Archive of Our Own ^beta

2012

From the comfort of their living room, they’ve watched a fair few wars.

Vietnam was the first to be broadcast right onto American television screens, and Rachel was hardly able to look away, despite her horror.  To her, every soldier on the screen was Steve, was Bucky.  Boys just like her boys were dying over there, but for the first time everyone could really see it over here .  And Rachel watched in gripping, morbid fascination right along with the rest of the nation.

They knew plenty of boys in that war – Hank’s son Jimmy, a plethora of Buchanan progeny, boys that were sitting in Beck’s lectures one semester and dropping out to join up the next, boys taken from the queer community, from their bars and clubs and haunts to fight for a country that wouldn’t love them if it knew them – but Rachel just kept seeing Steve and Bucky, over and over.  A wounded soldier was evacuated on a gurney, lifted into a helicopter, bloody bandages wrapped around his head wounds, and he had Bucky’s face.  A veteran in a cleanly pressed dress uniform, burns crawling up his neck and fanning out in scars over his cheek, spoke at a protest, and that was Steve.

There were more wars, after that, in deserts and jungles.  It left homeless vets all over the city and they were all Steve and Bucky, too.  Beck always said that there were better ways to help than doling out cash on the street, but Rachel carried extra money with her anyway.  She’d hand it out with addresses to nearby shelters or tips on restaurants that gave away their leftover food at the end of the night.

And then there were wars she did not watch from the comfort of their living room, wars that no one actually called a war because it was her people dying.  She was right there on the front lines with Beck, while queer men died in droves and the government ignored them and their families shunned them and the president laughed at them, and all they had was their community, as always.  When they started using Sully’s old building to provide care for the sick, to ease their pain before they passed when no hospital would let them through the front doors, Rachel saw Steve and Bucky in every bed.

Rachel sat on the sofa in 2003, curled into Beck’s side, as tanks rolled into Baghdad and Beck couldn’t stop shaking her head.  Beck talked about the politics of it all, but to Rachel every tank was filled with Steve and Bucky, every mortar launched by them, too.

Rachel’s watched a lot of wars and seen Steve and Bucky in a lot of faces, so in 2012, when aliens of all things descend on the city and a super solider in a star-spangled uniform is caught on camera throwing around a shield, she naturally assumes that her old age is finally catching up to her.

“I’m seeing things.”  Rachel sits close to Beck’s wheelchair, squeezing her hand and staring at the television where a newscaster is doing her best not to show her panic.

“What?”  Beck whispers.  “Aliens or Captain America?”

Rachel’s too shocked to panic, too busy analyzing every detail of the footage on the television to worry about those aliens flying their way to Brooklyn or the fact that Beck’s having a bad breathing day, which is not an ideal way to deal with power outages or evacuations or whatever the fallout is from space creatures wreaking havoc in Manhattan.

“Both,” Rachel replies.  “Either.  You’re seeing this, too?”

“Yes, dear.  I’m seeing it, too.”

On the television, they play a new clip, shot on a cell phone and already posted to YouTube despite the ongoing chaos.  Rachel can’t imagine the impulse, to be in the midst of such terror and still have the wherewithal to get out a phone, record the madness, and put it online.  Back in the day, just a couple of war correspondents were foolhardy enough type out articles in the thick of battle. Now it’s damn near everybody with a camera on their phone.

And really, Rachel can appreciate the compulsion to record everything.  There’s no way the government will be able to cover this up now, not with social media full up with all these first hand accounts of actual aliens.

“Rachel.”  Beck squeezes her hand and says her name in that quiet, patient way that means Beck’s said her name several times already to get her attention.  Beck, for all her gruffness, really is so kind, and shows no annoyance when Rachel’s mind wanders.

And Rachel’s mind does wander, even with aliens and a Captain America Wannabe up on the television screen.

“Rachel.” Beck runs her thumb over Rachel’s knuckles, back and forth.

Rachel shakes her head to clear it.  “Yes, motek ?”

“That’s Steve,” Beck says.

This statement is so bizarre, and so unlike Beck, that Rachel actually manages to tear her gaze away from the television in favor of gaping at Beck for the first time since Mia called from downstairs ten minutes ago, frantically demanding they turn on the news now.

Rebecca’s mind does not wander.  Rebecca does not see Steve and Bucky in every solider.  Rebecca, despite her frail lungs and weak limbs and COPD riddled airways, does not get confused like Rachel does, so there is absolutely no reason for her to be insisting that this Fake Captain America is actually Their Captain America, unless she really believes it.

“That’s not possible,” Rachel replies.

“Are aliens possible?  Back before ‘69, did you think a man on the moon was possible?  Was it possible for Steve to pull a full on Charles Atlas in only one week? To become a superhero overnight? If all that could happen, then why not this too?”

Frowning, Rachel turns back to the television to watch that superhero, wearing a costume that looks more like Steve’ ridiculous USO getup than the more practical uniform he wore to war.  He flings his shield around, impressive as anything.

The footage is shaky, and the helmet covers most of his face, but the size of him could be the same as Superhero Steve.

“They never found his body,” Beck whispers.  “Until now, apparently.”

“I don’t know, Beck.  How can you tell?”

“This looks like a Captain America movie, but with better effects.  Look at that shield.  It’s the real deal, vibranium, and unless Wakanda suddenly changed their whole policy on exporting the stuff, then it’s gotta be the original pulled outta the goddamn Arctic along with its owner.  That’s him .”

“What,” Rachel says, scoffing, “you’re a regular expert on rare metals now?”

“Listen, Rach,” Beck says.  “Even on these terrible recordings, you can hear that thing sing .  Nothing's so much as denting it.”

Rachel frowns, turning back to the television.

The news drones on, with the same replayed footage and the same information.  It’s all speculation at this point, posts from Twitter used like facts, but they keep watching anyway.  There are reports of Iron Man battling a giant flying whale and whole blocks demolished, but Rachel’s lived through disasters before.  She was in Brooklyn on 9/11.  No one will know anything real until after the dust settles.

And Beck keeps on insisting that it’s Steve Rogers back from the dead to save his city.

“It’s him,” she says again as Mia bursts into their apartment. She’s wide-eyed and terrified, talking in Spanish too fast for Rachel to understand, but Beck manages to understand, and reply in kind, rolling her eyes an awful lot.

“Mia thinks we should all go to the basement,” she informs Rachel.

“Why?” Rachel watches with rapt attention as they show more cell phone footage of a man dressed up like Captain America, evacuating people from a bus.

“These are aliens, Rachel!” Mia shrieks, gesturing wildly.  “They’re flying !  They could fly over here and crash through your windows and why are we even arguing about this? Aliens!   Aliens .”

“Nothing ever comes to Brooklyn,” Rachel says because it’s true.  “This sort of madness stays in Manhattan.”

“Or Harlem, that one time with the green thing,” Beck says.

“Or Harlem.”  Rachel nods and squeezes Beck’s hand.  “That one time.”

Mia makes a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, stomping over to them with her hands on her hips.  “How are you so calm?  There are aliens in our streets !”

“My best friend once went from a hundred pounds to Captain America, you know,” Rachel says, echoing Beck.  “Anything is possible.”

Although she’s still not sold on the possibility of this being Steve – mostly, because if she starts hoping she’ll just be crushed all over again when it proves not true – she’d rather Mia be irritated with her than panicking over aliens.

The strategy works.  Mia stops flailing around.  She glares, crossing her arms over her chest, and then there is more muttering in rapid-fire Spanish.  She wraps her hands around the handles of Beck’s wheelchair, pushing her towards the elevators.  Beck insists on taking her laptop with them and Rachel’s got no choice.  With great reluctance she turns off the television and follows them.

The basement is actually part home theater and Luis figures out how to get cable to play over the complicated projector system.  He officially left the home a year ago, when he went off to college, but he’s got a light course load this summer and he tends to stop by when he needs a break from studying or work.  Rachel murmurs a prayer of thanks under her breath, so grateful that he’s here today instead of in the city.  

All the other kids are shaken, too. Tammy collapses onto the arm of Rachel’s easy chair the moment she helps Rachel drop down into it. She learns into Rachel’s side, chewing on her thumbnail and watching the television with wide, terrified eyes.

Everyone’s on phones, on tablets, murmuring Twitter posts at each other and trying to figure out if the Brooklyn Bridge is really on fire.

“It’s him,” Beck says again.

“Who, my treasure?”  Rachel takes Beck’s hand, distracted by some new shaky footage of a strange beast gracefully swimming through the air.

“That’s not just some ass running around in a Captain America outfit.”

“Dr. Beck,” says Tammy, leaning over Rachel to better frown at Rebecca.  She is their resident Captain America expert.  She does own all the comics, after all. “Captain America died.  In 1945.  They never found the plane.”

“It’s him.”

Beck sounds so sure, and Rachel can’t understand what she sees in this blurry footage that Rachel doesn’t.  Most of what Rachel remembers of Steve post wacky science experiment comes from the newsreels.  They only got to spend two days with Big Sized Steve before he went off to war and then never came home.

“His hands are familiar,” Rachel decides after a few more minutes of staring.

“And the way he gets his chin up,” Beck agrees.  “That shield is one of a kind.”

Tammy snorts.  When she first sat down her hands were shaking and there were tears in her eyes.  Now she’s too incredulous to be terrified.

“You guys really think that Captain America is back from the dead?” Tammy raises one eyebrow, deeply skeptical.

“Stranger things have happened,” Rachel says.

“Exhibit one.”  Beck points towards the screen.  “Aliens.”

A moment later, a different cell phone clip rolls, one that only catches New Captain America’s shoulder, but his voice rings out.  Loud and clear, his deep voice gives out orders, so sure and steady despite the madness in Midtown.

Beside her, Beck gasps and Rachel covers her mouth with both hands because they both know that voice, even if it’s been decades since they heard it.  There’s less Brooklyn in it now, more like a Captain America film than the boy they once knew.

“It’s him,” Rachel whispers.

And the power promptly goes out.

They try to get Tony Stark on the phone for days afterward. The aliens are dead in the streets, the portal’s closed, and news stories about Steve’s rebirth run constantly.

It’s been a few years since they’ve contacted him, but the number they’ve got for him still rings and ends with the simple voicemail of Tony’s, “ Leave it .” He came over for dinner once, after all that nasty business with the terrorists – Beck just had to gush at him for hours about how proud she was that he was done with the weapons production – but they’ve lost touch since he started flying around as Iron Man, and Rachel’s regretting that now.

“Do we still have his email?” Beck hunches over in her rocking chair and flips through a black address book.  Rachel’s seated as close to her as possible, their arms pressed together.

“If he’s not answering his phone, he’s probably also not answering his email.”

“Olive might have a better number.  She works with his people when they donate to the home or throw fundraisers.  But his PR team is probably pretty busy at the moment.”

