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1
"Thought you might like to have this," Fury says, putting the box on Steve's new coffee table, "It's been sitting in storage since before I was born."
Before Steve can ask what the box is, Fury has left the room with a swish of his coat. Steve is beginning to suspect that Fury's dramatic entrances and exits are just a ploy to avoid actually talking to people.
The box emits a puff of dust when Steve tugs the lid off, the kind of thing that would have sent him into a coughing fit before the serum. Sometimes, Steve still wakes up in the middle of the night thinking it's all come back, the wheezing, the pain, the fatigue, worrying one good fever would be the end. This body feels borrowed, even after two years (seventy years, says Fury's voice in Steve's head). He sees his sturdy hands as the reach into the box, but doesn't quite believe that they belong to him.
There's not much in the box: some letters, a pile of photographs, two sketchbooks, and a small stack of books. Once Steve was pronounced dead, the SSR must have cleared out his apartment and boxed up some of his stuff, though what they thought they were saving it for, Steve can't imagine. He's surprised these things didn't end up lost or sold or destroyed, or at least donated to some museum, but here they are. He hesitates for a moment, then decides to go through the books first: his copies of Treasure Island and The Hobbit are in good condition, if a bit musty. There's the collection of Yeats poetry his mother left him when she died, a battered copy of Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, some Hart Crane. It's possible, Steve realizes, that SHIELD didn't release these books to any museums because the government didn't want the public to know what he had been reading. Maybe the world hasn't changed so much after all.
He spends a few moments flipping through The Hobbit - it almost smells the same, and his doodles of Smaug are still there in the margins - before his eyes fall on the photographs. Some of them are so faded he can't even tell what they are (the box seems to have run afoul of some water at some point down the line), but his parents' wedding photo looks alright, his mother looking radiant even in that stiff turn-of-the-century dress. There's Bucky's official army photo, a school class photo, a newspaper clipping of Peggy he must have cut out before he shipped out and never gotten the chance to give to her, and -
The photograph is of a teenage girl, skinny and pale, who stands by herself in a sparsely furnished room and smiles shyly at the camera, as if she's not quite used to the idea of having her picture taken. Her dress is cheap and obviously made for someone with a bigger chest than the one she has, but she looks happy, and even in the black and white Steve can clearly see the flush in her cheeks. Steve flips the photo over to see if there's anything written on the back. All it has is a date in smudged black ink: 1937.
Steve wonders if anybody took a second look at this photo over the years, if any SHIELD worker ever passed it to their buddy and said, Hey, doesn't this look a hell of a lot like - ? The girl in the photo could be Steve's sister, if he'd had one. Steve remembers the day the picture was taken: Bucky bought the dress and the stockings, telling the shop owner they were for his girl's birthday. The wig came from a friend of Bucky's who was a chorus girl and the makeup was stolen (borrowed, Steve remembers insisting) from Steve's mother.
"You don't look silly," Bucky said, absently straightening the wig on Steve's head, "You look pretty. You're perfect." He took the picture and promised her he'd get it developed at a place way uptown where nobody knew them. She was so small that she could pretty much pass as long as nobody looked too hard.
When Steve and Bucky and their friends would go out to those bars where half the people were in drag, it was clear that some of them wished they could be girls all time, while others were just playing dress up. Both of those things were okay, but Steve never felt like he belonged in either category. Still doesn't. There was nothing pretend about Steve wanting to be called she sometimes, to feel pretty, to take on the world same as always but as somebody just a little different. But it wasn't for all the time or for everyone to see.
Steve puts the picture back in the box and walks into the kitchen to make some coffee with the fancy new machine SHIELD has given him. He's tall now, over six feet, and broad-shouldered. His body seems to take up an impossible amount of space as he moves about the room. When he agreed to be part of Erskine's experiment, he knew that if the serum was successful that this would be what would happen, and most of the time he's glad of it. He can do things he would never have dreamed of doing before the war. But that willowy girl with the pale face and the dress too large for her body - that's someone he'll never be again. And there's nobody left who remembers her.
For some reason, that photo makes him sadder than anything else in the box. He doesn't look at the rest of it, and instead puts the whole thing away in a cabinet and tries to forget about it.
2
"Man, they couldn't have added dancing ability to the list of superpowers they were going to shoot you up with?" Sam laughs.
