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1945, October
The building is squat, a shabby five story walk-up. The residents are pushing their lives out onto the street – it’s that kind of building, where everyone lives outside during the day, airing out bedding, sweeping out dust, pushing out washing, on the fire escapes and out of windows. It’s loud.
Howard Stark is decidedly unimpressed.
He stands at the stoop of it, holding a piece of paper and staring at the building like it’s challenging him. He can see the rust and the debris of it and it’s all so working class, a building of people who remind him too much of his old man and too much of a world he left behind in Queens. Kids swarm around his legs, running back and forth, and he frowns. Howard doesn’t believe in having children, because he doesn’t believe in having children around, and there is a certain moue of disapproval about the entire industry of procreation.
Of course, that could just be his awful mood getting to him.
He works his way up the building, up the steps, and then through the door. His piece of paper says it’s the first apartment on the left, and he turns, dodging an older woman who gives him the evil eye, and finally knocks on the door.
A young man opens the door and looks at Howard with a measure of suspicion in his eyes. “Yeah?” he asks, his Brooklyn drawl thick. Howard can practically hear the Navy Yard Pier drip from the guy’s mouth. “What do you want?”
“Do you have the stuff that belonged to the old tenants?” Howard asks, not bothering to introduce himself. Instead he’s looking past the guy, into the apartment itself. It’s a sad state of peeling wallpaper and old floorboards, thick with dusty grease on the walls and the counters and-
“Hey, buddy, butt out-“ the tenant says, and shakes his head. “Who the hell do you think you are, Howard Stark?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly who I am,” Howard snaps back, giving him an unimpressed minute of a glance, and shakes his head. “Do you have the stuff or not? Letters? Furniture?”
The guy looks suddenly even more suspicious. “Get out of here,” he snaps, and closes the door, barely missing catching Howard’s nose. Howard takes a step back and almost growls, but then turns. The door across the way opens, and he spots a girl, peeking out at him – she must be in her early 20s.
She looks at him for a long minute, and he softens. “Hey, doll,” he says, turning the charm on. “Did you know the two fellas who lived here, before the war?”
“Steve and Bucky?” she asks, opening the door more. Her hair is done up in a perfect updo, and she looks like she’s ready for a night on the town. “Yeah, but they both died in the war,” she says, softly, like she never raises her voice above a whisper. “I think the superintendent has all of their things. In case Bucky’s ma ever came for it,” she adds, and it’s a moment of shock, of course, Bucky has a mother somewhere in this dirty borough. “Are you really Howard Stark?”
He grins. “I am,” he says, grateful for more than just the information. He moves a bit. “I gotta go talk to your superintendent, but I’ll be back in a second, if you want to step out with me. A doll like you is too pretty to be spending her night alone, and you can’t have a best guy who would be letting you open the door like that.”
She blushes from the base of her neck to the roots of her hair, and looks back into her apartment. “Yeah? I was going to meet someone for the picture show, but-“
“Someone handsome, probably-“
“-but I’ll ring her up and tell her I got a better offer,” she finishes, ducking into her apartment and coming back with her purse. She closes the door behind her. “Go talk to Mr. Morris, he’s just down the hall, and I’ll meet you back here.”
“Let me at least give you the change for a phone call,” he says, reaching into his pocket, and pressing it into her hand. She smiles a bit and nods, and she’s off. Howard considers that a minute – not bad, considering that he’s been in Brooklyn a total of ten minutes – and heads over to talk to Mr. Morris, who opens the door.
He looks like a weathered version of William Randolph Hearst, if William Randolph Hearst was weathered in a “went outside” way and not “rotted from the inside” kind of way. “Who are you and what do you want,” he asks, in a tone that states he’s not interested at all in either answer.
“I’m Howard Stark,” Howard says, and what the hell is the point of page six if people don’t bother to look at it, he wonders, “and I’m here for Mr. Rogers and Mr. Barnes’ effects,” he adds, as if he’s not ten months late. As if he’s not even two months late, considering the end of the war. But Howard’s been busy and he’s going to get busier, if the State Department and the SSR has its way.