Rachel dials the number again, gets the voicemail again, and leaves a quick message again, the tenth of the day, saying, “Tony, be a dear, and call us back .”

Beck lets out a frustrated growl and tosses her address book aside.  She buries her fingers in her hair.  “Should I be pissed that he hasn’t come home on his own?  The press confirmed days ago that it’s really him out of the ice, so it's not SHIELD or whoever keeping him from coming here.  This is Steve’s doing.  He’s staying away on his own, goddamn it.”

Rachel’s not mad at Steve even if Beck is, just like she’s not mad at Tony for not answering his phone.  They fought aliens, last week, and whatever they need to do to cope with the aftermath, that’s what they need to do, even if that means not answering phones and finally coming home.

Rachel’s not angry, but Beck’s always been predisposed to anger, so Rachel just leans down to kiss her until she’s not frowning quite so much.

“He must be so lost,” she murmurs, running her fingers through Beck’s hair.  “He missed the last seventy years, and everything is so different.  He’s a soldier, finally home from war, but everything’s so different .”

Beck starts crying, turning to press her face against Rachel’s shoulder.  “I’m just having these horrible thoughts.  I’m thinking terrible things.”

“Hush, motek,” Rachel whispers into her hair.  “Hush.  It’s alright.  These are strange times and you’re allowed to feel horrible about it.  And there’s nothing you could think that’s too terrible to tell me.  Not sure if you’ve picked up on this, but I’m in it with you for the long haul.”

Beck sobs out a laugh and sits up.  She hides her face in her hands. Rachel watches her breathe and waits.  Sixty-seven years with this woman has taught Rachel patience.

“I wish it was Bucky.”  Beck confesses into her hands, her voice breaking.

“Oh, Rebecca.  That’s not horrible.”

Beck drops her hands, giving Rachel a watery smile.  “Steve Rogers is in this city somewhere, back from the dead, and I loved him.  Love him, still, and I’m just wishing it was my brother, finally coming home.”

She cries in earnest now, but she lets Rachel take her hand.  They’re both so frail these days, their skin so thin, but Rachel presses her lips to Beck’s hand and her grip is strong.

“God, it’s going to be so hard for Steve,” Beck says.  “He’s missed so much and maybe I shouldn’t wish what Steve’s gonna have to deal with on anyone.  But I still wish it was Bucky.”

“I wish it was both of them.”

“Oh fuck ,” Beck manages through her tears, shoulders shaking. “Steve’s coming back to a home without Bucky in it.”

She collapses against Rachel, her head back on her shoulder.  She cries and cries, but Rachel doesn’t.  This still seems theoretical to her, and she won’t truly believe that Steve’s back until she sees him in front of her.  Until she can look him in the eye and hold his hands.  Until she can hear the deep rumble of his voice.

Maybe then, she’ll cry like Beck’s crying.  

“There you go,” Rachel murmurs, stroking Beck’s hair.  “You have a good cry.  Let it all out now.  When we see Steve he’s gonna need us.  We’re gonna have to be strong for him.”

Beck nods and keeps right on crying for a few minutes, until the tears trail off and her breath gets wheezy.

“Do you need the nebulizer?” Rachel asks.

“No,” says Beck between breaths. “No.  No, Rachel.  You saw him on the news.  He’s so young, he’s gotta be what? Twenty-six?”

“He would’ve been twenty-seven four months after he crashed the plane.”

“Twenty-seven.  Can you even imagine it?  That’s so young .  Were we ever that young?”

Rachel smiles.  “I guess so.  Hard to remember it, though.”

“I remember it fine.  You were so beautiful.  You’re still so beautiful.”

Rachel hums and keeps an eye on Beck’s breathing until she settles down, her eyes dry and her breath back to the usual disconcerting rasp.  Beck sighs and sits up.  She wipes at her face, grimacing and blushing.

Sixty-seven years, and Beck still gets all embarrassed about gratuitous displays of vulnerability.

“So what are we gonna do?” she asks.

“I’m just gonna go down there,” Rachel decides.

“Just march right through the disaster zone up the front doors of Tony’s Tower and knock, huh?”

“It’s worth a try, I think.”

Driving into the city is eerie.

Even in Brooklyn, far from Stark Tower, in areas completely untouched by the destruction that rained down for a terrifying hour, the streets are still deserted.  Businesses remain closed and the only people out and about are the ones that absolutely have to be.

It takes Rachel back a decade, to when the towers came down.  New York was silent after that, too.  People stayed off the street for weeks , and when they had to be out of their apartments they kept their heads down, walked fast and stayed quiet, as if the sound of voices and traffic would bring another plane crashing into their skyline.

As much as New York has changed since Rachel was a child, the energy's been a constant; buzzing, humming, so vibrantly alive.  When she drives into the city to bring her long lost friend home, it’s like she can’t find a heartbeat.  She’s lost the pulse.  Right now, like a decade ago, her city's not breathing.

The beat will come back, because New York always comes back, but the stillness is still troubling.

In the driver’s seat, Luis doesn’t talk and he keeps the radio off.  Any other day, it would be all booming bass and yelling.  Luis is overly fond of booming bass and yelling, but he’s lost the beat, too, so today they drive in silence.  In the seat next to him, Rachel just stares out the window at deserted streets – no traffic, no cabs, no people – only speaking to tell Luis where to turn.

They make it to Midtown in record time, but so many random streets are barricaded off that they end up circling around for awhile, trying to get closer to Tony’s tower.  When Rachel decides to get out and walk, insisting that Luis wait for her in the car, he asks, “Are you sure?” about a thousand times before she finally strikes out on her own.

She slips right past a barricade, and no one stops her.  It’s six blocks to Stark Tower.  She leans heavily on her cane, takes her time, and keeps her eyes peeled for the police, the military, someone .   The signs on the barricade made it very clear that it’s illegal to be in this evacuated zone, but the city’s services must be spread too thin to monitor every little side street and alley.  The alien attack was not confined to one section of the city, so the damage is spread out in random pockets of blocks.  Luckily for Rachel, they can’t monitor them all.

There are two guards in uniform, standing on the sidewalk in front of Tony’s hideous building.  Rachel tries to march right passed them, like she did with the barricade six blocks away, but turns out they’re not totally incompetent and they stop her, asking for some form of ID that would get her into the building.

“I’m here to see Steve Rogers,” she says.  “I have an appointment.”

“Really?” The soldier frowns, looking skeptical.  “An appointment?”

She didn’t truly expect that lie to get her in, but sometimes if you say things with enough confidence, people will just believe you.

She argues with the soldiers for five minutes before Steve appears outta nowhere.  Somehow, she was expecting to look down at her friend like she always did for so many years, instead of looking up, up, up .  Despite the classic image of Captain America plastered absolutely everywhere in the last seventy years, she’s never managed to remember Steve as anything other than her tiny best friend.

“Rachel?” he says.  And his voice sounds like Brooklyn.  His voice sounds like home.

Rachel cries into his chest, longer than Beck cried on her just this morning, and when that’s done with she resolves to be the strong one.  Steve won’t need to comfort her anymore.  She’ll do the comforting from here on out.

He looks so shocked when she lets go and steps back, dazed and overwhelmed.  Still, he manages a small smile when she beams up at him.

“Come on,” she says, taking his hand.  “Let’s get you home.”

1942

Rachel’s got four pins held in her mouth and the skirt of a wedding dress between her fingers.  The bride is fidgety, all pre-wedding nerves and shaky hands.  Her wedding’s been moved up from next spring to this weekend, since her fiancé got drafted.  Rachel’s had to “accidently” poke her in the hip with a pin to get her to stand still twice already this fitting.

She’s finally got the stubborn hem just right and ready to be pinned when the bell over the door in the front room rings out.

“Rachel!” Frank yells a moment later.  “It’s for you!”

Grumbling under her breath, Rachel gets the hem pinned.  Her foot’s fallen asleep from kneeling for so long, and she stumbles slightly as she stands.  “You can take a break.” Rachel calls over her shoulder to the bride.  “Just don’t let anything come unpinned.  I’ll be a quick minute.”

The bride sighs and sits as Rachel pulls the door to the backroom closed behind her.  “What?” she asks Frank, when there’s no one waiting to see her in the reception area.

“He’s out front.”

“Who?”

“Steve.”

“ Steve ? Why didn’t you say so!”

“I just did,” mutters Frank as she rushes towards the door, pulling it shut behind her as she steps outside.

In the week since Bucky shipped out, she hasn’t been able to track Steve down at all.  There was only a cryptic note left for her in the boys’ apartment, claiming that he was gonna get out of town for awhile, whatever the hell that meant.

Now Steve’s out on the front stoop, pacing around.  He’s wearing a odd khaki getup that looks alarmingly military, wringing a garrison cap between his hands.

He stops moving when she appears, grimacing at her.  “Hi,” he says, sounding sheepish as anything.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Hands balling into fists, she rests them on her hips while Steve blushes and stammers out nonsense.  “Is that an army uniform?”

“Yeah, well.  Looks like it.”

They stare at each other for a few long moments, Rachel confused and bordering on murderous, Steve bashful but determined.

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath.  “Yes, it is, okay?”

“They let you in ?  You passed the medical ?”  Rachel’s never properly panicked about all Steve’s ill-fated attempts to join up.  She worried she’d have to somehow find the money to bail him out of jail when the army realized he was lying, but never in her wildest dreams did she think she’d have to worry about him actually going to war, like she does with Bucky.

Steve’s got a laundry list of illnesses as long as Rachel’s forearm.  He was never supposed to get in.

“Kinda?” he says, shrugging.

“Kinda.  They kinda let you in?”

“Look, it’s not like a regular enlisted position, alright?  It’s this top secret program that I can’t give you any details on, but I’m just here to let you know I’m gonna be gone for awhile.”

Rachel crosses her arms over her chest, frowning at him.  “Top secret.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re gonna be gone awhile .”

“Yeah.”

“Wow, that really clears things up for me.  Thanks for all these details, Steve.  I really have a good understanding of what the hell is going on now.”

“Rach, come on.”

“And thanks for disappearing for the last week, too.  I wasn’t worried at all .”

“I’m sorry!” Steve gestures wildly, mouth moving as he tries and fails to find the words to help Rachel understand.  “Really, I’m sorry.  But I gotta do this, Rachel.  I’ve got to do my part and this is it.”

That, at least, she can understand.

“Look,” he says, glancing over his shoulder.  Rachel follows his gaze, noticing the sleek black car parked on the street for the first time.  “I don’t have much time, but mostly I came here to tell you to go stay at our place.”

“What?”

Steve reaches out, trying to uncross her arms so he can take her hand.  She remains stubborn for a second, Steve yanking at her elbow, but she relents and lets him take both her hands in his because this is it.  Steve is really going somewhere to do something secret for awhile.

These are their last moments together for who knows how long and she won’t waste it being angry.

