Chapter Text
1931.
Steve Rogers' ma is ill. Everyone knows it, it's why he supposes the Barnes family pities him and the neighbors try to stay away. Pity isn't care, nobody cares. It's the goddamn Great Depression, everybody's ill these days and nobody gives a damn. Sarah Rogers isn't something special, and little Stevie even less so.
Steve Rogers' ma is ill, and she thinks he's gonna be some great soldier like his daddy. The Great War took his daddy before Steve took his first breath. Everyone thinks his ma's illness is getting to her head because it's ridiculous, the notion of Steve being anything like his brave old man who left Ireland for Hell's Kitchen and then left Hell's Kitchen for the war and then got himself killed. Steve's gonna die young like his daddy, but it won't be glorious. It won't be in a blazing battlefield, fighting to protect his country. It won't be honorable or memorable or anything at all (daddy's death probably wasn't that either, there's nothing memorable about just another soldier in the Great War).
No, he'll probably die young coughing his poor lungs out as his heart gives out on the streets without a penny in his pocket, or beaten by some thug in an alley in the middle of goddamn nowhere Brooklyn. Nobody'll remember him and that'll be the end of Steven Grant Rogers. Ma must be really ill, because there's no war for Steve to be a soldier now. Ma is ill, but she doesn't die, not yet.
Steve's death almost comes for him just how he expects it to. He just wants to get past Tenth Avenue, he ain't got a dime to give and even if he did, he wouldn't give it. It hurts all over and he can taste the blood on his teeth, his chest squeezes and throat wheezes and a rib or two might've cracked as fists and boots beat down over his head, but he's not backing down. Then, the weight on his shoulders is lifted and he still can't breathe, but he feels infinitely lighter.
He looks up, not sure what to expect. Maybe a bird that's swooped them off, maybe a cop that scared them away, maybe even God or some guardian angel. The guardian angel's sharp blue eyes glint down at him, dark hair ruffled and sticking up in a dozen spots, and sleeves rolled up in that way that makes pretty girls swoon. His guardian angel is goddamn handsome and his name is James Buchanan Barnes. He tells Steve to call him Bucky, and like that, they're inseparable.
Bucky's quickly Steve's best friend. Probably his only friend, he doesn't really count Jonny from church who's about five years younger and just as sick as Steve's ma. Steve bets Jonny thinks he's sick too. He isn't, his body's just built that way. Maybe that it's own type of messed up illness. The folk at church would probably bet Steve and his ma sinned real bad for all their rotten luck, but it's still the goddamn Great Depression. Everyone's got rotten luck.
They don't have much in the way of entertainment or food that isn't just mushed up veggies and chipped beef. They hoard lard. Sugar's too expensive to come by these days, and they were never rich in the first place. They never took a debt, but the aftermath of the Roaring 20s is back to bite them in the ass either way. Ma says at least it's better than being back in Ireland with the famine.
Sometimes Bucky takes Steve to Coney Island to look at the pretty girls (Bucky likes watching them blush when he calls 'em dolls), and once Steve rides the Cyclone. Bucky makes him do it. He should know better with Steve's asthma and what, but laughs with him regardless when Steve comes down with jelly legs and takes two steps before emptying his guts onto the street. They stagger all the way home, their laughter bouncing down the streets.
1935.
Steve Rogers' ma is still ill. He reckons that's never changing. He's ill too. He's stuck in bed with scarlet fever or one thing or the other. His whole body hurts and his chest isn't working proper as it should (it never does) and his ears are shot. Bucky stops by with soup and threats if he dares to try and leave the house most days. At least it helps with the loneliness. The soup is bland, sometimes just hot water and salt, but it's better than nothing.
Ma still leaves the house for work, it isn't fair. If she can be a nurse, he can go to school. She gets better and worse. She's worse these days, thinner than she's been in years, and she coughs a lot. She won't be able to work for a lot longer, he can tell. He needs to figure out what he'll do then, but he doesn't know who'll hire him with his weak heart and skinny arms. He might make do with shoe shining or selling papers. He'll figure it out as soon as he can stand.
