14.

Brooklyn, New York

September 23rd, 1942

Isabel knocks loudly on the door to the Rogers' apartment so that Steve can hear, waiting patiently as the sound of footsteps comes closer and the door opens before her. She is greeted by Sarah Rogers, who's face lights up at the sight of her almost-adopted daughter.

"Isabel, darling!" She cries, pulling the young girl into a hug. "It's been so long!"

"I know! I'm so sorry, Mrs. Rogers. Work has been busy lately and Bucky just got home from basic so we've had a lot of catching up to do."

"I understand, hon. But it's been so long since you last visited, you've forgotten that you're supposed to call me Sarah!" She laughs lightly, then coughs, covering her mouth with her hand. "Never mind, come on in. Steve is in his room still getting ready. You know he isn't much of a morning person."

"But it's three in the afternoon?"

"He had a rough night," Sarah explains. "And before you offer to check on him, I already looked after him through the night. It's just the change of seasons flaring up his asthma and his iron levels have been very low lately. He needs to eat some more nutritious meals."

"Okay, if you're sure," Isabel agrees.

"Just be on the look out for an asthma attack, he keeps forgetting his asthma cigarettes when he goes out," Sarah tells her.

Isabel takes a seat at the dining room table after being motioned to by Sarah, who begins to boil the kettle on the stove. Their dinner is already roasting in the oven, another pot over the flame with vegetables simmering. Sarah moves slowly around the kitchen, almost brittle in her movements which doesn't escape Isabel's attention.

Isabel looks away so she isn't staring, taking the time to look around the apartment. She hasn't been to the Rogers' apartment for quite a while, but it's always nice to return because it looks exactly the same as she remembers from when she was younger. While the Barnes' used to live in a much more lavish house before the Depression, the Rogers' have always inhabited this apartment. It is very similar to the Barnes family's, as well as to many other apartments around Brooklyn. It consists mainly of one large, open space with two bedrooms veering off from the main space and a bathroom between them. A tiny kitchen and dining table sit in one corner near the door, the living room situated further into the apartment containing a small two-piece sofa set, coffee table, large fireplace and a bookshelf in the corner. The Rogers' don't have many possessions, but the place is welcoming, homely, and lived in. Isabel notes the assortment of Steve's drawings scattered around on every available surface, framed by Mrs. Rogers, most of them pieces Steve did in art classes that have no price on them for sale.

Sarah stirs the coffees and places one in front of Isabel, earning a thanks. She takes a seat opposite Isabel, her own coffee warming her hands. She seems slightly puffed, taking a second to catch her breath. "How's work going? Are you still enjoying it?"

"It sounds strange but despite the hardships and how emotional it can get, I love it. There are some downsides to nursing, as you know, but generally it's very rewarding," Isabel answers, taking a sip of her drink. The coffee is extremely sweet, the way Sarah Rogers has always made it, with three teaspoons of sugar.

"I heard about your experience with that soldier," Sarah mentions sympathetically. Isabel's eyes snap up. "Not from Steve, though he did tell me later that he knew. The other nurses told me. They were all shaken up by it, but said you were the most. It's common with those sorts of patients, don't worry. It's hard, and I guess it really makes the fighting seem close to home."

"Yeah, it does," Isabel agrees.

Sarah takes a sip of her coffee, and Isabel watches carefully and discreetly, noting her appearance. The wrinkles on her forehead, around her eyes, and her smile lines are more prominent than Isabel remembers them being before - though life has been so hectic that she's hardly seen Mrs. Rogers in the last two years, not the way she used to when they were all the school and they would pop into each other's apartments for an after-school snack and to do homework. Sarah's skin is extremely pale with almost a grey sheen. She's worryingly thin, her blonde hair rather wispy and flat, and her eyes seem to lack their usual sparkle. She looks unwell, as though she has a cold or a virus, and she has a worryingly tight, phlegmy cough. She also moves very slowly, getting puffed from small amounts of exertion. Isabel makes a mental note to ask Steve about it.