Mr. Morris doesn’t look even remotely impressed, and Howard thinks for a second that the only person in this entire building worth their salt is the nameless girl who he’s planning on showing one hell of a time to, if he can get those letters. “I don’t care if you’re a Rockefeller,” he begins, and Howard wants to point out he’s richer than a Rockefeller, thanks, “the only person getting any of their effects is Mrs. Barnes, when she wakes up from her vapors, bless her soul, or when the building owners orders me to fork them over.”
And then he slams the door on Howard, too.
Howard takes a second to compose himself, before someone touches his arm, and he sees the girl. She’s smiling up at him. “All set?”
No, not really, Howard thinks, but well, actually. “Sure, doll, let’s go. My car is parked out front,” he says, taking her arm, as polite as you please. He’ll call his lawyer later tonight. Later, after the date. There’s no rush. It’s just a mess of bricks in Brooklyn, no one is going to give an offer for it.
1946, January
Peggy wasn’t sure what she expected, really. She knew a lot about where Steve used to live in an abstract sense; stories about Brooklyn were a pastime, about the streets and the places that Steve got into fights, about the people in his life, the old ladies who loved him and the bullies he scraped with, about the life and the world that made up so much of who Steve Rogers was.
But she hadn’t been to this building. Howard contacted her last week, months after when he bought the building out, and then in a fit of what could only be described as Stark absentmindedness, forgot to talk to anyone about it. He vacated the apartment that Steve used to live in with Bucky, and finally told Peggy, like it would make some kind of difference for Peggy to be able to go and – do what, exactly? She was too pragmatic to expect there would be anything there waiting for her, too rational to think that it would be a balm to help her move on, when Steve had died almost exactly a year ago.
And she was also a little annoyed that Howard would think that there was anything appropriate in emptying the apartment like he did.
But she’s staring at the building. It’s exactly what she pictured, really; the kind of place where two young men who worked hard for a living would be. It’s surrounded by families and young men, and some young women, although less, recently. The men came back from the war and it was like a shock to the system as they took back jobs, and Peggy’s felt it keenly, working at the SSR. She wonders what Steve would think.
She suddenly feels very heavy, even as she makes her way up the steps, keys in hand, and goes through the building. They lived on the first floor, Steve and Bucky, and everyone here remembers Steven Grant Rogers as the skinny young man, the phlegmatic, coughing young man who never seemed to do anything but ache to prove himself. But she thinks, too, that the people in this building must have known him better than she ever would. They saw him in rain and in sun and every day, in and out, working and drawing and living his life, his shadow chased by his best friend.
When she turns the doorknob to their apartment, opens it, she feels like her heart is trying to bust out of her ribcage, sink below her stomach. It’s a dingy little apartment, smelling musty after being locked up for a few months. There’s furniture, although very little – an old armchair and a dark couch with no cushions, a kitchen void of anything to cook with, and when she opens the door, a pair of old beds in the bedroom, small and serviceable. The mattresses are still there, stained with dust and age, reeking of a secondhand existence. She stands there in the doorway and hold her hand to her mouth as though if she doesn’t, all that will pour out of her mouth is pure unfiltered emotion.
She’s not sure why, either. It’s just an empty apartment. There is nothing here but bare baseboards and exposed brick, dirty windows and the oily residue of human life, but it’s as though she has suddenly been confronted with everything she hasn’t wanted to deal with in the past year. How much she thought, that at the end of the war, she and Steve would try and figure out some kind of life together, and how she had kept those hopes secret, behind walls of practicality. It was such a schoolgirl indulgence, something she had no real business thinking of, not when there was a war going on and when she didn’t even know for sure if Steve was interested in a life her, despite how much she was interested in him.
But it was her schoolgirl indulgence, it was her secret hope, that they were the right kind of compatible, that the lingering looks he gave her, the sweet smiles he shared during the rare and brief times that he had the ability to smile, that they would lead to something more. To a marriage with a man who respected her for her strength and not just for what she looked like. To being a partner with someone who would never tell her to stop working or to stay home. To someone who would love her because of who she wanted to be, not despite.