“The apartment’s paid up for the next few months,” Steve says.  “You hate that little room upstairs and I hate the thought of all our stuff just sitting there, abandoned.  Please, go stay there while I’m gone.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.  Please, Rachel?  I hate leaving you on your own here, but I gotta do this.  Please, just go stay there.  It’s more of your home than that room.”

“Okay.”  Her breath shudders in her chest and she tries not to cry.  “Okay.  I’ll move my stuff over there tonight.  But, Steve.  Where you’re going, will there be fighting?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Is it dangerous?”

“I don’t know that yet either.  Rach, I really can’t tell you anything more.”

Behind them, someone honks the horn of that big, sleek car.  Rachel just about jumps out of her skin and Steve shoots a glare over his shoulder.

“I gotta go,” he says.

“Okay.”

“I’ll write when I can.”

“Okay.”

“You’ve still got your key to our place?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I do.”

“Take care of yourself, alright?”

Rachel huffs and pulls him into a tight hug.  She hides her face in his hair and absolutely will not cry. “Shouldn’t I be saying that to you?” she whispers in his good ear.

Steve laughs and hugs her back, until that horn honks at them again.

“I really gotta go,” he says.  Still, his arms stay tight around her waist.

“Okay.”

“Rachel, I mean it.”

“Fine, you let go first.”

Steve hugs her for a few more seconds before stepping back.

“I love you,” she says as he backs away towards the steps.

“I love you back.”  He turns on his heel and trots down the steps, moving over the sidewalk to the back of the car.

Rachel watches as he ducks down and says something to a beautiful woman with red lipstick through the open window.  She smiles and nods at Rachel when they make eye contact, but Rachel just crosses her arms over her chest as she watches Steve moves to the other side of the car.

Steve pauses when he gets the door open and she wraps her arms around herself, shivering against the wind.  With a long look and a final wave, he gets in the car.  She keeps watching long after the car moves down the street, turns a corner, and disappears from sight.

1943

Sometimes, when her back bothers her, Rachel will spend a night or two in Steve’s bed and then Bucky’s, but mostly she sleeps on the couch.  It makes it easier to believe that Steve and Bucky will be back any day now.  

Picking a bed and sleeping there every night would destroy the illusion.  Part of her still believes that her family will be home any minute, that she'll hear Steve and Bucky ribbing each other as they approach the front door, ready to throw their arms around each other the moment it’s safe, and Rachel will cook them all dinner before they all head out to the bar where they will find Sully cleaning glasses with a rag.

It’s all a big lie.  Steve, according to his letters, is doing something for the USO now, traveling across the country to sell war bonds and sounding bored out of his head (safe, though, at least he’s safe).  Bucky’s probably in a trench somewhere, buried in mud and definitely not safe.  Sully’s got another couple years left on his sentence. Zelda’s probably married to a man by now, for all she knows.  

Rachel’s the only one that’s gonna come home at the end of the day.

For months, she writes Steve constantly and Bucky slightly less constantly.  Steve writes back promptly.  Bucky writes back sometimes.  Rachel sleeps on the couch, right up until she gets a telegraph from Steve, telling her that he’ll be home for two short days before following Bucky across the pond.

Rachel frowns over the telegram and then she surveys the bedroom, frowning some more.

Each bed is perfectly made.  The side tables gather dust.  Her meager belongings sit piled in a corner, very obviously never unpacked.  She wonders if shoving it all under Bucky’s bed will be enough to keep Steve from figuring out that she’s been sleeping on the couch since she moved in here.

This is their room, Steve and Bucky's, one of the few places they can be themselves and be together, despite the two beds currently pushed to opposite sides of the room.  Bucky's fighting a war and Steve's going to Europe, too, with his much safer USO job, and the room will be empty of them for months or maybe years.

Rachel really should just pick a bed.

She bites back her tears and sits on the edge of Bucky’s bed, bouncing slightly.  Tentatively, she lies down and stretches out, but she only lasts a couple of seconds until she sits up and hoofs it out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind her.

She’ll pick a bed, later .

Tucked away in an envelope, she’s got postcards from twenty-four different states and pretty soon Steve’ll be adding to the collection from various European cities, too, if he can manage it.  She tucks the telegram in with the rest, even though there’s no reason to keep it.

But tomorrow, at least, he’ll be home.

Until then she'll keep pretending that the tiny bit of family she found for herself is still whole and still here.

There's a knock on the front door and Rachel jumps.  She seriously considers ignoring whoever’s waiting in the hall.  It won't be Steve or Bucky or Zelda or Sully and there's not one other person in the whole world that she wants to see.

A key rattles in the lock and Rachel watches in stunned silence as the door opens.

"Oh," says Rebecca Barnes.  She stands in the doorway, looking unbearably like her older brother.  She's got his bright eyes and sharp jaw, the same nose and cheekbones.  The corners of her mouth are slightly downturned like Bucky's, and it's even more pronounced now as Rebecca frowns at her.  "Steve didn’t say you’d be here.  He said he’d found a tenant, but not that it was you.”

"Sorry to disappoint." Rachel shrugs.

She's too tired to get properly defensive over Rebecca's inexplicable and apparent dislike.  Rachel's all alone again, just like she was at fifteen when she spent an unbearably long summer week on the streets, before she managed to track down Sully.  She's all alone again and can't be bothered to care about Rebecca Barnes.

"And I'm not a tenant.  I mean, Steve’s not letting me pay rent or anything.  I’ve just been staying here for awhile."

"Oh," Rebecca says, again.  She comes inside and shuts the door behind her, slipping her jacket off her shoulders.  Underneath she wears a shapeless beige blouse that looks like it was originally made for a man.  Her brown skirt is equally unflattering and her shoes don't even have a heel.  Now that she's paying attention, Rachel can't spot a trace of makeup on her face and her braided hair is messy.

It's dreadfully unfair, that Rebecca can be so beautiful with so little effort.

"So," says Rachel.  “What’re you doing here?"

Rebecca sticks her hands in her pockets and looks around the apartment, looks everywhere but at Rachel.  "With Steve coming home, I thought I'd clean up a bit.  Dust a little.  Make sure there's a bit of food in the ice box."

"Ah, okay," says Rachel.  She chews on her thumbnail and she must be more lonely than she knew because the next thing out of her mouth is, "Want help?"

"Alright," says Rebecca with great caution.  This is the most civil Rebecca's ever been in Rachel's presence.  Maybe she's also too tired and too lonely to keep on hating Rachel for no apparent reason with the boys gone.

There's not too much work to be done.  Bucky's always been clean and Rachel’s been careful to keep everything as the boys left it.

They both decide to be thorough without discussing it.  They scrub every nook and cranny.

Eventually, Rebecca turns on the radio.  News from the front is grim, and Rebecca changes it right as Rachel’s opening her mouth to ask her to do so, settling on Glenn Miller.

They move into the bedroom.  Rebecca goes to fluff the pillows on Steve's bed, sending a sketchbook falling to the floor.  It lands open just in front of the patch of floor Rachel’s sweeping.

There, for all the world to see – or at least Rebecca – is Bucky Barnes, wrapped around Steve Rogers.

The sketch is drawn like the two of them are standing in front the cracked mirror that hangs over their dresser, and Rachel can imagine that scenario perfectly.  Bucky protesting that Steve's books are full of Bucky all on his own, Bucky wanting a drawing of the two of them together.  Steve badgering him until he agrees to stand with Steve in front of the mirror, so Steve can see every little detail of pair of them and sketch it out with his notebook resting on top of the dresser.

In the drawing, Bucky's got his arms around Steve's chest, pressing his front into Steve's back.  He kisses Steve's temple, expression tender and Steve looks straight ahead, watching in the mirror, his grin small and private.

Rachel drops the broom and snatches up the sketchbook, moving as quick as she can to keep Rebecca from getting a good look.  She closes it, clutches it to her chest, and glares.

"That's private," she hisses.

Rebecca frowns.  "I'll put it back."

" I'll put it back," Rachel insists, making no move to do so.  She holds the book tighter to his chest.

"What?  Some compromising sketches of you in there, Rachel?"  

Now that’s the nasty tone and accusatory glare Rachel is used to when to comes to Rebecca Barnes.

"It's private," she repeats.

Rebecca snorts, crosses her arms over her chest.  "Now you care about what should be kept private?  That's rich coming from you."

"What?" asks Rachel, genuinely dumbfounded.

"You're always all over him.  And in public, too!"

Admittedly, that first time she met Rebecca she did get rather drunk at dinner and did hang off Steve's neck as he walked her home, but there was hardly anything indecent about it.

"What? Are you in love with him yourself?  Is that why you hate me so much?"

Rebecca looks completely stricken and appalled by the concept, so this particular theory to explain Why Rebecca Barnes Hates Rachel Rosenbaum is probably false.

"No!” she squeaks.  “I... Just no. Definitely not ."

"Then what’s the problem?" Rachel demands.

Rebecca rubs her temples, the gesture so similar to her brother's when he's trying to calm himself.  "Look," she says, taking a big breath.  "I'm sorry."

"You are?" asks Rachel, raising an eyebrow.

"You and Steve have been serious for awhile now and when you get married, we’ll be in each other's lives for a long time, so I'll make a real effort to be nice.  Starting now, anyway."

It explains absolutely nothing about why she's been so uncivil from the get go, but Rachel relaxes anyway, stepping around Rebecca to tuck Steve's sketchbook back under the pillow.

"Steve and I aren't getting married," Rachel says.  "At least not anytime soon.”  

“Sure, you’re not.”

“We're friends , good friends.”  

“Yeah, whatever you say.”

“I’m serious .”

“Uh huh.”

“Look!” Rachel snaps.  “Him and your brother, they're my family.  And if Steve and I get married some day in the distant, distant future, it would be as friends.  For convenience.  Because Steve would let me be my own person, not just someone's wife ."

Rebecca glances at Steve's pillow, then back up at Rachel.  "So you don't want to be someone's wife, huh?"

"Not even a little bit."

Rebecca almost smiles and Rachel blushes, turning her face away.  Rebecca Barnes looks damn good wearing an almost smile.  A real one, big and bright and painfully like her brother’s, would be more than Rachel’s equipped to handle.

"I was gonna make dinner.  Do you want to stay?"

Rebecca stays for dinner and then stays the night, sleeping in her brother's bed while Rachel sleeps in Steve's.

There is a stranger standing in the doorway.  He's tall and broad, but he wears it awkwardly, with hunched, rounded shoulders and his arms crossed over his chest.  Both Rachel and Rebecca have to crane their necks to look up at his startlingly familiar face.  Under their intense and silent scrutiny, he blushes and reaches up to push his hair to the side.

"Wow," he says and at least the voice is the same.  It's not much of a comfort, for the familiar, deep drawl to come out of such a big body.  "You're both here.  Together.  This is a surprise."