"So, what else have you been doing with your time?" Sarah asks, a sly smile sliding onto her features. "Have you been dating anyone?"

Isabel almost spits out her coffee in surprise, taken aback by the sudden change in conversation. Her cheeks blush profusely.

"Maybe," she says vaguely, smiling at Sarah. "Why is everyone so interested in my love life?"

"Well, honey, that's the kind of thing people talk about. You aren't a teenager anymore, people are curious as to who you're going to settle down with. And it's kind of imperative that a woman marries. It's hard to get by in the world otherwise."

"Women don't have to marry, Sarah," Isabel reminds her. "I work a respectable job and earn a reasonable wage. I could get by on my own if I wished."

"I know you could, darl. But life is awfully lonely without someone beside you."

"I don't doubt that," Isabel says, feeling as though the eyes of Joseph Rogers in the photograph behind her on the wall are staring into her back.

"Tell me about him," Sarah demands. "You're sweet on him?"

"Yeah, I guess," Isabel says. "He's a nice man from a lovely family. He's pretty swell."

"That's it?" Sarah asks, obviously hoping for more information. "Come on, let's have some girl talk," Sarah pushes, a slight gleam in her baby blues.

Isabel shakes her head, sighing, a smile stretching across her features. "Okay fine. But it isn't all sunshine and roses," Isabel warns

"No relationship is, sweetheart."

"He's funny and kind, and always tries hard to be a gentleman. We get along really well, we have similar interests in books and films."

"I'm sensing a but…" Sarah pushes.

"I really can't fault him, Sarah. He's lovely. The only "but" is that we have very different lives. He comes from a rich family and they aren't very close, whereas my family is poor, but we're very tight-knit. He sort of... looks down on my family for not having much money, but I guess he doesn't know any better, his father is the same. He was a jock at high school, on the football team. He was very popular, which I wasn't, so he has a lot of friends that he's kept, even now. He works full time during the week, and then he likes to spend time with them every weekend, going out drinking with his teammates, and doesn't spend a lot of time with me."

"He's young, love, he'll come around. One day he'll wake up and realise he's wasting his time by not spending it with a doll such as yourself."

"Well I hope so," Isabel laughs. "Otherwise I'd still be very lonely."

"How long have you been together?"

"Not very long, around seven months," Isabel guesses. She carefully looks around to make sure Steve isn't listening, but the door to his room is still closed.

"Is he very handsome?" Sarah asks.

At that question, Isabel finds herself surprised, her mind imagining large baby blues and golden hair and long eyelashes as opposed to Danny's light brown, shaggy hair and almond shaped, green eyes. "Very," she breathes, realising she hasn't answered. "He's–,"

Isabel stops abruptly when the door to Steve's bedroom opens and Steve emerges, dressed in slacks and a woollen shirt, and with a jacket hung over his arm. His hair is perfectly styled with not a hair out of place.

"Uh, hi Steve," Isabel says quickly, her cheeks heating up again as she hopes Steve hadn't heard. Sarah looks curiously between her son and Isabel, trying to understand Isabel's reaction, a confused frown perched on her features.

"Hey, Issy," Steve says. "I thought before we have dinner in a few hours, I'd spent some time sketching in the park across the street. Wanna come?"

"Yeah, sure," Isabel says, jumping up to escape the surprised and almost-knowing look on Mrs. Rogers' face.

"We'll be back in a while, Ma," Steve says.

"Be in by six," Sarah calls as they escape out the door.

Neither of the friends say much as they ascend the stairs. Stepping out of the lobby sees them blasted by the unusually cold air, and they wrap themselves a little tighter in their thin jackets. They walk side by side down the footpath a few buildings down before reaching a busy neighbourhood park. There are a few food vendors set up along one edge and a newspaper stand shouts out to passers-by in a loud, rough voice.