God, she realizes, just how much she misses Steve Rogers.
She manages not to cry. Instead she goes to the main room, to the table, where there’s a neat stack of letters, left there by the superintendent under orders from Howard. They’re all kinds of letters, but what Peggy picks out of the pile are the notification letters, sent here and for some reason not to Bucky’s mother. It takes Peggy a moment to realize that of course, Steve wouldn’t send his notifications to Bucky’s mother, and Bucky sent his to probably Steve and his mother both, so that one would not have to notify the other.
She sits down at that table and closes her eyes, and says a prayer to God, the kind of prayer from a desperate soul who isn’t even sure if she believes anymore, for some measure of justice in the world. For the sake of Steve Rogers.
1988, April
Sam hates Brooklyn.
He hates the way that all his friends are back in Harlem and going to attend Patrick Henry (good old PS 171, is what his mom always says) and he’s out here in Brooklyn for at least a year, because his great-aunt Faith is sick and they moved to be close to her. Like taking the train would be so bad.
He doesn’t get it. It only takes a little while to get here from Harlem, and he hears his mom say things like rent-control and we’ll get back on our feet soon and he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, because Sam is already on his feet, all the time, because he has a pair of blue sneakers and they are the best.
The building is this little walkup, and when they get there, Sam stares at it, feeling a little betrayed. It looks like it’s falling down. The front door is solid and made of metal, but the paint is peeling, and the building is blackened and sooty, and Sam hates it, because it’s not his building back home in Harlem and none of his friends will come down to Brooklyn to see him, even if they were allowed to go on the train alone, which they are not.
His great-aunt Faith is nice but she lives on the first floor in an apartment that smells like cats and rose soap all the time, and he doesn’t have his own bedroom; he shares one with his mom who tells him that it’s only for a little while, which Sam has figured out is a grown up code for a really long time.
He’s there a week and none of the kids will talk to him because they all grew up together and they look at him like the new kid, and he looks at them like maybe they’re snobby Brooklynites who don’t realize that Manhattan is better, and he’s sitting on the stoop when an old lady who lives next door stops and looks down at him. “What the matter?” she asks, her voice creaky like the door to his great-aunt’s bedroom.
“Nothing, ma’am,” he says, grumpily, because even though he hates Brooklyn and he wants to be back in Manhattan, he knows if he’s rude he’ll get a swat to the backside. The old lady stares at him and looks away, down at the ground, down at the blue sneakers he thought were the best until his mom told him they came with the string that was moving to Brooklyn. He couldn’t even show them off.
He thinks that’s the end of it but then the lady is sitting down next to him, and she’s taking a long time to sit. “You’re Faith Bradley’s nephew, aren’t you? She’s been talking about you coming here to stay for a while, for a long time.”
He looks up at her. “Yes ma’am,” he replies, obediently, unsure of where this is going. Part of him wants to bolt, but there’s another part of Sam who is just as content to find out what is happening.
“Don’t you have any friends yet?” she asks, and he shakes his head. She shakes hers, too, like she’s not surprised. “The kids in this building,” she says, like that explains anything. Grown-ups are confusing. “Are they mean to you?”
“No,” he starts, and then he closes his mouth, and opens it again. “They just know everything about living here and I don’t know anything, and I miss Harlem, and I wish I could tell them one thing that they don’t know-“ he says in a flurry of words, and the old woman makes a creaky noise that takes Sam a second to realize is a laugh.
He looks down again because he doesn’t think it’s all that funny, but then she’s talking again. “You can tell them that apartment 1B is haunted.”
Sam looks up right then. Ghosts are serious business. It’s rare to find a grown-up who will say something like that, because usually they’re telling him that ghosts are not real and can’t hurt him, and now this building has a ghost? Who invented Brooklyn, anyway? “What do you mean?” he asks, his heart thumping, but not in a bad way like when Tommy Johnson once held him over a toilet, but in a good way, like when he’s on the edge of the limits of where his mom tells him he can go.