Rebecca laughs.  "That's the surprise?   Christ , Steve."

"Hey, Beck," he murmurs, back to bashful.  "Had a bit of a growth spurt."

Rebecca laughs again.  Rachel can't do anything but stare.

Rebecca lunges forward, wrapping her arms around this stranger's neck.  He's got to duck to return the hug, and when he straightens, her feet actually leave the ground.  Her legs dangle and swing as the stranger sways.

"This is so strange," Rebecca whispers.

"I know." The giant sets her down. He's back to messing with his hair, ducking his head.  These gestures are bizarre on such a large person and Rachel feels a little sick.  “I missed you."

Rebecca sniffs, wipes the tears off her cheeks, and nods.

The stranger turns to Rachel.  With Steve's voice, he says, "Rach."

When he reaches out for her, like Steve's reached out thousands of times before, she takes a stumbling step back.  His face falls and Rachel crosses her arms tightly over her chest, as if that will keep her from falling apart completely.

"Come on," says Rebecca.  She's got a hand on Rachel's shoulder, pushing her towards the couch.  "Sit down, Steve, and tell us what the hell happened to you."

"I joined the Army," Steve replies with a cheeky grin, taking the chair across from them.

Rebecca’s laughing again, but Rachel’s rather certain that she’ll never find anything funny for the rest of her days.

"But, really.” Steve gets serious, his mouth flattening out like it always did when he was about to say something Important.  “It's classified.  They didn't even want me seeing anyone that knew me before, but I put my foot down.  Wouldn't go to Europe without seeing my best girls first.  Especially since we're leaving from New York.  They wanted to put me up in some fancy Manhattan hotel, something befitting of Captain America."

“You're Captain America?" Rebecca shrieks.  " That's your mysterious USO job?  Dancing around and punching Hitler in the face?  Starring in comic books and stupid movies?"

Steve’s ears turn pink and he rubs the back of his neck.  The mannerisms are just the same, transposed over this unfamiliar giant, and Rachel struggles to pull air into her lungs, like they’ve somehow shrunk down in the minutes since she opened the front door expected Steve and got this instead.

"Yeah," he confirms.  “Captain America.  That’s me, I guess.”

Rebecca thinks that's funny, too, but Rachel keeps right on staring.

For the next hour, Steve regales them with stories from the road, train trips and Captain America shows in a hundred different cities, traveling to a hundred different places.  What it’s like to shoot a real Hollywood movie and a list of all the real Hollywood actors he met.  Rebecca has a million questions.  Steve answers half of them.  They only talk about Bucky for a minute.

"You heard from him?" Rebecca asks.

"No." Steve grimaces.  "Not in a couple weeks."

"No need to worry yet." Rebecca sounds so sure.  Steve's a giant now, so Rachel’s no longer sure about anything in the whole world.  “The twins got a letter from him a couple weeks ago.  It’s back dated two months, but it’s something.”

Eventually, Rebecca decides it’s time to check on dinner.  A nice stew just like Sarah Rogers used to make. Steve's favorite.  When Rachel tries to stand and follow Rebecca to the kitchen, Rebecca pushes her back down to the couch, giving her a glare.

Somehow, in their twenty hour-long truce, Rebecca's already gotten exceedingly comfortable pushing Rachel around.

Left alone in the living room with Rachel, Steve doesn't say anything.  He retreats to the kitchen for a minute, returning with two glasses and a half empty bottle of whiskey.

"You just never gonna talk to me again, Rach?" he murmurs, pouring generously and handing over the drink.  He sits next to her, taking up far more room than Rebecca did, far more room than he should.  "I'm leaving the day after tomorrow.  I'd be nice if you could at least look at me."

Sighing, Rachel turns.  She pulls up her legs, crossing them beneath her as she sits sideways on the couch and faces Steve.  Downing half her drink in one go, she shudders slightly and then summons to courage to look at this stranger who is actually, somehow, Steve .

Her brain just sort of skips over the body.  It is too big and too new and too impossible to comprehend.  Instead she leans closer, framing his face with her hands.  Her palms hide his new, strong jaw, and Rachel can only see his face, those blue eyes and the serious set of his mouth, soft and red.  His expression is familiar: determined, and just a little wary.  She looks right at him, staring for a few long moments until she really, truly believes that this is Steve, her friend and her family, his face right here between her palms.

"Oh," she says.  "There you are."

Steve lets out a strangled sound and smiles slightly, before slumping forward to rest his forehead against her shoulder.  She hugs him, runs her fingers through his hair.

"Steve," she murmurs.  "Bubbeleh.  What did you do to yourself?"

He doesn't answer and when he lifts his head, reaching for his drink, Rachel can look at him without feeling so sick.

“It was dangerous, wasn’t it?  You utter ass .  Of course it was dangerous.”

Steve shrugs and swirls his whiskey, but doesn’t drink.

“Oh, Bucky’s gonna kill you,” she says, actually managing to laugh now.   “He’s gonna be so mad.”

Steve winces.  “You think he won’t like—“

“Don’t be an idiot.  He’s not gonna mind how you look, just what you did to get like that.”

With a huff, Steve leans back against the couch.  “My lungs are good, now.  I can breathe right.  No more asthma or heart conditions or any of it, Rachel.  I’ve got a decent chance at making it to thirty.  I can see.  I can hear.  I can breathe .”

“You were always gonna make it to thirty.”

“Not according to about five different doctors I wasn’t.”

Rachel takes a deep breath.  It comes through her lungs shaky, but she manages a watery smile.  “Well, I’d lead with all that, then.  When you tell Bucky.”

"You okay, Rach?  Still working for Frank?” he asks.

“Still working for Frank.  He’s got me trained up good.  I can do almost everything he can, just not as fast.”

“Any word on Sully?  Any change?”

Rachel shakes her head and looks at her lap.

“And the job? How is it now that he’s got you all trained up?”

“It’s fine.  Steve, everything’s fine,” Rachel says, striving for patience.  Steve’s questions are getting more desperate, like he’s trying to fit all the months he’s been gone into one evening.

"What about the money I've been sending out?  It helping a little?  I don’t want you to worry about money."

"The money ,” she says, “is tucked away in an envelope in your bedside drawer."

"Rachel!"

"Steve.”

“You should use it.  Buy yourself some nice fabric or new lipstick or something .”

“There’s a war going on, Steve.  I don’t need all that.”

“But--”

“Thanks to you, I’m not even paying rent.  And the wage I get from Frank’s more than enough to cover the rest.  Stop fretting.”

“Just treat yourself to something nice for once, why don’t you?”

“I don’t need your charity to treat myself.”

"It's not charity,” he insists, waving his hands around.  Maybe if he was still tiny, he’d be shaking her shoulders, but he’s huge now. She wonders if he’s learned how to use all that new strength yet.  “Do you know how much they're paying me to be a trained monkey?”

“No, and I don’t care.”  

“One paycheck is more than Bucky and I used to make together in three months!”

“So?”

“I got a huge check, from these absurd Captain America movies and that’s in addition to my usual pay. What am I gonna do with all that money?"

"I don't know.” Rachel sticks her nose in the air and sips her drink.  “But it’s all waiting for you in the drawer when you figure it out."

Steve sighs, finishing off his drink and leaning back against the couch.  He's pouting and defeated.  Rachel grins. Steve's spent a good part of his life protesting that he doesn't need anyone doing anything for him, even Bucky, and now look at him.

"You’ll keep living here, though,” he whispers.  “Right?" he asks with great trepidation.

"Yes.”

“I’m gonna pick up the rent.  I’ve already worked it all out with Mrs. Meyers.”

Rachel sighs, wishing more than anything that she was in a position to say no.  But she’s a single woman, with no family, no husband to support her, and society just isn’t set up to let her make a go of it on her own.  There’s no room for pride here.

“Look, stop sending me the spending money and I’ll let you pay my rent.  Deal?”

Steve grumbles for a minute, but eventually he agrees and they shake on it.

“Thanks, Rach.”

“You’re thanking me for letting you pay my rent?” Rachel smiles, finally getting that rush of affection she usually does for Steve, even though he’s a terrifying giant monstrosity now.

“I’m setting off into the unknown,” he says.  “This is taking a load off my mind is all.”

Rachel rolls her eyes.  "You're going to Europe to fake punch Hitler in the fake face."

Steve groans.  "Don't remind me."

"I'm glad," Rachel says.  "You might hate it, but dancing monkeys stay safe."

"Rachel—“

"I’m amending the agreement,” Rachel decides.  “If I promise to stay here for good will you spare me the lecture on doing your part and duty and all the good men dying over there while you do nothing?"

Steve cracks a smile.  "Okay.”

“Dinner’s ready!” calls Rebecca from the kitchen.

Over dinner, Rebecca talks about college.  She’s been working for the family company full time since she finished school, but recently Mrs. Barnes has tripled her efforts to find Rebecca a husband, so naturally Rebecca’s tripled her determination to continue her education.

“I’m saving everything I’m making,” Rebecca says.  “But it’s gonna be awhile before I can afford the classes at Barnard.”

“Your parents can’t help you out with that?”  Steve’s already on his third helping of stew.  Apparently, his appetite has grown in proportion to his body.

“Steve, I’m already working for them and living with them.  How under their thumb am I gonna be if I let them pay for school?  Ma has this sudden fantasy that it’s gonna be me taking over the business instead of Bucky now, so she wants me to study something terrible.  Like accounting.”

Rachel makes brief eye contact with Steve before they both go back to looking at their stews.  They’ve got to be wondering the same thing.  Whether Winnie’s given up on Bucky and his progeny taking over the family business because she doesn’t think he’ll make it back home.  Or if she’s finally accepted that her son is as queer as the day is long, and she’s finally given up on him procreating the next generation of Barnes Trucking workers.

“And what do you want to study?” Steve asks.

“I dunno, literature?  History?  Anything but business?”

“Let me guess, Winnie doesn’t find that all too practical.”

“She doesn’t find my disinterest in going out with fellas from Assumption very practical either.”  Beck glances away from Steve, staring right at Rachel.  “I don’t want to be someone’s wife .”

Rachel grins, looking down at her dinner in an attempt to hide her blush.

Steve nods, because if there was ever a fella around who’d understand that sentiment, it’s Steve Rogers.

“Hey,” he says, suddenly perking right up.  “You need money!”

"Not you too." Rebecca groans.  "Bucky's been basically sending me his entire paycheck, ever since I wrote him about Barnard."

Rachel laughs and kicks Steve under the table.  "Steve's been doing that with me, too!  I'm keeping it all in an envelope for him to spend after the war."

"Me too!  They're ridiculous aren't they?"

"Completely."

" This, of all things, is what you two are bonding over?” Steve scoffs.  “Give me a break."

They drink their way through the bottle of whiskey, until Steve stretches out on the couch and nods off.  He says alcohol doesn’t affect him like it used to, but something’s sure knocked him out good.  He must not be sleeping much, what with him living on the road and with Bucky in the war.

