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“Did it work?”
Steve looks down at himself, feeling aching and generally in residual pain to see what he has always seen. Pale Irish skin, skinny enough to see his rib cage, and short enough he looked up at everyone. He cannot say he is not disappointed that it did not work. That he may again be looking at another year where he may not survive till the next.
“Ah… huh, I thought it would,” the doctor’s accent tingeing with sincere disappointment. “Do you feel different?”
“Sore,” responds Steve dryly, getting a barely heard snort of laughter from Peggy. Abraham rolls his eyes in response.
“Well, this is just great,” Colonel Chester Phillips throws his hands in the air, turning around and moving up the stairs to the crowd as he mutters words not polite for good company under his breathe.
And, just like that, everyone who crowded in was being dispersed, leaving Abraham, Peggy, Chester, Howard, and Steve in the laboratory.
Peggy smiles at Steve as he buttons his shirt back up. “Well, on the bright side, at least you’re not dead.”
“Yet,” Steve deadpans easily, his morbid humor getting another chuckle from the British woman.
“So, what do we do now?” Howard asks, wiping his hands across his trousers and leaning against the console behind him casually. Used to things not always working, it was a disappointing set back, but not the end of the world.
“Try again, I suppose,” Abraham retorts thoughtfully as he looks at Steve.
“Well, we’re packing up for Europe,” Chester states, the colonel running a hand over thinning hair. “Let’s get him back to civvies.”
“Him is still standing here,” Steve interjects, amused irritation to his tone. He was used to be overlooked and annoyed by it, but being overlooked by Chester was more of an after thought and a dynamic now. It was not meant to mean that he was incapable, so much as Chester moving on to the next important thing.
“No, we cannot send him back. He is coming with me,” Abraham immediately interjects.
Howard nods in agreement. “Yeah, we just experimented on the kid. Who knows what could happen?”
Chester looks at each of them, settling on Peggy who gives him the Look. The colonel throws his hands up again in exasperation. “Fine, list him as one of your assistants for travel.”
“Dibs,” immediately states Howard, Abraham shoving the millionaire lightly.
“Why?” protests Steve in part confusion and part dread.
“You’ll be with me,” Abraham states easily in reassurance.
“You have no idea the plans I have for you,” Howard promises immediately while ignoring the doctor, Steve’s eyes widening in slight horror at the playful tone.
Peggy laughs, a sound like chimes or bells that usually brought a smile to Steve’s face.
It is not reassuring.
-///-
After an extensive physical and conclusion nothing had changed from baseline, Steve finds himself on a plane to Europe officially listed as Doctor Abraham Eskrine’s assistant. He sighs; rubbing his popping ears and concluding that plane rides feel a lot like ear infections and tinnitus.
“I’m sorry it didn’t work,” Steve states softly to the doctor, the first time they were reasonably alone since before the procedure. It was more of an apology for the hopes that Abraham had placed in him rather than the failure. “Maybe if you tried with Hodge it would-.”
Abraham hums in thought beside him for a moment, cutting off Steve’s statement. “Apology is unwarranted, Steve. This tells me that the world is not ready yet, not that I choose the wrong person. You were the right person.”
“Oh, well, thanks?” Steve responds, a bit of an unsure lilt to his voice that causes Abraham to chuckle.
“Now, tell me. How much do you know about science?” Abraham asks seriously. Steve shrugs in response.
“I never had a chance to finish school. I was out sick too much and had to work…. So, probably not much,” Steve concludes, Abraham raising a brow.
“Nothing?” the doctor’s voice is skeptical.
“Well, I mean, not from school. I guess I know a bit about medicine, from my conditions and my mother was a nurse. I’m not sure if that counts,” Steve adds on, gaining an approving nod from Abraham.
“Sometimes, you will find that doing is a better teacher than schooling,” Abraham pulls out his satchel then, with a blank pad of paper and his notes on the project. “Now, let’s start on getting you ready to assist me.”
Steve smiles, ready to learn and assist the man who gave him the opportunity of a lifetime.
They barely get through twenty minutes before Howard moves beside them. “Oh, science, my favorite. You’re going to teaching him about engineering– you know what, I’ll take care of that. After all, Steve’ll be assisting me, too.”
Steve’s pleading eyes towards Abraham have no effect.
-///-
“Sure, I’ll be right there,” Steve responds absently from where he is sterilizing the equipment, setting the last down and turning to assist only to see Abraham within a foot from him. He startles backwards in surprise. “Ah, I’m free to help with writing notes now.”
“Steven, you are half deaf, are you not?” Abraham asks curiously.
“Ah, yeah. Almost completely in the one ear and only a bit in the other,” confirms Steve easily. “I think that’s why my eyes decided to be the one thing about me that works, well minus the color blindness.”