There is a small hill at the other edge of the park which they make for, underneath the canopy of the trees which almost entirely block out the view of the buildings around them. The park has a tranquillity that invokes a sense of freedom and of being away from the city, which is a welcome change for the two young adults who have rarely, if ever, left it. Steve finds his desired spot, not far from the tiny pond by the edge of the hill, dumping his art backpack onto the mound of grass and taking a seat beside it. Isabel carefully sits next to him, covering her legs with the length of her thick skirt to fight off the cold and wrapping herself tighter in her knitted jumper.

Generally, Steve only likes to sketch in Central Park over in Manhattan, since its bigger and busier with more objects to draw, but that activity is saved only for the summer months since too much cold air flares up his asthma. Today has been unusually cool, but only going down the street makes it easier to return if he starts to feel that familiar tightness in his chest. Isabel sometimes goes along with Steve to Central Park when she has a day off, not just to keep him company but also to experience the park itself. It's an ever-changing landscape that looks significantly different no matter what day they visit. There's always something new to see and experience, and it's a break from a rather monotonous life of working and coming home.

Steve pulls one of his sketchbooks from his bag and his graphite pencils, flipping quickly past used pages with drawings of people and landscapes to a blank sheet. He brushes the blank page with one hand, adjusts his grip on his pencil, and then starts to look in front of him for something or someone to draw.

"What are you going to draw?" Isabel asks, watching as a business man rushes past them, briefcase in hand, obviously hurrying to get home from work.

"Them, over there," Steve says absentmindedly, his hand already gliding over the page. "The mother with the child, holding the kite."

Steve draws quickly, the sketch taking on a likeness to the scene within minutes. The child is drawn first, the kite in his grubby little hands and his expression one of utter joy. Then, Steve adds the mother, her arms protectively encircling her child and her face one of love and devotion, laughing as she looks up into the sky. Isabel sits patiently, breathing in the cool, fresh air, and watches as the child runs along with his kite, making it fly higher and higher into the air. It narrowly avoids getting lodged in one of the trees, making Isabel laugh when the mother quickly yanks it down. Her eyes flick every now and then to the drawing, more detailed and darker with shading every time.

Steve never announces when he's finished a drawing. Rather, he just flips the page and starts a new one, either finding himself a new subject or taking interest in something Isabel points out. Isabel lays back after a while, looking up at the faint orange light streaming between the branches of the trees above. The sun is setting slowly, disappearing behind the surrounding buildings and putting a hazy ambience over the park. She listens in contentment to the birdsong in the trees, the rustle of the leaves, the laughter of children, and the scratch of Steve's pencils, and eventually finds herself dozing off, only vaguely aware of the sounds around her.

She awakens with a jolt when Steve shuffles next to her, adjusting his position on the hard ground. "What time is it?" She asks groggily.

Steve checks his wristwatch. "4.37," Steve says. "You've only been dozing for about twenty minutes."

"Oh, sorry," Isabel chuckles, the disorientation starting to wear off. "Good company, I am."

"You're always good company," Steve says sincerely, turning to smile at her. "Even when you're snoring."

"I don't snore!" Isabel protests in mock offence, smacking Steve gently in the shoulder and eliciting a cheerful laugh from Steve. She lets him draw for a few more minutes before she remembers about Sarah's appearance today and that nasty cough she can't get out of her mind. "So, your Mom looked really unwell today," Isabel observes.

"I know," Steve sighs, staring down at a new piece of paper he has turned to. "She's been looking like that for a few weeks now. We had a doctor come out the other day to check on her."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

Steve shrugs. "Ma said she didn't want to bother you. Anyway, the doctor went in, took her temperature and that – I'm not really sure, I stayed in the kitchen. Anyway, she told me after that he'd said it was just a virus. Promised me that if she didn't get any better, she'd get a second opinion. But she's a nurse, you know, she knows what she's doing."

Isabel doesn't reply, instead trying to envision the way Sarah had looked this morning. The grey, pasty pallor to her skin, the limpness of her hair, that almost constant cough that she'd tried to hide. "Perhaps it is a cold or the flu, or maybe she just hasn't been eating well and she's down on some nutrients. It's hard to diagnose someone without examining them. Are you sure you don't want me to have a look?" She offers.