"Shut up." Steve throws the record sleeve at Sam, who catches it.
"Fine, why don't we play one of your records?" Sam asks. "You can show me how people danced to real music, or whatever you want to call it."
Steve knows that Sam is trying to distract him from the fact that it's been three entire days since they've heard anything from Maria at all, but he takes the bait because there's nothing else to do, and because it's Sam. Sam's got a way of making you feel like you've got all the time in the world.
"I have to warn you - I'm terrible at that, too," Steve tells Sam, "but I've got a stack of albums in one of those low cabinets if you wanna pick something out."
Steve points to the left, but it must be vague because Sam goes to the right, toward the cabinet closest to the wall.
"Actually, it's - " Steve starts, but Sam has already opened the cabinet and started to pull the box out onto the carpet. It's even dustier than when Nick gave it to him, and the SHIELD logo looks strange and out of place after everything that's happened. Sam opens the box, and as Steve sees him realize what it is he notices Sam's hand linger over the contents for a moment as if he's afraid to touch any of it.
"Steve," Sam says, "is this all your old stuff?"
Steve nods and sits down next to Sam on the floor. The next logical question would be why it's all hidden away in a box instead of out where people can see it, but Sam doesn't ask that. He just picks up The Hobbit and smiles as he flips through the yellowing pages.
"You know, I read this as a kid, too. Some stuff never gets old, I guess," murmurs Sam. Steve picks up the wedding picture from the pile and holds it out to Sam.
"These are my parents."
They spend a couple of minutes talking about the photo - how pretty Steve mother's dress was, what she was like, how Steve's parents met. It feels good to talk about these things again, not to someone who's looking for a piece of history but to someone who just wants to listen. Sam picks up a couple of the other photos.
"Hey," he says suddenly, holding out one of them to Steve, "is this you?"
And there’s the photograph again - the little smile on a mouth that had never worn lipstick before, the pleated skirt of the dress, the knee socks and the shoes that didn’t quite fit. Steve doesn’t think the person in the photo is that recognizable (the black and white is grainy, and there’s a thick crease over her eyebrow where the picture was folded), but Sam barely looked at the photo for more than a few seconds before asking his question. The old panic starts to rise in Steve’s stomach, and his mind gropes for any excuse for the picture. Before he went under, this photograph was dangerous, probably still is.
But it’s Sam. So he nods. Sam stares at the picture for several tense seconds.
“Wow,” Sam says, finally, “this sure isn’t in the Captain America exhibit.” Steve lets out a relieved breath.
“No, it sure isn’t,” he says. There’s a bit of an awkward silence, and Steve’s certain that he’s blushing. He’s always been a blusher.
“Seriously though you - you look nice,” Sam continues. “Did you - is this something you - I mean…”
“Is this something I did often?” Steve finishes for him. “Is there a vast historical record of me in drag that’s been kept from you by the government?”
“Well, I wasn’t gonna go that far,” Sam says, “but - wait, is there?” Steve has to cover his mouth to quiet his laugh, Sam’s mock-offended “I’m serious!” lost in the sound of helpless giggling.
“No, not really,” Steve explains when he recovers. “I think that’s the only picture. I don’t know, it was...it was something I did sometimes, before.”
“Before what?”
“Well, once the war started, I was trying to get in the army. And then I was actually in the army. And then I was pretty much dead for a while, so…not much opportunity to put on a dress.”
Sam looks at the picture thoughtfully.
“Well, what about now that you’re not ‘pretty much dead’ anymore? You gonna start again?” Sam asks.
“What? No,” Steve answers, a little too quickly.
“Why not?” Sam says. “Come on, is it something that made you happy?” Steve looks at his hands.
“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “Anyway, that’s not the point. I'm too tall and...I'd feel stupid. And anyway, it wasn’t about - it wasn’t about the clothes."
There’s another silence, a long one, Steve and Sam sitting on the floor with the box between them. Finally, Sam bumps his shoulder against Steve’s.
“We don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want,” Sam says. “I know it got kind of sprung on you.”
Steve takes a deep breath.
There are words now, for this kind of thing. He’s been on the internet - he knows that now there’s a distinction between drag and being transgender, he knows the words dysphoria and genderfluid and bigender, has turned them over and over on his tongue until they don’t even feel like words anymore, just random collections of sounds.