Sometimes ma feels well enough to go to church. Steve doesn't really care for it, but ma talks about Ireland and his father a lot when they go. She prays for his father's soul, for their wellbeing, that they'll be able to afford food on the table tomorrow, and she prays and prays. Most of her prayers go unanswered. Steve doesn't talk to Bucky about church, because Bucky's Jewish, but they talk about everything else. A lot of the time, it's girls. Always girls with Bucky.
Even when they were younger, Bucky was a real charmer, but he's growing even more now. He's got those eyes and that dimple-worn smile that makes the ladies swoon and a handsome jawline and a built body and Steve always hears the girls in town when they pass by. He notices how they giggle and linger a little too long when Bucky's around, how their gaze follows and they're generous with their grazing touches.
Bucky tries, he really does. He takes Steve with him to Coney Island again with the girls, tries to set him up, but the little pitiful looks they give him tell him everything he needs to know. They're only giving him time of day 'cause he's Bucky's best buddy. Maybe if they're nice to him, Bucky will give them a chance. He hates to break their poor hearts and tell them the truth, Bucky's never liked a girl longer than a couple of weeks. He just loves the attention. He's charming like that.
They go to school in Brooklyn. Bucky's from Brooklyn, so it makes sense. Well actually, Bucky's from Indiana, but he grew up in Brooklyn, proper Brooklyn boy and all that. Steve likes the sound of it. Bucky calls him one too, like some token badge of honor. Steve laughs every time and ducks as Bucky grabs his neck and shoves his face into his armpit, watching him squirm like it's all in good fun. Steve kicks and Bucky laughs and then they're both laughing until Steve is coughing so hard he can't breathe and then they're laughing even harder. Then Bucky stops to make sure Steve is alright and the mood dies.
Steve is a newsboy now. They go to school in Brooklyn, but they actually don't most of the time. It ain't like Steve doesn't know how to read and write and add numbers so it doesn't really matter. They need the money. Working is a good thing. He walks the streets, handing out papers. He looks younger than he is, sometimes that helps and sometimes not really. It doesn't really matter, it's just the way it is. He's stubborn nonetheless. He's still beat blue in New York alleyways, still rescued by Bucky, still a weak scrappy kid. Except now he sells papers. Bucky buys them, which is funny because isn't much richer than he is. Just a little bit. Steve supposes it must be something about being an older sibling. He wouldn't know, he doesn't have any.
There are a lot of things he doesn't have, like a dad and siblings and money and a proper chest. Still, there are things he does have. Ma says he's got a heart ten times his size and Bucky says he's got a sense of justice that's real big and he's too damn stubborn for his own damn good. Steve grins real big at both of them. He knows he's reckless.
Steve Rogers' ma is still ill. Black Sunday doesn't help. Black Sunday makes it so much goddamn worse. Jesus Christ, ma's coughing blood.
1939.
Steve Rogers' ma isn't ill anymore. She'll never be ill again. She's all better now, six feet under next to his father's pearly white bones. Steve’s alone, except not really, he’s got Bucky. It’s fine, he thinks, it’s been a few years since ma passed. She’s with his father now who died in the war. There probably isn’t any war in heaven.
Bucky’s sister meets a boy, and Steve knows they’re growing up. They go to art school together in Brooklyn, him and Buck. For the first time in his life, Steve’s better than his best friend at something. Neither of them are bitter about it, and Steve doesn’t brag, even though Bucky says he should. They laugh about it all night.
Sometimes he still sells newspapers. He sells art now too. He’s good at it, but they still don’t have much money. Sometimes on their way home they talk about leaving everything behind, leaving New York, going somewhere like Jersey or something. They laugh about that too. Steve would probably die on the way with how his lungs are.
Bucky likes to read. He got the Hobbit from Europe when it came out in ‘37, around the time Ma died. Bucky’s a real square, but he doesn’t want anyone to know it. Steve knows it. Teases him about it too. The older boy denies, says he ain’t, teases Steve right back. Steve would bet Dolores doesn’t know about the blue-eyed charmer’s extensive library at home. Bucky swats his arm with a newspaper, laughing all the while.
There’s a war in Europe, but that ain’t their business. There isn’t any war in heaven.
Bucky still does eyes at Dolores, even though she quit on him in ‘38. Steve talks about it like it was ages ago, but it was only a few months really. She still blushes when he passes, but she doesn’t giggle anymore. Bucky spent 3 whole dollars on her to get her that stupid bear. That’s a working day's worth of money. They bought hot dogs too, and had to panhandle and beg their way onto a damn freezer truck to get back home. They laugh about that.