“It’s late,” says Rebecca.  She gets to her feet, stumbling a little. “I should go.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Rachel puts herself between Rebecca and the door.  “You’re drunk.”

“So?”

“So, you really think we’re gonna let you walk home by yourself at two in the morning?”

“I bet Captain America would walk me.”

At this moment, Captain America lets out a very loud, sustaining snore.

Rachel and Rebecca both have to cover their mouths to muffle their giggles.

“Okay, maybe not,” whispers Rebecca.  “I hate to wake him.  He looks more like our Steve when he’s sleeping.”

Rachel gazes at him for a moment, his face slack and peaceful.  “Yeah.”

“Still, I should go.” She clears her throat.  “Give the lovebirds some alone time.”

It takes Rachel at least ten whole seconds to understand what Rebecca is saying.

“No,” says Rachel, shaking her head.  “No, no, no .  It’s not like that with us.”  

“Uh huh.”

“Not at all.”

“Okay.”  

“I told you.”

“ Sure .”

“Steve will sleep on the couch.   He’ll barely fit in his own bed now, looking like that. Take Bucky’s again.  Your parents aren’t expecting you home, are they?”

“No,” Beck murmurs.  “I told them I’d probably sleep here.  But really, I don’t want to impose.”

“Rebecca!” Rachel rolls her eyes.  “Just stop being so stubborn and stay .”

Rebecca nods, turning back towards the bedroom.  “It’s Beck,” she says, pausing in the doorway.  She looks over her shoulder, her face partially hidden in shadow and her eyes bright.

“Huh?”

“I’m Beck.  You should call me Beck.  I hate Rebecca.”

“Okay, Beck,” Rachel murmurs.  She busies herself by tossing a blanket over Steve’s new hulking form.  “Good night.”

Beck leaves early the next morning, making them both promise to come over to the Barnes’s place for dinner, five pm sharp.  It leaves Rachel the whole day to just soak up Steve’s warmth before he leaves.  Rachel would prefer to while away the day, walking to the park and then maybe baking enough challah to feed Steve’s entire USO troupe, but Steve wants to be productive.

He pulls an old trunk out from under his bed, poking around at the meager contents inside.  There’s a picture in there of a soldier with Steve’s nose and intense eyes, standing tall and straight in an British uniform.  Steve wipes dust from the frame and sighs.

“Your father?” Rachel sits next to him on the floor, crossing her legs beneath her.

“Yeah.  I never found a place to put it out in the apartment.  It’s just been sitting in here since my ma died.”

“He was very handsome.  He and your ma must’ve made an attractive couple.”

Steve hums his agreement and just keeps silently staring at the photo.  Rachel rests her head on his shockingly giant shoulder and keeps quiet.  She wonders if Steve looks at his father in a uniform from a different war and thinks about Bucky in a uniform for this one, if he thinks about his own uniform, a pair of bright blue tights.

“Well.” Steve clears his throat and attempts to smile. “Let’s get to it.”

“Get to what?”

“You’re gonna be living here, now,” he replies.  “It’s about time we pack away all our stuff so you can move in for real.”

Steve cracks the illusion wide open, and Rachel can’t pretend he’s back for good anymore.  After he leaves, she won’t be able to tell herself that she’s got to sleep on the couch because he’ll be home for super.  He’s off to Europe and although he’s not going to fight (for now, at least) he’ll still be gone for who knows how long.

So Rachel helps him pack the life he made with Bucky into boxes.  The really sacred stuff – sketches, love letters, a baseball Bucky caught and gave to Steve at a Dodgers game when they were 8, a terribly cross-stitched pillow Steve made for Bucky in 1941 bearing the words Queerly Ever After, Sarah’s rosary, the menorah Rachel gave them before she even met Bucky – all goes into the trunk with the photograph of Steve’s father.  It gets locked and pushed back under Steve’s bed.  With great solemnity, he hands Rachel the key.

The rest gets tossed into boxes and pushed to the back of the closet.

“Well,” says Steve, rubbing his hands together.  “That didn’t take long.”

“Yeah, good thing you own next to nothing.”

“Hey, you have even less.  That’s why we didn’t pack up the kitchen or take my ma’s landscapes down.”

Rachel gasps, clutching her heart.  “I would never take down your ma’s landscapes.  They’re the best thing about this dump.”

Second to Steve himself, of course, but he’s not going to be here all that much longer.

When Steve laughs, throwing his head back, pressing his open palm to his chest, he looks just the same.  He sounds just the same.  Rachel would laugh, too, if she wasn’t too busy staring up at him instead of looking down.

It’d be nice if she had more than a day, to get used to his new size.

“So,” Steve says, when he finally stops laughing at her.  “We’ve got a few hours to kill before we head over to the Barnes.  What’d you say we go get hitched?”

Rachel blinks at him.

“Just got on down to the courthouse.  Should be easy as anything.”

Rachel blinks some more and then laughs.  They’ve brushed this off as a joke before.  Surely, that’s what he’s doing now.

“What?” Steve blushes, running a hand through his hair.  “You want more romance?  Should I get down on one knee?  Go out and get a ring?”

“You’re serious!”

Maybe if he’d asked her, really asked her, a year ago, two years ago, she’d have said yes immediately.  Marrying Steve would mean she’d have family, real and official like.  She’d have a husband who wouldn’t expect her to make his meals and raise his children.  She’d have the security of a married woman without the expectations.  She’d be allowed to work without the stigma of being on her own.  She’d be able to live whatever life she wants and she’d have Steve right there with her.

Well.  Assuming he refrains from doing something enormously stupid when he goes off to a warzone as strictly the entertainment.

A year ago, two years ago, she’d already be dragging him out the door and towards the courthouse.  So much has changed since she first came up with what she thought was a simple solution to all their problems.  Marry Steve. As if it would be easy as that.

But before Bucky even told Steve that he was off to war, he showed Rachel his draft letter and begged her not to marry his fella when he was on the other side of the ocean.  And Rachel held his hand and said, “James Buchanan, I promise not to marry Steve until this war is over and you’re back home, safe and sound.”

She takes a deep breath and avoids looking at Steve, sinking down to sit on the sofa.  Her knees are too wobbly to keep her standing any longer.

“Why on earth would we do that?” she asks.

“It’s not like we haven’t be talking about it for years.”  Steve frowns, tilting his head to the side as he studies her.  

“Why now?”

Steve looks up to the ceiling, puts his hands on his hips, and sighs.  The movement has his shirt straining against his bulging chest.  If they had the time, Rachel would tailor his whole wardrobe.  It would certainly be a challenge.  She’s never worked on a fella so big.  She’s never seen a fella so big.

“Look,” Steve says.  He drops into the chair next to her, rounding his shoulders forward like he’s trying to make himself smaller.  “I know I ain’t a soldier.  I know all I do is prance around and recite some lines and pretend to punch Hitler in the face, but we’re still going to a warzone.  Anything could happen and if I don’t--”

“Stop.”  Rachel presses the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying desperately not to cry.  She’ll crumble completely, if she thinks too long on the possibility of Steve not coming back.  

“You know it’s true.”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” She snaps at Steve, like she never snaps at Steve.  His eyes go so wide, his head jerking back.  “Sorry,” she whispers.  “But I just can’t bear to think on it too much.”

“Okay.”  Steve stretches out to take her hand and Rachel lets him.  He always had big hands for a little fella so the size isn’t that different, but all his artist’s calluses are smoothed out now, either from whatever strange science experiment got him so large or from a lack of drawing.  

Rachel hopes it's the former.

“We should still go get married,” he continues.  “It’s the smart thing to do.  You’ll have benefits.  And I know you don’t want to think about it, but you’d be entitled to money, if… Well, you know.”

She’s shaking her head before he even finishes his sales pitch, yanking her hand back.  “No, no.  Maybe when you and Bucky come home.”

“But, Rach--”

“No.”

“We could--”

“We won’t.”

“This is the reasonable thing to do.”

“Too bad.”

“Truly?” Steve shakes his head.  “You’re truly not gonna marry me?”

“Steve.” Rachel leans forward.  From way down deep she dredges up some of her old good humor, even though she hasn’t felt much like smiling or laughing or joking since 1940. She gives him her best smirk and says, “I don’t go for fellas the size of houses.”

When Steve laughs, Rachel laughs too, and for one short moment, Rachel’s able to pretend that everything will turn out just fine.

When Steve ships out, Rachel goes with him to the port.  They stroll, arm and arm, taking their time.  The whole way, people watch them.  Lifting their hats at Steve or smiling at them appreciatively.  They’re nearly to the docks when Rachel figures it out.

They must make a striking pair, with Steve’s new big body, wearing a uniform he doesn’t feel he deserves but Senator Brandt insists on, and Rachel in her best red dress, perfectly tailored and just this side of scandalous.

People look at them with admiration, with envy, and it’s a novel experience, to be openly admired by the normals.

Other people must look at them and see a perfect couple.  A handsome soldier and his beautiful lady.  A pair of sweethearts, enjoying a bit of leave.

Right after Zelda left, Rachel wanted to be different.  For the first time in her life, she wanted to be normal, to be someone else.  She wanted to want what these other people see when they look at her and Steve.  She wanted to love a good looking guy.  She wanted to be able to walk around on the arm of her sweetheart with no fear.

When she was young, her mother would smile at her and say, “ A looker like you could have any man she wants .”  With her face, and her figure, Rachel knows she really could.  When Zelda left, Rachel closed her eyes and tried to want a man.  For the first time in her life, she actually considered finding a bearable fella.

But it was never gonna happen for her.  

Near the pier, a pair of older ladies stop them to gush over what a pretty couple they make and to thank Steve for his service.  Steve turns pink and bumbles an answer, stuttering about how they’re not actually a couple and he’s not actually a soldier, but Rachel takes over before the ladies can get too disappointed.

“He wanted to marry me the moment he saw me,” she says, squeezing Steve’s hand.  “Didn’t you, Stevie?  But I would have none of that, not until he wore me down with a little romance.  Now, we’re waiting until he gets back, after the war.  I want a real wedding.  No rush job will do.  Plus, it’s something to look forward to.  Right, darling?”

The ladies wait for his answer with bated breath.  Steve rolls his eyes only a little and kisses her cheek, making the ladies swoon.  “Anything for my best gal.”

Rachel gets choked up, but somehow she manages to keep from crying.  The ladies wave goodbye and they continue their stroll.  Rachel huddles closer to Steve’s side, well aware that he’ll be so far away so soon.

“Well, that was surreal,” Steve mutters when they’re out of earshot.  “Bucky’ll think it’s hilarious. I’m putting it in my next letter.”

Rachel laughs and relaxes.  Steve might suddenly be the pinnacle of what every red blooded American man aspires to be, but he’s still Steve. He’s still queer, an artist, her scrappy, snarky, self-righteous best friend.