“When I was a young woman,” she says, and that must be a million years ago, Sam thinks, because her voice is so creaky, “there were two young men who lived in that apartment. They went off to war, and they didn’t come back. But since then, no one’s ever been able to live in that apartment for more than a few weeks at a time. They say that they can hear one of them calling to the other - Bucky, Bucky and Steve, because they miss each other so much. And I know it’s true, because I knew them, when they were alive.” She nods, wisely.
Sam can feel his heart pitter patter, and he grips the bottom of his shirt tightly. “Really?” he asks, “you’re not kidding?” He hopes she’s not. Because if she isn’t, this is the best news, to know where a real ghost is. That’s just the ticket to get in good with the kids in this neighborhood.
She nods. “I mean it. No one lives there now, but I have the key, and if you’re really brave, you could stay there the night. Invite some of the kids. Steve and Bucky, they liked kids. I can show you pictures of them, if you want. So you can be sure if you see them.”
Sam is suddenly struck by his good luck. His mom probably wouldn’t like it if he snuck out and stayed the night in an empty apartment with a bunch of other kids, but his entire future was on the line. A whole night in a haunted apartment with real ghosts makes his heart thump harder, and that part of him that likes to run really fast and likes to go on the roof is telling him to do it. “Yes, please,” he says, trying to not sound like a little kid, but even he can hear how excited he is.
She smiles down at him. “Help me up, and I’ll find pictures.”
It takes a little while, to find kids brave enough, to find a good night, to sneak batteries and a pair of flashlights, and sure, maybe the only thing they get scared of that night, in that delicious way, is a cat scratching on the windowpane, but Sam realizes that night that he’ll be friends with some of these kids his whole life, even if he does go back to Harlem. Riley, especially, who sits and stares at the yellow picture that Sam’s neighbor loaned him with a focused fascination, like he’s seen one or both of the men before.
Maybe Brooklyn isn’t so bad.
2002, July
Tony hates New York so much, but there’s nothing worse than New York in July. He remembers growing up here, sweating those summers out in the Hamptons or in air conditioned rooms, but really, there is nothing - nothing - worse than a summer in New York, sweaty and disgusting and smelling like garbage.
“I don’t even know why we’re here,” he says to Pepper, who is sitting in the limo next to him. “Why do we have to do this in person? This is the 21st century and there are such things as camera phones. Do you know that means we can take pictures and converse with people across the country at the same time?”
Pepper doesn’t even look up from her documents to answer him. “We’re here because we’re trying to get you to take a more active role in deciding the fate of the buildings you own, and because you have never been here,” she says.
Tony ponders this for a second. “I could have just sent you. That’s as good as me seeing it myself,” he points out, taking a quick glance out the window. There are a pair of Hasidic men walking down the street, a woman with a stroller behind them, and a pair of people wearing jeans that are too tight to actually be worn. They must be painted on. He can practically see the heat oozing up out of the sidewalk. “This neighborhood is a mess,” he announces.
“It’s up and coming,” Pepper corrects, glancing out the window quickly too, and then back to her papers. “Here, so your father-“
“No,” Tony starts.
“-bought this building in 1945, after the war-“
“Is this necessary? He bought it, I’ll sell it, there, I made a decision-“
“-without a reason, or at least he never wrote one down. The original tenants stayed except one, and there’s a note that no one can live in apartment 1B-“
“Is it haunted? Say it’s haunted this is boring I’m bored-“
“And there’s a note that says something about Captain America, but I can’t read it-“
Tony stops talking, then, and takes it. Pepper can’t read it because his father wrote half in terrible chickenscratch mixed with shorthand, for reasons that Tony doesn’t fathom and doesn’t care about, but he cracked years ago, when he wanted to read his father’s papers.
He stares at the paper a long moment. “Sell it. I don’t even want to see it,” he says suddenly, irritated. Captain America is like the big brother that he will never live up to, his father’s favorite creation, best friend, and most favored person all rolled into one enormous ball of dead legend. But that doesn’t matter, Tony doesn’t care. The fact that this was the building that his father fished some skinny asthmatic out of and created a creature of mythical proportions is not why he wants to sell it. He wants to sell it because why does he need a building in Williamsburg? Really? “Sell it,” he repeats, and Pepper is saying something but he’s already leaning forward to tell Happy to turn the car around when Happy stops, and Pepper looks at Tony with that expression, the one that says stop trying to run away from your father’s choices.