Steve goes to Mass in St. Agnes Clinton Church, right down from their old house, because it’s what Ma would’ve wanted. He doesn’t listen much to the sermon. He doesn’t listen much to anything at all. He can’t. His hearing’s been shot since he got sick a few years back. It’s not all bad, though.
There’s an orphanage next door. He wonders if he’d ended up there if Ma had died any sooner. He doesn’t think so. He’d probably have been left to die in that house until some unfortunate soul, probably Bucky, found him.
Bucky calls Steve an optimist sometimes and that makes him laugh. Steve’s no optimist, but it’s nice that somebody thinks of him in such a way. He’s a poster boy of a dreamer in his best friend’s mind. Too stubborn for his own good, always coming out of a fight with a smile on his bloody lips, standing back up regardless of how many times he’s been beaten down. It isn’t optimism and he isn’t a poster boy or a dreamer.
He’s just Steve from Brooklyn (technically from Manhattan, but he spent most of his childhood in Brooklyn – does it really matter?), who’s always sick and knows he’ll die. He’d rather die doing something good like losing a fight against a creep who was picking on a lady. If he dies doing something good, he’ll go to heaven. There’s no war in heaven.
He’s Steve Rogers from Brooklyn with a heart of gold. Steve Rogers is a wimp. He’s weak. He’s going to die someday. He thinks Ma would rather he died in war like his daddy. That’s not going to happen. He’s cornered and beaten and his lungs hurt and his bones hurt. He wishes he was someone else, someone stronger and braver, like the poster boy of optimism Bucky talked about. Come on, Stevie, get up.
If nothing else, he’s an artist.
1942.
The war in Europe is here now.
It has been since December, since Pearl Harbor, since the goddamn Japanese decided to drag them into it kicking. The Japanese are crazy and suicidal. Germany and Italy decided to drag themselves into Japan and America’s issues too, as if the Soviet Union wasn’t enough, and suddenly it’s a world war.
They were in class when they found out, and then they stopped the next day by the United States Recruiting and Induction Center. Steve had to get in, he did, it was his calling in a way nobody would ever understand; pulling at his soul and screaming his name. They didn’t let him in. Not the first time, not the second, nor the fifth.
Bucky was accepted that first day, of course he was. Steve is still trying not to be bitter about it. He’s down on his luck these days and Sergeant James Barnes is a goddamn army sniper. Most days, he isn’t angry about it. His heart swells with pride when he hears that his best buddy’s a sergeant.
The war in Europe is here now. Steve wants to help. There are no words to describe how frustrating it is watching and waiting and reading and listening on and on about the war, unable to do shit. He wants to help, he could help. They just won’t let him. He doesn’t understand why. Anyone who wants to help in the war effort should be able to.
He goes a sixth time. He’s refused a sixth time. The doctor nearly laughs him out of the room. Calls him a damn poster boy of all the world’s health problems. That makes Steve angrier than it probably should. It ain’t Steve’s fault he grew up poor in the Great Depression.
“D’ya like fightin’, punk?” Bucky mutters at him, pulling him by his shoulder.
They’re walking out of a shop. The clerk is glaring at them, Steve’s got his sleeve to his nose so that the blood doesn’t dribble onto the floor. Steve stumbles as the door shuts behind them, the sudden breeze and dust of the outside making him sniffle instinctively. He tastes the blood and for a moment fears choking on it and spits.
No, he doesn’t like fighting. He just didn’t like the way that man was looking at those girls. They’re young, those ladies, and they smile at him and Bucky shyly as they hurry out. One of them is blushing slightly, and she won’t stop looking at him. Her friend pulls her away and then they’re gone.
No, he doesn’t like fighting. It’s just that guy last week shouldn’t have been hitting that kid. And cheating the tourists like that isn’t fair. And stealing that woman’s purse isn’t right. And telling that woman she can’t sit there because of the color of her skin is just plain wrong. They’re all bullies, and Steve doesn’t hate much, but he despises bullies like nothing else.
