Steve Rogers

I realize- realized some time ago, long before the sun dropped below the horizon and the cooler night air set in- that I should not just be sitting here. What lacerations and bruises I'm sporting are minor; superficial. My skin is still warm from sitting in the last of the sun, though I'm stripped to the waist so it's leaving me, now. Even the heat soaked up by the sand all day is leaving, dissipating into the evening air and leaving the grains cool to the touch.

Not as cold as the body wrapped in the remains of my shirt and jacket. Between the two pieces of clothing, she's covered head to toe. I know I should move her, should bring her to the forensic team, not that I want to. Maybe straight to the cemetery. There's something I should be doing, but all I can do is watch the water for more bodies. I sit with my knees bent and my arms draped over them, feeling wasted but remaining vigilant, and bear witness as the ocean laps away at the stretch of sand I washed up on, continuing to shift and replace the pieces of shore that were disturbed as I tried uselessly to breathe life back into the lungs of a little dead girl.

As frightening as it had been to wake up in the strange house, and venture out into the bizarre and exotic island, it's almost as unnerving to return to it now. I want to say sorry to whoever's it is, to explain to them that I didn't mean to wake up there, or knock that table over, but no one's inside. After standing around for a good while knocking, I push the door open and move through the cool dark rooms. It's clean but it doesn't look really lived in, like it's kind of new. The only sign anyone's been here recently is the canvas sack of what I guess are dirty clothes, and the empty- now broken- glass and book with the pencil sticking out of it that were on the night stand I ran into in my hurry to get out of the place. Feeling bad about it, I crouch down and take a while to pick up all the little pieces of glass I can find against the wood floors. There are a few big ones, and their edges look almost smooth but I know they'll cut if I don't handle them right. I layer them onto each other so each curved piece cradles the next, but they don't fit quite right, and the sound they make when they scrape together sort of bothers my ears. Then I pick up all the littler pieces and put them on top, but I probably missed some. Righting the table, I put the glass on it. I'll find a broom, I promise silently, but I guess I don't know who it is I'm promising. I pick up the notebook and carefully brush at it with my fingertips to make sure there's no glass fragments on it. I can't help but notice the little piece sticking out, paper that's a different type than the pages.

Instinctively, I know I shouldn't. It's been rude enough, gawking at all the pictures that are up in the house, pictures of soldiers and heroes. Some of them are photographs, some of them are drawn, so I don't know which one the person who lives here is, an artist or a photographer or a soldier. I like the drawings a lot- I like to draw, myself. I hope I can get that good some time, but paper is kind of expensive. Usually I just use the backs of other things, but the teachers at school and the administrators at the orphanage say I shouldn't. They don't ever seem mad about it, they just seem a little disapproving, so I try not to, but.

But there isn't an orphanage, here. Or my school. There's no buildings or streets, it's all like something out of an adventure story. Like The Swiss Family Robinson, or Treasure Island. Anyway, everyone's been very kind, and I haven't met any pirates, but I haven't met any big families or anything, so I guess it's just an island. It'd be swell to see a pirate, but to be honest, I bet that pirates in real life are more dangerous and cruel than exciting.

I pull the photograph paper out from the sketching book and drop it again, but I don't notice. The picture's of a pretty woman with her hair done up real nice, looking sort of embarrassed but smiling. I don't think anyone else would think she looks embarrassed, I just do because I know what that look means. Her mouth is doing a little thing on its side. Mine would do it too sometimes, and she would put her thumb into the one dimple in my cheek and tell me it was and that I shouldn't feel shy about things. I almost think I can smell her, while I'm looking at the picture, even though I know that can't be true.

It's not that I mean to, I really don't, but I start crying. I miss her, every day. Sometimes I think I'm used to them both being gone, and it's been so many years since father died, but mom...

I end up sitting on the floor of the house near the open front door with my back pressed against the wall. The picture's on the floor and I'm looking at it from over the tops of my knees, where I've got my nose and mouth pressed against the boney part, although the other fellas say all of me is bones. I can feel the ones in my back against the wood and the ones in my elbows digging into my palms, maybe hard enough to leave bruises, I dunno. I don't understand why there's a picture of her here. I don't understand where here is. I don't understand why I'm alone.

Even if it's been that way for long enough now that I should be used to it.

I don't find Bucky at his place, but I find him near enough. In my brief morning sojourn to the Compound, I couldn't help but notice a kind of tension. I was planning to come by anyway, but now I have a specific question in mind, when I do. Maybe Bucky knows what's going on.

It's not the strangest thing, perhaps, that Bucky owns a horse. It certainly isn't something I would have pictured him doing back home, though, even in a world where we weren't- well. Who we were. I've ridden enough to know Virginia is a fine mare, but taking care of a horse is an entirely different matter than riding one.

"Bucky." I lift a one hand briefly in greeting as I walk up to the single wooden stall.

"How are you?"

My respect for the doctors who have so painstakingly guarded my significant injuries from infection is immense, as is my gratitude, but enough is enough. I'm getting out of this clinic. In three days it'll have been twenty since I arrived, and I haven't spent a one of them outside yet. Aside from a few brief, stolen strolls down the compound hallway and one foray onto the front stoop with Bucky, it's been seventeen days of reading, fielding visitors and playing cards, and I may be a veteran but I'm not ready for a life of retirement yet.