“I don’t know, I guess I just don’t feel like a guy all the time,” Steve mumbles. “A lot of the time. Maybe even most of the time. But definitely not all of the time.”
‘Captain America is the quintessential symbol of American manhood,’ the news anchor says, and she feels like she is going to throw up. She looks down at her body and feels like it belongs to somebody else.
Sam nods seriously, and Steve feels a burst of affection for him. Progressive future or not, this conversation could have gone much differently with another person.
He glances at Peggy talking to one of the nurses on the base and wonders vaguely if she likes girls. He knew plenty of girls who liked girls back home. He has a wild, hopeful thought that maybe she would like him when he’s not him.
“Look,” Sam says, “When you’re hanging out with me, if you want to be called a different name, or be called ‘she’ or ‘they’ or something else, that’s something I’d be really happy to do, okay?”
Steve just nods.
“And I’m sure, if you feel okay telling them, that Nat would be cool with that, too - and Sharon,” Sam continues, “Just...something to think about.” Steve notices that Sam’s been avoiding the topic of the person who took the photo, but he doesn’t mention it. It’s probably obvious, and Sam doesn’t want make Steve go down that road right now.
You don’t look silly. You look pretty. You’re perfect.
“Thanks, Sam,” Steve says, “Really, that’s. It’s.” A pause. “So, are we ever going to listen to that record?”
3
“Steve,” he says, and then, quieter: “Sarah.”
“Yeah, it’s me. It’s me.”
4
“Stop pacing, grandma, you’re making me dizzy,” they say, crossing their arms. Their hair is still long, but it’s pulled back into a neat French braid, and it makes them look younger, somehow. Red strands have started to escape from the braid and curl across their face.
Sarah sticks her hands into her pockets and closes her eyes.
“Sorry, I just,” she says, “It’ll be the biggest number of people Bucky has been around since - ”
“If James is uncomfortable, he’ll tell you,” Nat assures her.
“Right.”
“Anyway, that’s not what you’re worried about.”
Sarah fiddles with the button that Sharon bought for her, which pins to the front of her shirt and says SHE in large purple letters. It’s the only thing about her that indicates she’s feeling any different today than she did yesterday, except for that she asked Nat to paint her nails sky blue. The polish is already chipped where she’s picked at it.
“I know I’ve told pretty much everybody already, or had someone else tell them, but this is the first time I’ve actually asked - ”
“Sarah, this isn’t the public,” Nat interrupts, “It’s not ‘Captain America,’ it’s you. And these are your friends.”
“Well, why don’t you tell people about your pronouns, then?” Sarah asks, knowing full well what the answer will be. Nat smiles slightly.
“Remember what I said about layers of untrue selves?” Nat explains, sitting down next to Sarah on the couch, “It’s sort of like that, but not - not negative. Me - without a gender, it’s private. It’s special. It’s like having no clothes on. It’s for me and people who I trust and want to see it.”
“That sounds stifling to me.”
“It’s a good thing I’m not you, then.”
They bump their shoulder against Sarah’s. A moment later, Sam arrives with a few bags of microwavable popcorn.
“Hey, S,” he says, “We ready to go?”
Bucky enters behind him carrying two bowls of chips. He’s stopped wearing gloves so much recently, and Sarah can see his metal hand glinting at the bottom of his sleeve.
“You look pretty,” Bucky says, matter-of-factly. Sarah grins at him.
“Yeah,” she tells Sam, “Yeah, I’m ready.”
5
Steve takes the books out of the box one by one and carries them to his bookshelf. He puts the sketchbooks on the counter to look at later, then starts to sort through the photographs. His parents, Bucky, Peggy, himself with his classmates, and then - the teenage girl in the photo smiles back at him, her slight frame braced against the wall behind her, her wig just slightly askew, and he has the sensation again of knowing that she’s someone he’ll never be again. But he’ll never be a skinny teenage boy again either, and it’s probably time to stop dwelling on that and start thinking about all the things he can be. A good man. A good woman. Neither. Both.
On the back of the photo, there’s still nothing but the date, 1937. Steve stares at it for a moment, then digs around in his pocket for a pen. When he finds one, he carefully writes another inscription just above the old one.
Sarah Steven Grant Rogers
1937
He lines the photos up on his mantle, where they’ll be clearly visible.
“You’re going to love the future,” he says to the younger Sarah, “just you wait.”