punched_hitler | ☆ 33 ☆ (TEXT; Private to Bucky

[TEXT: Private to Bucky]
Hey, I need you to hang on to something for me for a little while, if you don't mind.

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[It's not that there's a new guy on the Barge - there's not. But anyone used to seeing Captain America around might notice that he's conspicuously missing as of Saturday - or, at least, he's not six-foot two and two hundred twenty pounds anymore. He's five-foot four and about a hundred pounds soaking wet, and he's not apologetic about it in the least. Same haircut, same voice, same style of dress (at least he asked for some civilian clothes that would fit), same attitude.

Steve goes about his day the same as he ever has - he goes for a run through the Barge early in the morning, and he shows up for his lunch shift in the kitchens and his shifts in the infirmary on time. He shows up at T'Pol's cabin for meditation, and he's even in the gym sometimes, working out against the bags. It's just that his mile has gone from two minutes to twenty, and he's got an inhaler in his pocket for those times when running or climbing the stairs - he's not taking the elevator, he refuses - gets to be a little too much.

Of course, he knows people are going to notice, but unless someone says something to him first, they're not going to hear a word about it from him. Actions speak louder than words, after all.]

[ooc: If anyone needs a reference, 1, 2, & 3, just with this haircut, still. Feel free to recognize him or not!]

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Not a total sadist, then.

[And yeah, Ricki is grinning in earnest now. It is him, and it was an Admiral request, and it's so bloody validating, to have even one person listen.]

What exactly did you get up to, during your war? You're certainly not much like any of the captains I worked with.

Not completely.

[He tilts his head, finishes catching his breath while he figures out just how to answer that. It's not hard, but he doesn't usually have to explain it, it's public knowledge back home.

First thing's first, though, that wry smile is back because,] That's probably because I had about two weeks of extremely abbreviated boot and then got skipped from Private to Captain while I was still figuring out how not to tear doors off their hinges. I didn't even see combat for another five months after that.

[Anyway.] I was part of a special ops unit, you could say. We went after HYDRA, the Nazi deep science division. Turns out their leader, Johann Schmidt, thought Hitler was too soft. He had bigger plans - and a premature version of the serum they gave me. So we tracked HYDRA, and we wiped them off the map.

[Or they thought they had, anyway.]

Bucky was part of my unit, too. After I pulled him out of one of their labs in Italy. [The first time he was a prisoner of war.]

Special ops. Malaysia, Kenya, Brazil, Hong Kong, Turkey.

[Ricki admits, quite quietly. He's still all over the network as a gun runner, but has told enough people now that the truth doesn't have much longer till it's all the way out.]

Very different parish, but we're cousins, you and I.

[He wonders if the jargon was the same when Steve was working. Cousins always meant the Brits and the Yanks, and has since he got involved in spycraft in the fifties.]

[Steve smiles softly at that, nodding.] Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Poland, Italy, and Czechoslovakia.

[Either way, he's not about to go blabbing anything about Ricki to anyone. But some things do start to make a little more sense.

Ricki's not wrong, either way - in fact, he's very right. And Steve's heard that term enough to know what it means.] I guess we are. About of my team wasn't American, anyway - two Brits, and a Frenchman. [Two, because he considers Peggy part of his team.]

I was special ops for a while after the war, too. [He doesn't think he is anymore, though - not with SHIELD in shambles.] It's hard to do anything else after something like that, isn't it?

Edited 2015-06-28 22:09 (UTC)

It's hard to lose control over so much, after something like that.

[It's why this place kills him, sometimes. He's already dead, but the instincts, the ones screaming at him to stay armed, stay moving, stay alert, or eat lead, those are so routinely haywire that the adrenaline leaves him sleepless, nights at a time.]

How are you adjusting?

Yeah. I can imagine. [He's got those instincts, too, in varying degrees. He's just generally been able to weather them better - maybe it was cheating, because the serum really had helped with that. Maybe he's in for a rougher ride now, who knows. But it's still not as rough as Ricki's, and he wouldn't pretend it is, if he were to compare the two.]

Me? [He gives a little one-shouldered shrug, passing it off as no big deal.] Should be a piece of cake, right? I've been Captain America for four years. [Not counting the time he spent in the ice - he doesn't, most of the time, because it's like it didn't happen, to him.] I was Steve Rogers for almost twenty-five before that.

[Turns out... it's surprisingly easy to get used to being taller, to seeing all the colors a person should, to breathing and to running without getting tired. But he's not complaining.] I'm good. I guess what everyone else thinks is up to them.

Live through a few floods.

[He advises. It'll be a good bit of perspective for him.]

But don't forget to come back when you're done. Politics aside, there are kids here like Tiffany who needs someone between them and it, whatever it is.

Maybe more than a few.

[This really isn't something he's planning to do for a day, or a week. That doesn't prove anything.

But he does nod, at the second part.] What I had isn't really mine to give up, in some ways. I'm not going to belittle the sacrifice of the man who gave it to me. [He'd meant what he said, too, when he'd told Tiffany that he didn't plan to retire. He can't stop being Captain America, and he won't, either.]

But I think he'd understand what I'm doing, for now.

[He smiles a little.] Maybe by then, those kids like Tiffany won't need someone, anyway. [Besides, he doesn't plan to really leave them hanging in the meantime. Being short and shrimpy never stopped him from stepping into the thick of things before.]

Tell me about that? If you don't mind.

There's nothing remotely like it, where I'm from, and I'm curious.

[Helplessly so, about these strange worlds and these stranger systems. He would have heard about Steve, if he had been there in that war.]

Project Rebirth? [Well, pal, it's all classified - or, most of it was, some of it still is, and it doesn't actually matter a bit here, does it.] There's not much remotely like it where I'm from, either, except for a few attempts. And most of us prefer it that way. It's based on a serum developed by a man named Abraham Erskine. He was a German scientist, and when Hitler and Schmidt found out about his research after the Great War... well, they wanted it. Erskine refused, and after that, he needed a bit of a rescue. [To say the least - but he figures you get the point.]

The serum was meant to enhance human abilities to their highest point. Everything - speed, strength, stamina, agility, cognitive skills. Schmidt forced a version of it on himself before it was ready, and it pushed an already insane fanatic further over the edge. Erskine was willing to use the finished formula to help the Allies stop the Nazis and HYDRA, but they needed a test subject. [He shrugs a little.] I had nothing to lose. Dr. Erskine gave me a chance, when the Army wanted someone who was already in peak condition and thought I was a joke, just like everybody else. He said... he said the serum would take care of the physical, but that he wanted somebody who'd do the right thing with it. Who understood what power meant, and how to use it, rather than taking it for granted.

All told, the whole thing took a couple of minutes. Sure felt like a lot longer, to me, [he says dryly,] but - it worked. It worked perfectly, and then HYDRA assassinated Erskine about ten seconds later. So I was all the Army got, and no one's been able to recreate the formula or the procedure exactly, ever since.

Not for lack of trying, though.

☆ 33 ☆ (TEXT; Private to Bucky | SPAM; OTA)

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