I know when Dr. Grey will be coming in- I know all of the doctors' schedules, now- so when she is I've made sure I'm sitting perfectly upright and at my leisure, notebook and pen in hand. My shoulder is still miles away from back to normal, and the healing incision along my ribcage has a ways to go as well, but I know myself. I need to start some kind of physical therapy regime, need to get on my feet. Lying here isn't going to do me any more good it's just going to make me go stir crazy. The risk of infection has to be passed, and the only reason I'm still here is caution.

Which I appreciate, but God almighty, I have got to get out of here.

"Dr. Grey," I say, smiling, easily slipping my pen between the notebook's pages and closing it with one hand.

"Good afternoon."

There is a sound and a fury to the twenty first century that makes the clamor of post-War, pre-Depression Brooklyn seem tinny and small. Growing up in the city of churches, the noise was constant, everything reverberating off of brick and cobblestone, but I had no idea what true cacophony was until I became Captain America; first by way of the fire in my veins and the lights bombarding me as my body warped and changed itself into the machine I needed it to be to enact the duties my patriotism demanded; then in the explosive percussion of World War II; and finally, the modern age I came to live in, alive at all hours, saturated with noise and technology and so many voices striving so powerfully to be heard. It's all taken some getting used to.

There is a new quality of sound now, though, one I am not familiar with. One that rattles as hollowly around inside my chest as it does the corrugated metal interior of the armored car I'm riding in. It's distressed and dissonant, a low rumble that threatens to break into a fever pitch at the slightest provocation, at the correct signal, and I know before the doors open that I will be that catalyst, I'll be what ignites the crowd. It's not a good feeling, this knowledge.

It isn't shame that makes me regret having to walk up the steps of the Federal Courthouse in a few moments, it isn't some sense of wounded pride that makes the metal cuffed around my wrists feel heavy- though those things are there, undeniably. I'm not a saint, or liar enough to say they aren't- so much as a grim, sinking feeling that this fight isn't over. My part in it, maybe, but the people have had so much stripped from them, from heroes they trusted and relied on to rights they thought, still think, are inalienable, ones they may not yet realize to be corrupted. For some, seeing me marched to my arraignment by plain clothes and duty blues police officers, not a super-powered being among them, will be gratifying. Reassuring. For others it will doubtless create the kind of despair I first felt an inkling of when I realized Tony wasn't going to back down. I would have fought forever over this, but I stood down, and I'm starting to think I've left the heaviest lifting to people who don't yet understand how lengthy and far-reaching this campaign will be.

Or maybe I just can't accept a world without a war to fight, in which case it's all vanity. I'm not sure. That lack of certainty alone was reason enough for me to concede, I know that- and I wish it made this easier.

The doors open and the rumble becomes a low, dull roar. This is where S.H.I.E.L.D. will hand me over. I step down, the grips of my boots hitting familiar pavement, and it isn't more than the space of a moment before individual slogans become discernible, ones with words like traitor and fake, questions like how could you and condemnations that spell it out, very clearly- this is what I deserve. There are other words, hero and captain, a forcedly punchy chant of 'Free Cap', like a desperate, steady drum beat, and though the other words are louder, I can't ignore the voices of support. I can't ignore any of their voices, because it was doing that which brought me here. Then I get hit in the face with a tomato. If there's one thing you can say for my fellow New Yorkers, we do like to uphold traditions.

I don't have the same uncanny skills as so many of my fellow heroes. Peter's ability in particular, his sixth sense for danger, is one I have admired many times. You can only go so far in the field of combat, though, before you develop one of your own, and I look past the crowd to the buildings beyond. Some have the broader loft-style windows set into brick that are reminiscent of the apartments in Red Hook- home- only twenty minutes on the J train if I started for the subway station right now- while others sport tall, thin windows and old masonry so specific to the financial district, and it's in one of these that I see the scope of the sniper rifle.

It's easiest to assume I'm the target, though given the confluence of influences here that isn't a given. Regardless, everyone around me is in immediate danger, especially the officer leading me up the steps. If the bullet goes through me, if the shooter misses, it is this man who will be taking the shot.

No. No more. No more innocents will be wounded in this crossfire.

It hasn't been two seconds since the muzzle of the rifle registered in my vision and despite my exhaustion, the peculiar lethargy brought on by an unfamiliar sense of defeat, I throw myself forward, shoving the Federal Marshal up the steps and away from me, away from the line of fire. I can't get away from the crowd, but I can angle myself so whatever fire I take, it won't encompass anyone but me.

"Look out!" I yell, loud and strong enough to startle my escorts and, I hope to God, the crush of onlookers pressing ever closer against the barricades. I hear the crack of the rifle's discharge and a shredding in my back, impact and pain like only a bullet can really cause. I've been shot plenty of times- it is, understandably, part of the job description- but something gets hit inside and I feel it, my lung, as something pops and most of my air is suddenly gone. There's a strange, cold pain across the front of my chest and I know the bullet went through, must be lodged in the stone steps. It's staggering. It feels as though my heart's been ripped out.

I could swear to God I think I hear Sharon's voice as I fall.

There's light in my eyes, warm and bright, and the sharp edges of cut stone under me aren't the same width, the same number as the ones I was walking up just moments before. I try to breathe and it's too humid, though there's a secondary wetness, thick and coppery, in my throat. It should be more bewildering, the sudden shift in climate, in the quality of the air; the fact that all the sound seems to have gone out of the world, the screaming and hysteria, gone, the sound and the fury, gone.

Faulkner took the title of that book from a Shakespearean soliloquy. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. I can't remember which I read first, Faulkner or Shakespeare, just that they both came after Twain, and after... everything, I have to admit, it seems a small thing to be concerned about in the face of dying.