Tony hates that look, so he steps out onto the sidewalk and looks right at the building. It is falling apart. The fire escapes are listing like teeth in the mouth of a very old person, and that imagery is making Tony incredibly uncomfortable. “Sell it,” he says again, with a measure of desperation. He doesn’t want this building. He doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it, he doesn’t want it.
“We could fix it up, it would be a good investment,” Pepper says. “This neighborhood is getting very popular.”
He doesn’t know why Pepper is saying that. “Fine, if you want it, it’s yours. Where’s the deed? I’ll give it to you-“
“You know I can’t accept-“
“-like a birthday gift, it’s your birthday soon-“
“-in nine months, Tony-“
“-so belated by three months-“
“Tony, no,” Pepper says, with a note of finality in her voice.
Tony stares at her, confused as to why she won’t take it, except that maybe it’s because it’s a heap of bricks that should probably be condemned soon. He stares at it a long time. He stares at it and sees a comic book that his father took away from him because it was old and valuable, and he sees stories that his father told him, the only time they could talk to each other about something that wasn’t engineering, and he sees-
He sees-
“Okay, fix it up,” he says, turning and getting back in the car. “Ice cream? I feel like ice cream,” he announces.
Pepper gets back in the air-conditioned car. They get ice cream. By the end of the week, Tony has forgotten about the old-toothed building, about rent control, about his father, and about Captain America.
2012, November
Steve didn’t mean to come out here.
But here he is.
He’s exhausted, overwhelmed, and he still feels the bruises from the battle of Manhattan ripe against his bones. He was living in an apartment a few blocks away, paid for by SHIELD, and Steve didn’t know how much his apartment was costing them.
He still doesn’t know.
He’s avoided this place, though. The last apartment he lived in, before, back before, and it only feels like maybe a few months ago, but it was seventy years, almost, and it hurts to be back here. He doesn’t recognize anything, except the buildings, and it feels like recognizing the bones of an old friend. Disturbing, and sad. He doesn’t understand what happened. How everything looks so strange, how the bodegas and shops and restaurants look so alien under the bright lights.
Steve stops in front of the building and he feels like his stomach is collapsing in on itself. He remembers finding this place with Bucky, he remembers Bucky being excited about the first floor apartment, how Bucky’s mother helped them decorate a little, how he would sleep with the window open in the summer, the breeze and noise of Brooklyn thick against him.
The noise is too much now, he hears it and it surprises him, so he closes the windows.
He takes a careful step up. Tony, in a strange, manic show of generosity, or maybe it was his brush with death, called him in a frenzy and gave him a key, saying something about his father and this building and then going off on a tangent about marshmallows. Steve may respect him now, but it doesn’t mean they’re friends, really, so it’s….strange.
It was strange, anyway.
Steve makes his way into the building and every step he takes makes him want to turn tail. The building is shiny-new on the inside, in a way, the wood paneling unfamiliar and the floor a different shade, the walls painted. He turns and stares at his (is it his? No one lives here, Tony says, no one’s lived in this apartment a long time) for so long that people pass him, wearing cardigans and long skirts, almost like they used to dress back when-
Almost, but not quite. The shape of things is different. People see him, he can hear them whisper about Captain America, is that him? and it makes him feel a pressure in his gut. He’s never wanted to run away from something until now.
He stares at the door finally opens it.
The floor is rotting – that’s the first thing he notices. The sofa that Bucky dragged in from Steve’s old apartment is there, but the cushions are missing, gone, only the frame left. The old armchair is still there, and sleeping on the cushion is a cat, who makes a mrrow noise, and Steve isn’t sure how it got in.
And it’s funny.
Steve remembers, acutely, what asthma feels like, and it’s this, this is asthma. He can’t breathe, and he doesn’t know why. There is pain radiating in his stomach, as if just being here is devolving him back to the man he used to be.