She likes who Steve really is better than what those ladies see when they look at him.  She likes herself better, too.  She likes who they are to each other more than something as common as a pair of handsome sweethearts.

At the dock, they’re immediately accosted by six women, all young and beautiful.  They’ve got big smiles and Rachel doesn’t know where to look or what to do with her hands.  She’s engulfed in a heady cloud of perfume and she clutches Steve’s arm tighter, hoping her eyes aren’t bulging out of her head too terribly much.

“Ladies,” Steve says, tipping his cap.  “Rachel, these are the showgirls.”  

Steve makes the introductions, and Rachel’s barely listening as they all reach out to shake her hand, their skin soft and nails manicured.

“You must be the sweetheart Steve’s always writing,” says one girl.  A blonde with a crooked smile.

“Yeah,” says another.  Brunette.  Blue eyes.   Dimples .  “Steve here is always, always writing his sweetheart.”

“Well,” says Rachel when it becomes clear that she’s supposed to reply.  She clears her throat and forces herself to look up at Steve.  “He does write me an awful lot.”  

And that’s not even a lie, but he’s bound to be writing Bucky more.

The girls tease Steve gently.  His ears turn pink but he grins at Rachel, all conspiratorial.  Holding the secret of who Steve’s actually writing to so constantly is a delight.  It leaves Rachel giddy, like having a shared secret always used to, before they took Sully.

“Y’all are just perfect for each other,” says a red head with a southern accent.  Rachel likes her best.  She got the best pair of legs Rachel’s ever had the pleasure of encountering and her voice drips like honey.  “No wonder Steve would rather write to his sweetheart than go out on the town with us.”

“He’s a good one,” Rachel agrees.  She gets all teary eyed, and reaches up to pat his jaw, trying to focus on his familiar face and not his unfamiliar girth. “I’m gonna miss him.”

When her voice breaks, the showgirls are kind enough to give them some space to say goodbye.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, when they’re own their own.

“What for?  Surely you’re not apologizing for introducing me to the showgirls.  Really, I should be thanking you.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Rachel.”

“Why’re you sorry?”  

“You’re all on your own here.”  He stares down at his boots, kicking at gravel.  “I’m leaving you all own your own here.”

Rachel closes her eyes and bites her lip until the urge to sob passes.  

Steve chose this, trying to enlist over and over again until he finally got the chance that turned him into the giant version of himself.  He didn’t get a letter like Bucky. He didn’t get dragged to prison in handcuffs like Sully. No one forced him to leave her, except his own stubborn resolve and need to prove himself.

He’s leaving her all on her own and it’s a deliberate choice. Part of her wishes she could resent him for it, hate him even, but he wouldn’t be Steve if he didn’t do the right thing, the brave thing.

Rachel can be brave, too.

“Well,” Rachel says, squeezing his wrist.  “There’s a war going on.  Sacrifices must be made and whatnot.”

Steve shrugs.  “I still ain’t happy about it.”

“Me neither.  But here we are.  I’ll be fine, bubbeleh.  I’m always fine.”

That just has Steve frowning some more, so Rachel throws her arms around his neck and tries not to get vertigo when she hugs him.  He squeezes the breath out of her lungs and mutters  apologizes before they mutter their goodbyes.

“I love you,” she says when he lets her go.  “Even though there’s a whole lot more of you to love all of a sudden.”

Steve grins and clucks her chin.  “I love you back.”

She stays put, watching him cross the Navy Yard and go up the gainway.  He pauses at the top, giving her a little, awkward wave.  Grinning, she rolls her eyes and shoos at him until he disappears through the doorway.

“ Yehi ratzon milefanecha Adonai ,” she whispers as she walks.  She keeps her eyes on her feet as they take her home, and she prays for Steve’s safe travels.

A month after Steve ships out, Rachel gets back to the apartment and Beck's there, rummaging around in the closet where Rachel's clothes now hang.

Rachel had worked late, staying well after the shop closed to fit gowns for a pair of demanding drag queens in preparation for some party in Harlem next week.  Frank made Rachel do all the work, so he could socialize with his friends instead of telling them that some of their dreams for these dresses were just not possible on a budget.  Listening to them laugh and talk about the upcoming party seemed so strange with the war going on, but when Rachel was working on the hem of the smaller queen's glittering green dress, she found a wooden leg underneath.  "That's from the last war," she said, when she noticed Rachel noticing.

So Rachel's glad she was able to help someone get a little joy out of a life that's probably been harder than anything she'll ever experience, even if she had to work late and can't stop picturing Steve and Bucky with missing limbs.

Mostly, she's really not in the mood for whatever Beck is currently doing in her closet.

"Rebecca."  She tries to snap, but it comes out with a tired sigh instead. Today she met someone who lost a leg in the last one, so she just doesn't have it in her to snap at Beck.  Lately she only has the energy to go to work and come home and follow the news from the front obsessively.

At the sound of her name, Beck jerks and smacks her shoulder into the door frame.  Muttering curses, she turns around to glare at Rachel.  She doesn't look a bit guilty, even though she just was caught snooping.

"Where the hell have you been?" Beck demands.

Rachel kicks off her shoes and puts her hands on her hips.  " Working , Rebecca.  I was at the shop."

"Normally you're home by seven.  It's after nine."

She's been spending far too much time with Beck, if she knows Rachel's schedule so well.  

It started off as a dinner, the Friday after Steve left.  George was lighting candles when Beck dragged her into the Barnes family kitchen, murmuring, “ Barukh ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha-olam ,” while the twins chased each other circles around him and Winnie pulled something out of the oven.

The cadence of George’s Hebrew, after so many years so disconnected from her Judaism, almost made her cry.  She hadn’t heard someone else say that blessing out loud since she left her parents house.

The week after that, when Beck showed up at the shop and somehow sweet talked Frank into letting Rachel leave early, Rachel didn’t want to go with her to Shabbat dinner.  She convinced herself that Steve put Beck up to it, that no one really wanted Rachel around.  But Beck just rolled her eyes and bodily dragged Rachel down the street to the trolley.

Now, Rachel says the blessing with George and lights the candles every Friday. She waves her hands over the flames and covers her eyes and all the Barneses say, “ Shabbat Shalom !” when she lowers her arms.  

Still, that’s not enough time for Rebecca.  She’s taken to showing up at the shop, forcing Rachel to take her lunch breaks at the automat around the corner or walking Rachel home at the end of the day.  

Apparently, it’s been enough for Beck to memorize her schedule.

Really, she needs to get some friends who actually like her.

"Why are you going through my closet?" Rachel asks.

"It's not yours.  It's Steve and Bucky's.  Where's all their stuff anyhow?"

Sighing, Rachel elbows Beck out of the way and pulls aside her dresses, gesturing at the two boxes tucked away at the back of the small closet.  

"Steve and I packed it away the morning before he shipped out," Rachel murmurs, sad again.  Terrified again.  It's so exhausting, swinging to sadness and terror every time she thinks about her boys at war.  

Which unfortunately happens approximately every six minutes.

“Just those boxes?”

"They don't have much."  Rachel does not mention the trunk full of all the proof of the queer life Steve and Bucky lived before they went away, safe and locked up tight under the bed she’s been sleeping in.

"No." Beck’s voice wavers. She's sad and terrified, too.  

Maybe this is why Beck’s been coming around so often.  She’s sad and terrified and equally lost without her brother and his best friend. It’s a strange sort of camaraderie, one that Rachel’s endlessly grateful for now.

Together they stare at the two boxes hidden away in the back of the closet for a few long, silent minutes.

"I need a dress," Beck declares.

Rachel glances at Beck, suspicious.  "Why?"

"I got an interview.” Beck’s cheeks turn red.  She fiddles with a button on her shirt and looks at her feet.  "With an officer, in the Navy Yard.  My tateh set it up.  He’s got all sorts of connections, now that the trucking company is on contract with the military.  Ma’s furious, of course, but Tateh understood, when I told him I want to do something for the war.  And I do, want to feel like I’m doing something for the war, but I told you, that I need to get out from under my ma’s thumb and this is my chance and I’ve never had an interview before and all my church dresses make me look like a little girl."

Rachel gapes at Beck, reasonably certain that she’s never heard Beck speak that much all at once before.  And without saying anything nasty or sarcastic at all.

"You wear dresses to church?" she asks because she doesn’t know what to say to the rest of Beck’s very open, painful honest, entirely relatable little spiel.  

Plus, she's never seen Beck in a dress, just ill fitted trousers and shapeless blouses.  Suddenly, she regrets never taking Steve up on the standing invitation to go to Mass with him and the Barnes clan.  She could’ve sat through the latin just to get a glimpse at Beck in a dress.

"My mother makes me.” Beck huffs, back to being nasty.  “Are you gonna help me out or not?"

Rachel pauses like she's considering it, tapping her chin.  Obviously she's going to help, but Beck really did cross a line, going through Rachel's things, and she deserves to be punished accordingly.

"What do I get out of it?" she asks.

Beck clenches her jaw so tight her eye actually twitches, but somehow she manages to stay calm instead of cursing at Rachel like she normally would.  

"I'll cook you dinner."

"I already ate at work."

"I'll cook you dinner, tomorrow ."

"You can't cook."

"Just because I don't cook doesn't mean I can't.  Do you really think I didn't learn a damn thing? After all those hours my Ma made me spend in the kitchen with her?  Jesus Christ , Rachel.  Are you gonna help me or not?"

Rachel grins.  She's not sure when, over the course of the last lonely month, Beck's angry ranting started entertaining her rather than annoying her.  Tonight, Rachel finds it delightful and coming back to an empty apartment after hours spent thinking about Steve and Bucky getting their limbs blown off would’ve been much worse.

"You can't just go through my things, Rebecca."

"Fine."

"I mean it.  Do I have to take away your key?"

"You can't take away my key!" Beck stomps her foot, fists her hands, and turns an angry shade of red.  "My brother, who actually lives here, gave me this key.  Just because you're squatting until they come back doesn't mean you can go around taking people's keys."

"Jeez, Beck.  You're being awfully rude.  It's like you don't actually want me to help you at all."

Beck seems to finally catch on to the fact that Rachel is deliberately baiting her and she just rolls her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest and waiting as patiently as possible for Rachel to make up her mind.

She really is so messy and so beautiful at the same time.  With fitted clothes and some sort of style to her hair, she'll clean up into just what men want in a secretary.  Nice to look at and no-nonsense enough to actually do the job.  Plus, Beck’s got an entire lifetime of experience working in the office at her parents company.

With Rachel dolling her up, she'll definitely get the job.  

Assuming she can act pleasant enough to get through the interview.

Which will be a real struggle for Beck.  Rachel's never met someone less inclined towards pleasantness

"When's the interview?" Rachel asks.

"Tomorrow afternoon."