The world isn’t fair. It isn’t right. Nothing’s just about it. He isn’t a kid anymore, but he knew that even back then. He’s still poor. He’s still weak. He’s still tired. He’s trapped. Ma isn’t, she’s in heaven with his father. That must be a freeing thing to live in heaven where there’s no war and no fighting.
No, Steve doesn’t like fighting. He ain’t good enough at it to enjoy it to any degree. Still, he goes to protests and he argues and hits and gets hit harder. Bucky says it ain’t his job to make the world fairer. Steve argues that if everybody thought like that nothing would ever change for the better. Bucky, who reads all the time, sighs.
Edmund Burke said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. Steve likes that quote. He lives by it. It’s his mandate, his motto, his purpose, his drive. He doesn’t like to think of himself as a holier-than-thou type of man, but if nothing else, he likes to think he’s good to any degree.
He goes a seventh time. To alleviate himself of the frustration that follows, he goes to a movie. There’s some punk in the back who won’t shut up. He’s being disrespectful. It’s really damn annoying.
1945.
Captain America is everything Steve Rogers never was. Captain America is strong and handsome. Captain America is a man made by science and good old American values. Captain America probably smells like apple pie, he’s got blue eyes and blond hair and a square jaw and a figure like a goddamn Greek god. Captain America punches Nazis and runs into battles and marches to soldiers and he’s an industry tool and a propaganda machine and he’s everything Steve Rogers wasn’t.
Except, they’ve both got a heart. Ma was right about one thing. Ma was right about a lot of things in the end. It’s funny how things turn out like that. Captain America doesn’t have a Bucky Barnes. Bucky’s gone. Captain America killed him. He failed him. Bucky slipped.
Captain America is a poster boy. Steve Rogers was nothing.
When they ask him now, he talks about Brooklyn. Memories of Manhattan and Hell’s Kitchen and Ma and the church and the alleyway fights died with Steve Rogers. He gets to keep some of the soft things. He gets to keep art and Brooklyn and Coney Island and Bucky’s memory.
This goddamn war has been happening for so long. Ma’s probably right. He’ll die in glory on the battlefield, just like his daddy. He’ll go out blazing and screaming for his country. He might even be remembered. That’s more than he can say for the others who died.
Captain America is a poster boy. The epitome of what their great country should be is. He smiles with shining white teeth through the grit and the grime. Ladies swoon. Children cheer. His fellow soldiers sometimes even smile back (but for the most part, they’re tired – who isn’t tired? That’s right, Captain America isn’t tired. Of course he isn’t).
If Steve Rogers was here, he’d probably cry. He’s a wimp, that Steve. Poster boys don’t cry.
Not even as they fall. Not even as they crash. Not even as they watch the murky ocean below, blurring. Icarus and Captain America are in more than one way practically the same. Ambitious young legends who flew too far and high and burned as they fell.
Captain America presses a kiss to the picture of his lover as he falls, like they do in the movies, like a good poster boy does. Steve Rogers thinks about how cold it is down there. He wonders if it’ll be cold forever or if he can finally rest when he gets to heaven. He’s optimistic. Poster boy of optimism.
The war has been happening for so long, it’s all he knows now. Captain America lives and will die in perpetual war. There’s no war in heaven.
DAY.
“You know, man,” Clint Barton says. “Growing up, I kind of thought you were a myth.”
Steve flashes him a look. “Really?”
“Yeah. I kind of thought you were propaganda or something. I mean, I knew you were real, I just didn’t think the serum was.”
“You thought I…what? Popped out like this?” Steve laughs, good-naturedly.
“Something like that. I mean, not out of the womb, obviously. I thought you trained in your childhood. I just thought the whole bit about you being sick as a kid was a puff piece to make all the normal weak people feel better about themselves or to teach kids about the value of good morals or something. Like, if you’re good, maybe you’ll be tossed into a machine and come out looking like Captain America too.”
There’s a beat of silence, then the two of them burst into laughter. He doesn’t laugh like he used to. He hasn’t since Bucky died, but it’s close this time. It makes his heart hurt and chest squeeze in a sort of unfamiliar way. Steve Rogers is used to his heart hurting and chest squeezing. Captain America isn’t.
Steve Rogers is dead in a way. All that’s left now is this poster boy of America. Steve doesn’t know if this is better.