The joke must miss its mark, and Steve falters slightly. His blonde brows furrow as he watches a slow, manic smile start to spread across the doctor’s lips.
“But, you heard me listing tasks for you, requesting your assistance with documentation,” Abraham presses, Steve nodding in confusion. The man laughs briefly, a giddy sound. “I whispered that from across the room to myself. You should not have heard that. I would not have heard that.”
“Wait, do you mean that parts of your serum worked?” Steve’s own voice sounds slightly dumbstruck to him, as the implication dawns on him.
“We shall keep this to ourselves for now, see the extent and how quickly it is acting, but yes,” confirms Abraham with a grin, pulling Steve by the wrist over to their cots in the corner. “For now, we test.”
“Yeah, sure, okay,” agrees Steve easily, watching with a stunned awe as Abraham reaches for various medical equipment.
“I should have thought,” Abraham confesses as he begins to run through the physical. “The human body is not meant to undergo an immediate transformation. Growing pains, shall we call them, should have been expected.”
“Growing pains?” Steve repeats back to him, still dumbfounded now that he is noticing the soft tone the man is speaking in.
“Yes, slow, gradual change, so your body is not shocked to death. Fixing the more serious first,” Abraham nods. “Now, have you been feeling any different, particularly your ears and hearing for now?”
“Ah, well, I thought it was the plane – I’d never really been on one before – but, I had a lot of popping and ringing in my ears, and that kind of aching burn from ear infections,” lists Steve, knowing by now from working for that doctor that every little detail, even something insignificant, can make a difference. “I’ve had a lot of headaches lately, too.”
“Yes, that would make sense, ears healing, then your brain is exercising to account for the new simulation,” Abraham details choppily, pausing for a moment after writing on the chart. “What else have you noticed? Anything that is different about your conditions? Think through how you would go through a day before we met and tell me the differences.”
“Ah, I would get up, bath, eat,” starts Steve thoughtfully. “I’m always hungry now. I mean, before it was because we didn’t always have enough, but now I’m hungry even when I just eat.”
“Maybe increased metabolism?” suggests Abraham more to himself, gesturing with the hand he was holding his pen in to continue. “Step onto the scale and read off your weight, if you would.”
Steve stands, moving the few yards to the scale and stepping up. He blinks rapidly after the adjustments.
“What’s it read?” asks Abraham, not looking up from his chart.
“That can’t be right,” states Steve, Abraham looking up and giddily moving over to look at the scale.
“One thirty five, with no significant visible change. That is twenty five pounds more than after the procedure,” Abraham notes, quickly getting more excited. “Perhaps greater bone and muscle density. We should test both strength and exertion, probably visual, auditory, and memory as well…. Wait, let me fetch Howard. We will need more than just us for this, and without the army interfering.”
Steve is left standing on the scale, staring between the weight and after Abraham a bit flabbergasted.
-///-
Steve starts and ends his day with a physical now.
He is put through the paces with auditory and visual simulation, improvement beginning to show each day as he slowly surpasses what a normal human should see and hear. There are memory exercises, where it seems that Steve is slowly developing an eidetic memory – remembering and citing with perfect clarity more and more as the days go on.
Physically, he is healthier. He is not growing per se, but the serum is correcting the deficiencies from genetics and illnesses to make his body at its optimum. His spine has straightened to a more respectable five foot six inches tall – still considered short, but not as short. Once Howard and Abraham increased his food intake and changed his diet, he packed on a layer of compact muscle that covered his previously bony frame, hidden beneath his baggy clothes.
Except, the strength he used did not match his frame. Howard liked to compare him to an ant sometimes, small with the strength to carry many times his size.
Steve is still not sure about the comparison.
He breathes.
It may not seem like a miracle, but after so many years of not being able to breathing felt like one to him. He could run for miles, quickly and easily. No strain on his body from his muscles or his lungs. And, certain parts of his body like his libido or immune system that were previously unable to work properly, now seemed to be at a healthy level.
When the entire camp got a cold after a heavy week of rain, Steve was the only one healthy. When he fractured his ankle slipping in the mud, he trudged back to the lab to report it healed within a few hours.
Abraham, Howard, and he marveled at the results as they pondered what – if – they tell the army.
The serum did work, just not the way it was originally expected.
Though, one thing that did work to Abraham’s expectation was the enhancement of not only the physical, but also the mental.
Steve felt more strongly than he ever did before. He thought part of it may be from having a body that was no longer exhausted by a flight of steps, but the larger probability with the serum.
Happiness warmed him more deeply, anger simmered longer than before. Controlling the emotions was difficult for him, and he often had to use his increased ability to process to quickly run through the situation and not get immersed in feeling.
But, when he learns of the 107th, the wave of feeling that comes over him because of Bucky stops him in his shoes before it propels him forward. Because, there is nothing that Steve would not do for Bucky.