"Stay here tonight," Rachel says.  Beck ends up taking over Bucky's bed at least twice a week anyway.  Rachel sleeps better with her breathing on the other side of the room.  "I'll put your hair in curlers and fix it in the morning.  I think a skirt and blouse will be best for an interview."

She goes to the closet and starts pulling out options.  Beck's shoulders relax, like she's relieved.  Like there was any doubt that Rachel would help.  

If she's learned anything in the past month, it’s that Beck usually gets what she wants, one way or another.  Especially where Rachel’s concerned.

Just before closing time the shop door is thrown open, bell above it clanging out.  Rachel looks up from her half sketched dress design to see Beck standing in the doorway, grinning maniacally.

She still looks as polished and perfect as she did when Rachel put her together this morning. Her auburn hair is carefully waved and pinned back.  Beck's face is so perfect, her skin so smooth and her cheeks naturally rosy, that she doesn't need a stitch of makeup to look gorgeous. Rachel painted her lips red anyway, hoping that the man interviewing her would be so distracted by Beck's mouth that he wouldn't notice if any of Beck's typical unpleasantness leaked through.

In the process Rachel herself only got slightly distracted by Beck’s mouth.

She's stunning, but the whole look makes Rachel frown.  She wants to wash Beck's face and put her hair in the braid that usually hangs messy down her back.  She wants to strip her clothes off Beck's body and put her back in those ugly, shapeless sacks.

She wants Beck to go back to looking like Beck.

"I got the job," Beck says, coming closer.  She wobbles a little, unused to walking on a heel even though Rachel put her in her most modest pair of pumps.

"So you managed to hide your horrible personality during the interview?" Rachel replies.  "Impressive."

Beck just grins.  "Where's the bathroom?  I've got to get this lipstick off me and then I'm taking you out for a celebratory drink."

They go right after Rachel locks up and Beck doesn't bother changing.  This proves to be a mistake.  

It's been a long time since Rachel’s been to a normal dance hall without Steve to hang all over.  Even flanked by Steve and Bucky, Rachel attracted more attention from men than she wanted, even in some queer bars, but going out with Beck alone (all dolled up and stunning, even without the lipstick) gets them mobbed.  They can't speak two sentences to each other without being interrupted by some fella, begging for a bit of conversation or a dance. Beck even gets a marriage proposal.

Rachel tries to let them down gently, smiling ruefully and talking about her sweetheart in the war, but Beck is unpleasant as ever.  And as much fun as it is to watch the expression on the faces of these fellas when Beck unleashes her unpleasantness on them, the truly drunken ones don't take rejection so well.  Rachel drags Beck out of there before she can get them in trouble.  They don't even get to finish a drink.

Back at the apartment, Rachel digs through the boy's cabinets until she finds a mostly full bottle of whiskey.  A drink at the apartment should have been the plan all along.  It's quiet here, and comfortable.

Plus, Beck sighs in utter relief when she takes off the pumps and peels off her stockings.  The noise makes Rachel’s cheeks hot, but she hides it by taking an extra long sip of her drink.

Halfway through the bottle, someone decides Beck should just move in. (Rachel’s pretty sure it’s not her idea.  Beck is equally sure it’s not hers, either).  

There's the extra bed, after all.  And why should Rachel alone benefit from Steve’s unnecessary spending, when Beck’s on a mission to be her own woman and get out from under her mother’s thumb?

Rachel sleeps better with Beck breathing nearby, anyhow.  But luckily she doesn't say that part out loud.

"I don't care if you only agreed because you were three sheets to the wind," Beck says in the morning, still curled up in Bucky's bed as Rachel attempts to ignore her headache and get dressed for the day.  "I'm still moving in.  I'm moving in today."

"Just stay the hell out of my closet, Rebecca."

"Look!" Beck shoves a newspaper into Rachel's chest the moment Rachel gets the door open, answering the frantic knocking that interrupted her morning routine.

“What?” Rachel says, stepping aside to let Beck back into the apartment they now share.  “You forget your key again?”

“I was getting a paper.  Will you look .”

"Rebecca, I don't have time." She drops the paper on the couch and digs through the laundry there until she finds a pair of stockings.  Beck’s not much tidier than Rachel is, and since she moved in a week ago, their combined stuff has just sorta crept out of the bedroom and into the living room.

The mess would drive Bucky nuts, if he was here at home instead of living out of some muddy trench across the ocean.

"Yes, you do!" Beck says. “You absolutely have time for this.”

"Are my seams straight?" Rachel smoothes down the skirt of her red dress, turning her back towards Rebecca so she can check on the line going up the back of Rachel's legs.  She glances over her shoulder, huffing in frustration as Beck takes her sweet time studying the lines in Rachel's panty hose.  "Well?"

Beck jerks and then scowls, coming around the couch to retrieve her paper.  "They're fine .  Now come read this."

"I gotta go to work, Beck.  I’m late as it is.  Frank's counting on me to open the shop this morning."

"Will you just look ."  

And Rachel finally looks, not like Beck gives her much of a choice, the way she's waving the paper in her face.

Captain America Single Handedly Rescues 400 Hundred POWs

Rachel blinks at the headline and then the accompanying picture of Captain America himself surrounded by dirty and hard-faced soldiers.  

"That's not right," Rachel murmurs.  "Steve is Captain America and Captain America isn't allowed to do any real fighting.  They won't let him.  He's a dancing monkey."

"Not anymore."  Beck flicks the paper.  "Look at the picture, Rachel.  Right there on Steve's left.  I know it's grainy, but really look at it."

Rachel squints down at the picture, bringing it closer to her face.  Steve still looks like a stranger, but he's not wearing the silly cowl.  He's standing there with his jaw clenched, looking solemn and brave.  And there, close to his elbow and on his left, is unmistakably James Buchanan Barnes.

"It's Bucky.  That's Bucky," says Rachel as Beck presses close to her side. "He looks awful!"

Even in the poor quality photograph, the dark circles under Bucky's eyes are apparent.  His cheeks are sunken and gaunt.  Beneath the collar of Bucky's sweater, his collarbone sticks out sharp.

Beck dumps all Rachel's laundry onto the floor and Rachel doesn't even complain as they sit together on the sofa.  She's too shocked for complaining, her hands shaking and her vision blurring.

"Read the article," Beck murmurs.  She keeps an arm around Rachel’s waist.  Her hands are shaking, too.

So Rachel presses into Beck’s side and reads.  The article is like a movie review, detailing the act of  patriotism in the jubilant language of blatant propaganda designed to give the public a good story.  They talk about Captain America like he is a cartoon, like he's still starring in those silly movies instead of fighting real Nazis and saving real lives.

Like this wasn’t Steve Rogers, newly huge , saving Bucky Barnes. Saving the love of his life.

As sugary sweet as the tone of the piece is, Rachel still picks out the most shocking facts.  

"He marched in there alone with no back up?  The prisoners were well behind enemy lines for almost three weeks and presumed dead?  He marched with nearly 400 hundred wounded men for over thirty miles behind the front line back to base?"

"It was for Bucky." Beck holds onto Rachel  tighter. "That part about facing down certain death to save his childhood best friend?  There's no way the higher ups woulda signed off on that kind of mission, not when Steve's got zero combat experience.”

“Except for socking Hitler in the jaw.”

Beck snorts. “Yeah, let’s not forget about that.”  

“But he was obviously doing something right.  Just look at what he did.”

“He went in on his own because no one else would and he did it for Bucky."

"Of course he did," murmurs Rachel.  She cried herself dry when Sully was taken and then did it all over again when Zelda left.  She cried so much that there wasn't much left for Bucky when he went to war or for Steve when he went to fake punch fake Hitler.  

The tears are back now, silently working her way down her cheeks and dripping off the end of her chin, landing in big fat drops on Steve's picture, right there on the front page.  They call him Captain Rogers in the article, when they’re not calling him Captain America, like he’s actually in the army now and someone just decided to make his stage title his official rank.

"I don't think it was even supposed to make the news this way.  You read that part about the reporter being there to cover the USO show?  This guy just happened to be around when Steve went AWOL and came back with Bucky and all those other boys."

"Yeah." Rachel’s hardly listening.  She runs her thumb over Bucky's face, accidentally smearing the newsprint.

They sit quietly for a few minutes, Rachel rereading the bits that are actual facts and not simply using Steve to extol the virtue and superiority of the American armed forces.  Beck stays right at her side, with her arm still around Rachel and it's a relief to have her near.  

No one else in the world loves Steve and Bucky like the two of them do, and Rachel would have hated to read this article on her own.

"Rachel," Beck says, right in her ear.  "I... They hurt my brother.  I think they really hurt my brother."

She finally stops reading the article then, wrapping her arms around Beck’s neck and pulling her into a hug.  They cry on each other’s shoulders for awhile and Frank doesn't even scold her for being late when she shows him the newspaper.

Dear Miss Rosenbaum,

Just what do you think you’re doing? Letting Rebecca move in with you?  Whose great idea was that? Bucky still thinks you’re pulling our leg with that one, even though I showed him your letter.  I recommend that you try your best not to tailor all Beck’s shirts into a silhouette you find more appealing.  Have a little patience when she sings at all hours of the night and day. And for the love of God, don’t go giving her orders.  If you want her to clean up the kitchen or something, ask real nice like and then shower her in thanks afterward.  I swear, she digs her heels in real good when you try to tell her what to do.

Bucky requests that I write that Beck and I have this in common, but I think he needs to write his own damn letter so I will tell you no such thing.

Just try to ask her nicely.  She’ll respond like a reasonable person, if you just ask nicely, even though I know you have a hard time doing anything nicely where that Rebecca Barnes is involved.

Do not fret.  Beck will also receive a list of my recommendations for cohabitating with you.  You’re not the only one getting this lecture.

Please try not to kill each other before this war ends.  Buck and I would like to see you both in one piece when we come home.   

I got three of your letters all at once (one written while I was still out in California with the USO from months ago!) but I guess the most recent you wrote right after they started running news stories about Captain America getting involved with the war.

Bucky wants me to tell you that he thinks “getting involved” doesn’t quite cover it, but his description of what happened involves a lot of curses and stuff that won’t make it past the censors anyhow.  

Anyway, that’s the most recent letter I got.  Where you saw me and Bucky’s picture in the papers.  I know you had a lot of questions (also how do you make it so clear that you’re yelling at me when you’re just writing words on paper?) but I can’t tell you much.  

We’ve got some idea what the public back home knows about what we’re doing, but I’m a little unclear on the details since I haven’t read any of the articles or seen any of the newsreels. I guess I can say that I’m a real soldier now, and I’m leading a real unit.  

Still, I know they are producing stories for the folks back home.  They even dragged a film crew out to (oh, I can’t tell you where exactly) where we are, put makeup on us and everything, made us all camera-ready like I was back on set of a terrible Captain America movie and not standing ankle deep in European mud. That’s part of the deal.  I’m in this war for real now, but when we’re between missions or on leave we’ve got to let them make up these comic book stories about us for the papers and the newsreels.