And god he would accept it, he would give it all up – the strength and the stamina, the fighting, the protecting, his shield, he would give it all up if going back to the skinny sick kid he was would bring back Bucky, too. As if the two were a package deal, as if Bucky would come back from the dead just to protect Steve, as if it were some magic balm that would undo the past seventy years of him being-
He gasps for breath, and reels a bit, right into the bedroom, and he holds onto the doorframe like there’s an earthquake under his feet only he can feel. One of the mattresses – his – has fallen through the frame, they’re rotting away, and Steve can see that in Bucky’s a family of mice have chewed into it to make a nest. Steve squats down, then his knees hit the ground, and he just stares at the room.
He and Bucky shared this room – Bucky pushed the beds together at night, so they could sleep curled up, so when Bucky whispered, love you in a deep mumble, barely audible, when he pretended Steve was asleep, Steve could mumble it back, as if those words in the dark, barely said, couldn’t carry the fear of someone finding out.
He locks the door when he leaves. He’s going to Washington D.C. in the morning, and maybe it’s time he said goodbye.
2014, June
It’s sweltering; a real Brooklyn summer. The Soldier can parse it, the faintest memory of it – of dragging an old mattress out as much into the window as he could, sleeping in the heat and haze but it was better than inside, wet towel on his head. He can just barely grasp the memory, slippery in the back of his head.
It’s sweltering.
It didn’t take much to break in. The building is fancy now – people look like they don’t care much, they’re open, unsafe, anyone could come by and hurt them. They have the carelessness of the wealthy. The Soldier recognizes that absolutely. But the apartment he wants is empty, still.
He knows this is it.
He knows that this is the apartment that the person he used to be lived in, once. The memories are funny things. They come and go, caught between the gasping intake of breath and the exhale.
The click almost catches him by surprise.
He thinks, for a second, that it will be the Captain, but no. The click is a door, and he hears a mew, and when he looks over at where the bedroom-
(He knows it’s the bedroom, there’s a memory of a small person, in his arms, his mouth against his own)
-there’s a small gray cat, and it meows at him again.
He understands cats well enough. It’s an easy memory, one that doesn’t have anyone attached to it, one that doesn’t come with programming. He needed to understand animals to do what he did, because he needed to understand what could be a danger and a risk, and what was worth leaving alone.
He kneels down in a manner that is muscle as much as it is desire, and the cat comes close.
(Bucky, the more you feed them the more cats will show up)
The cat sniffs his fingers and he moves, slowly, to sit cross-legged.
He is quiet as the cat crawls into his lap, and curls up and purrs.
(Another one?
What can I say, ladies and cats love me.)
He looks up at the bedroom. The wallpaper has peeled off. It wasn’t like that, once. It was old, sure, and dirty, but it was on the wall.
His head is starting to hurt, but he sits, quiet.
(I hope you know I’m allergic.
I know everything about your bod-)
He short-circuits, almost, his metal hand curling tight, and he closes his eyes. This place, it’s too much, there’s too much here, there’s too much that makes the memories blink, too bright, painful against the inside of his head, plastering behind the lids of his eyes. Every memory is like a function.
But then something strange happens.
Memory has always been pain, the blanking every time a horrible shock running up every nerve. It’s made him unwilling to allow memory, to prevent it. They (he can’t figure out who they is, exactly, but he knows, they) didn’t think that he could remember anything, but he remembers the pain.
But the more he sits, the more memories come, until he can breathe easy, until his fingers can very gently brush the top of the cat’s head. He sits in the apartment, surrounded by peeling paint and rotten wood, mildew and mold and animal droppings, and the entire room changes. It’s a clean, tidy, cozy apartment, that he personally shored up against the wind in the winter, when he had two hands that were his, when he wasn’t a weapon.
He stays there for a long time, and then he opens his mouth. There is no one in the room, but a sudden memory strikes him, and he puts things together. “Steve,” he says, and he can link the name to the face, and when he opens his eyes, the memory is as much a blessing as it is pain.