"I appreciate it, but really, it's okay. Ma says she feels fine, maybe just a little run down. She's still going to work, so it can't be that bad. She'll be okay."

"Yeah, she's a fighter," Isabel agrees. She tries to remember whether she'd seen Sarah around at the hospital. Normally they cross paths quite frequently in the break room or when they're scheduled on in the same ward. She can't remember seeing her.

Steve lets the conversation drop, picking up his sketchbook again, but the paper is blank. He seems to be looking out at the park again, but not seeing anything of interest.

After about ten minutes of Steve searching, Isabel suggests, "Maybe we should move somewhere else? You've probably drawn this whole park twenty times over by now."

"Can I draw you instead?"

Isabel pauses. Steve, of course, draws her and Bucky all the time as practise and she is aware of it. Only difference is, they generally don't know that he's drawing them until he shows them the finished product. Steve is normally very silent about his drawing, imagining someone in a certain position rather than asking them to pose. He draws them as they're moving around or reading, otherwise distracted from the fact Steve's subtly drawing them.

Bucky is much more open to being photographed and drawn by Steve, more than happy to pose as a model. That's how he ended up at Steve's art class back in December. Steve's sketchbook is full of still-life sketches of Bucky in posed situations, holding random props or wearing certain clothes, making a certain expression with his face or smiling directly at Steve. The few that Isabel has seen of herself – not that Steve openly shows them to her often but she's caught glimpses – are of her actually moving or doing things, like reading a book or dancing around the living room with Bucky. She never knows he's drawing her, so she always looks natural and relaxed. Bucky can look that way, like he's relaxed, even in a posed situation. Winifred always said he should have become a star in Hollywood, he's always been comfortable in front of the camera, the centre of attention at any event. It's part of his charm.

Isabel decides maybe she should try her hand at posing like Bucky does. "Okay."

"Okay," Steve beams, turning around to face Isabel.

"What do you want me to do?" Isabel asks, feeling slightly uncomfortable as Steve is already putting pen to paper.

"Just do what you were doing before," Steve waves off her nervousness. "Talk to me or something. Try to look relaxed."

Isabel does as she's told, going back to looking out at the park. There's more business people in the park now, business men and shopkeepers and retail workers cutting through the park toward their respective apartments. The children have all been called inside to prepare for dinner, and the park has suddenly lost its friendliness, feeling a little lonely.

Every now and then she glances at Steve through the corner of her eyes, seeing him hunched down over the book. When she chances a peek down at the sketchbook, the drawing of her is already sketched out, the outline of her face appearing on the white paper. Steve is beginning the shading and textures, the pencil swooping across the drawing's jawline. He notices her looking and pulls the sketchbook toward him.

"No peeking," he berates.

"Fine," Isabel yields. "But don't you have to look at your subject more? You've hardly looked up at me," Isabel observes, noticing that Steve has only actually looked at her once or twice for a second or so the whole time he's been drawing.

"You don't really need to observe your subject if you've known them nearly your whole life," Steve says, the tips of his ears turning a little bit red. "I know what you look like. It's really only just for the lighting and that."

"Oh."

Another twenty minutes or so passes and finally Steve puts down his pencil, looking critically at the drawing.

"Can I see yet?" Isabel asks impatiently, but Steve shakes his head, hiding the drawing from her sight.

"It isn't finished yet," Steve says, erasing some parts before picking up the pencil again. "So, you were telling my Mom about Danny?"

Isabel feels like she chokes on any words in her mouth, her cheeks heating up embarrassingly. She looks away from Steve, eyes widened in disbelief. Another person interested in her love life. This is just getting better and better. "Well she did ask."

Steve's interest looks peaked, though Isabel thinks she sees a flash of disappointment spread across his face. "I still haven't met him, not properly, and neither has Bucky," he says, a little bit accusingly.

"Because we all haven't done anything together."

