shoulder again. She winced as they walked, but wouldn't let him carry her again. Instead of sitting, she leaned against the aspen tree in the front yard.

"I'm afraid I won't be able to get up again if I sit down," she told him.

"Does it hurt a lot?" he asked her, wishing he could do more to help her.

"Only if I put weight on it or move. And kind of when I just stand here, so yeah. I'll be all right though. I've been through worse." It began to rain a moment later, and Aspen pulled her jacket collar up around her neck. Steve joined her under the tree though the slender branches gave little shelter. "Some vacation, huh?" Aspen joked lightly.

Steve smiled. "If we were planning a vacation, we should have gone somewhere sunny."

Aspen grinned at this. "But we're having so much fun," she said. "Falling down rotting stairs was definitely on my summer to do list right up next to breaking codes."

"You're coated in dust," Steve told her, reaching out to dislodge some dust from her hair. She held still while he helped dust her off.

"Thanks." She gave him a grateful smile. Just then the taxi pulled up, standing out against the grey of the neighborhood. Steve helped Aspen to the car. He could tell that she was trying very hard not to show her pain, but the tightness of her lips and grip on him told him she was in a great deal of pain. The taxi took them back to their hotel, and Steve paid the driver before helping Aspen out of the car. They headed slowly to their room, Aspen pulling out her key as they approached. When they entered, Steve led her over to one of the beds. She sat down with a sigh. She began to relax and then froze. Steve saw the slight change in her posture and went on alert.

"What's wrong?" he whispered.

"Someone's been here," Aspen said quietly.