"I know. But we've invited him a few times now and he hasn't come out." Steve pauses, seemingly coming up with his question carefully. "Is there something about him you don't want us to know? You sounded a little... unsure when you were speaking to Ma."

"What? No. Did Bucky put you up to this? This older brother act?" Isabel asks slowly. She feels a slight hope in the pit of her stomach that maybe Steve is interested in knowing about her relationship with Danny because he really is hoping she'll leave Danny for him. Of course, she's being silly, because those sorts of things don't happen in real life.

"Of course not. I mean, Bucky's talked about it because he's worried. But no, I put myself up to it. I've just never heard you talk about a guy like that in a while, not even when you dated Jacob Hemmings in tenth grade - I think you found him more annoying than anything. Anyway, obviously you and Danny are pretty serious, like you said, and as your…" Steve pauses, seemingly forcing the words out, "adopted brother, I feel like I need to help Bucky out in fending off the boys if they aren't good enough for you."

Isabel laughs at her own stupidity, at how silly she was to think Steve would think of her as anything else other than the younger sister he never had. She silently thanks God above that she hadn't admitted that it was him she talked about. "Right," she says through her laughter. "I appreciate the concern, but I can look after myself, Steve."

"I know you can, but you shouldn't have to."

"Well that is why I'm with Danny, is it not? So he can look after me?"

"I guess so," Steve decides, sounding a little dejected. "Are you happy?"

"Yes, we are," Isabel says, though her voice isn't as convincing as she's hoped. If Steve is so interested in who's she's sweet on, he obviously doesn't want it to be him. Besides, he only just said that he thought of Isabel as a sister. She feels her heartbreak just a little, and she doesn't even understand why because she's doing it all to herself.

"Good, I'm glad. That's all that matters to me," Steve decides. He puts down his pencil, examines the drawing once more, then turns it to face Isabel. "Finished." A genuine smile has returned to his face, as if he feels relieved or something, all evidence of the coldness in his voice from before gone.

Isabel carefully takes the sketchbook from his hands, putting it down in her lap. The graphite drawing is of her profile as she looks out to the park beyond. She looks tiny and uncomfortable, hunched over her knees as she protectively holds them into her chest. Her hair is curled, the hair at the front of her head pinned back from her face with a sparkling silver clip. The rest of her hair flutters in the slight wind. Her lips are dark and plump, reflecting her red lipstick, her eyes a medium grey colour, and her eyebrows dark and thick, forming a slight frown. Despite the frown though, she really does look more beautiful in the picture than she knows she is. Steve is an amazingly talented artist, but he always manages to make her look better than she truly does.

"Why am I frowning?" She asks Steve. "Do I always look like that?"

"Not always," Steve laughs. "You and Bucky have the same expression when you're thinking and that. I call it your brooding face."

"It's really lovely," she smiles at Steve, handing him back the sketchbook.

Steve looks at the drawing again, then back at Isabel, then the drawing again. He flips the page over to the one before, then turns the book to show her. It's another drawing of her, in a similar position. Except, this one she hadn't known he was drawing. She looks comfortable and content, sitting back on her hands, her skirt flaring out in front of her. She has a relaxed smirk on her face, her eyes bright.

"So, that's what I look like when I don't know you're drawing me…" Isabel mumbles, unable to get over how her entire demeanour seemed to change once she knew she had an audience.

"They're both you," Steve tells her. "Not everyone is happy all of the time." Steve flips between the two drawings critically. He stops on the staged portrait and takes a second to draw a few more lines around the mouth, then turns the drawing back to her so that Isabel can see that the drawing of her now has the corners of her mouth turned upward in a slight smile rather than an almost scowl. "Now, it's perfect."

A/N: Hmm, so even Steve and Sarah can see through Isabel's relationship with Danny. It's a pity Isabel hasn't put all the pieces of the puzzle together as well. There's some hints in this chapter as to what will happen in the next, so prepare yourselves.

Thanks again to everyone who's followed, favourited and reviewed! Please feel free to continue reviewing - tell me what you like, what you don't like, what you're thinking so far. :)