Dum Dum - that’s Dugan, the fella with the mustache if you’ve seen any photographs of us all together - actually thought that men couldn’t wear makeup, like it’s incompatible with our skin or something.  Buck and I couldn’t even look at each other when he said that or I’m sure we’d die laughing.  We were both thinking of the same memories, if you catch my drift. Let’s just say our friend Mae West woulda had a thing or two to teach Dum Dum.

We’re okay, Rach.  I know you’re worried, but we really are doing all right.  For the most part, Buck and I get to bunk together, off on our own and everything, so it’s not all that different from being roommates back in Brooklyn.

I’ve gotta go.  Did you know that being a Captain in the Army in the middle of war is a pretty time consuming venture? Who’d a thunk it, right?

Bucky’s got a letter for you, too.  And we’re both sticking our letters for Rebecca in here as well, to save on envelopes now that you two are roommates. So of these four letters stuffed in the envelope, only two are for you.

Again, I must remind you not to strangle Rebecca before we get home.

Take care of yourself.  And I love you back.

SGR

1944

Rebecca Barnes can sing.

There’s obviously some musical talent running in the Barnes family, because Rachel saw Bucky carry a decent tune a time or two.  Usually he’d just shriek out a terrible falsetto to make Steve laugh, but once they were at some bar with a piano in the back.  Bucky ended up playing something slow and sad, singing like he had choruses of angels behind him and Rachel thought it was just about the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.

Turns out, Beck’s got her brother beat.  

She’s always singing something, either humming hymns under her breath while she organizes the files she brings home from the Navy Yard or crooning out Bing Crosby in the kitchen while she makes dinner, her voice so loud that the neighbors start to complain.

A record player shows up in the apartment, along with a crate full of records.  Beck’s got an obsession with the Andrews Sisters, and they prove to be her go-to choice, when news from the war gets her down or the major she works for really irritates her.  She’s got a decent selection of jazz and blues, too, Ella Fitzgerald and Lead Belly.  These are records she got to meet Bucky’s tastes, while Beck admits her preferences are more mainstream, stuff like Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.

Rachel never cared much for music, unless it was being played live in front of her at a queer bar, but now she’ll come home from a long day at the shop with Frank and hear music in the hall before she even gets the door open, either Beck singing on her own or following along with whatever record she’s got on.

It brings life to the apartment, and for the first time since the boys left, Rachel doesn’t dread heading home at the end of the day.

They still snipe at each other over dinner--whoever gets home first does the cooking, and they always wait for each other to actually eat. They still bicker as they stand side by side in front of the sink, doing the dishes, but they get quiet when they settle in the living room afterward.

Beck always puts on a record, keeping it low to avoid the wrath of their neighbors.  On nights when she’s feeling particularly generous, she even asks Rachel for her preference.  Rachel honestly wants to listen to whatever Beck wants to listen to, because it increases the chances that Beck will sing along.

It turns into the most peaceful part of her day.  Rachel’s usually got a sketchbook in her lap, or a dress to hem, or a scarf to knit. Beck set up her typewriter the day she moved in, and she’s always writing something. Sometimes, when she’s really into it, she’ll type along in time to the music, the typewriter pinging to the beat when Beck gets to the end of a line.  She sings, either under her breath or loud and proud, and Rachel just melts back into the cushions.

For a couple hours in the evening, she’s got no demanding customer getting picky about pleating.  There’s no war.  Hitler's leaving Europe’s Jews the hell alone. Steve and Bucky are safe wherever they are, safe and together despite the truly strange newsreels that run before movies now, almost always featuring Captain America and his band of Howling Commandos.

Beck honestly might be worth keeping around, even if it’s just for her singing alone:  her voice makes Rachel forget for a few blessed minutes that the world is a terrifying place right now.

One night late in January, while snow falls steady outside and Rachel wraps herself in two blankets and three sweaters to ward off the chill, Beck hardly sings at all.  She has the Andrews Sisters turned down low and her fingers hover over the typewriter keys, but she doesn’t type much.

“Hey,” says Beck and Rachel jumps in her seat, shocked.  This is quiet time, the peaceful hours before bed, and since the two of them rarely manage a conversation without scowling at each other, they just don’t talk.

“Yes?” Rachel braces herself for whatever Beck’s got to say.  If she’s interrupting their evening’s quiet, it’s gotta be rough.

“Does it get under your skin?”

Rachel blinks.  “Do you get under my skin? Yes, I thought we’d established that about five years ago.”

Beck huffs and crosses her arms over her chest.  “Not that.  I already knew that.  You annoy me worse.”

“That’s debatable.”

“I mean, does the singing get under your skin?” Beck actually looks almost self-conscious for what might be the first time in her life.  “Hank and Hannah are always yelling at me to put a sock in it, back home.”

“Oh.”  Rachel lets out a big breath, relaxing back against the sofa.  “No, it doesn’t.”

Beck raises an eyebrow, purses her lips.  “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Beck does not look convinced and Rachel scrambles around for something that to reassure her, suddenly horrified that saying the wrong thing will make Beck stop singing.

Rachel’s life will become dramatically worse, if Beck stops.

“I mean it,” Rachel insists.  Her cheeks are burning red, but she forces herself to look Beck dead in the eye, to make it clear that this is the truth.  “Rebecca, your voice… Well, it’s swell.  It’s my favorite part of you.  It’s my favorite part of the day .”

Surprise is a good look on Rebecca.  Her eyes get so round, her mouth falling open into a neat O .  Even without lipstick, Beck’s mouth remains distracting and it’s worse when she’s surprised.  It’s a good thing Rachel gave up on trying to ignore Beck’s mouth months ago.

Beck doesn’t look like she’s got any plans to move or speak in the near future, so Rachel goes back to her knitting.  She’s got plans to give Beck this scarf when she’s done with it and she wants it perfect so Beck will have no opportunities to complain.

“Okay,” Rebecca says eventually.  She physically shakes out her shock, wiggling from her shoulders all the way down to her hands.  “Okay.”

And it seems like Beck’s always singing a little louder, after that.

They watch Steve and Bucky storm the shores of Normandy before Going My Way starts to play.  Beck’s got a thing about Bing Crosby and it’s supposed to be just a nice night at the pictures, a fun evening out, but there is no forgetting the war.

It’s both comforting and terrifying, to see Steve and Bucky up on the big screen, in the thick of it.  

They’ve bonded over the absurdity of it all, the close-held knowledge that Captain America might be Steve Rogers under that ridiculous mask, but Steve Rogers sure ain’t Captain America.  And Bucky Barnes loves Steve Rogers with everything he’s got, but he’s no simple sidekick.  

The American propaganda machine has taken these two complicated people Rachel and Beck love, and boiled them down into cartoons.  The Captain America icon they've created (completely patriotic, overtly masculine, terribly violent, uncomfortably xenophobic) is nothing like her Steve Rogers (unabashedly queer, beautifully artistic, painfully honest, utterly idealistic).

Captain America is a cartoon, a caricature, a puppet, with Bucky painted as his faithful, although somewhat hapless, follower.  In real life, they’re partners, through and through, and the two of them might actually being doing something important over there, but it’s impossible to say what when the newsreels that play before Bing Crosby musicals show them marching through the surf with their chins held high, backs straight.

The narrator gleefully goes on about the bravery and ferocity of the Howling Commandos, but if they were actually involved in the invasion, it sure wasn’t in the moment captured on screen.

No one’s shooting at them, for one.  They don’t look around or crouch low like they’re in a battle.  In one clip, Bucky actually rolls his eyes and the camera catches Steve biting his lip, like he’s trying not to laugh.

In the seat beside her, Beck snorts, slumps down low, and whispers, “I don’t know if I love this or hate it.”

“Yeah,” Rachel agrees, as the camera shows a line of commandos hollering and sprinting up a dune.  “I think I love it, so long as I plug my ears and don’t listen to anything they’re saying.  And I just look at their faces and not all the war stuff happening all around them.”

Beck makes a big production of covering her ears, and Rachel giggles, focusing on the goofy expression on Beck’s face instead of the explosion going off on screen, cut with shots of her best friend’s newly huge face.

After the movie, they stop for booze on the way home.  “We’re celebrating a successful retaking of France,” is Beck’s excuse for drinking on a Thursday when they both have work in the morning.  

Rachel almost suggests they go to a queer bar in Harlem, where Peter used to play live music every Thursday night before he got drafted.  She’s got to bite back the words, coughing and sputtering when she remembers that Beck doesn’t know that part of her life.  She doesn’t know that part of Steve and Bucky’s life either, and for one little moment Rachel forgot that Beck wasn’t there at her side for all of it, every moment at Sully’s since she met Steve.

“What?” Beck asks.  She’s got whiskey in one hand, and a bottle of wine in the other.  “Do you not want wine?  You’re really gonna drink whiskey with me in the middle of the week?”

Rachel shakes it off, forcing herself to remember that this is Rebecca Barnes.  

Rebecca Barnes is not Rachel’s family.  Rebecca Barnes does not like her much and they’re simply bound together right now by a mutual need to live on their own. Rebecca Barnes is using her to get away from her mother’s influence just like Rachel’s using her not to be so pitifully alone. They’ve bonded over Steve and Bucky’s strange portrayal in the media and nothing more.

Rebecca Barnes isn’t with Rachel because she wants to be.  But that’s alright.  They’ll get drunk on a Thursday when they both have work in the morning, anyway.

“Wine,” Rachel says, reaching into her pocketbook for her money.  Beck waves her off, saying Rachel can get it next time, and she pays for the alcohol herself.

It hardly seems possible, but when Beck’s got a drink or two in her she’s even more gorgeous.  She gets loose, her smile an easy, dopey thing. She’s quick to laugh.  The booze brings more color to her already rosy cheeks, and she just sorta seems to glow in general.

It’s equally possible that when Rachel gets a drink or two in her, she just finds Beck that much more attractive.  And that sure is saying something, because even in her most sober moments, when Beck is being a right pill about something and generally going out of her way to drive Rachel up a wall, she finds Beck pretty damn attractive.  Even more attractive than Zelda, and objectively Zelda’s the most beautiful woman Rachel’s ever seen outside the pictures.

Now, Beck’s got her hair down, free of its braid, falling in a curly auburn mess over her shoulders.  She sitting with her legs crossed on the floor in front of the record player and extolling the virtues of Bing Crosby - Rachel made the mistake of calling Crosby old people music ten minutes ago - and messing with a crate of albums.

Beck concludes her rant with, “You’re as bad as Bucky,” and then looks expectantly over her shoulder, like Rachel’s supposed to reply. Beck licks her lips, her mouth slick and red, and Rachel loses all hope of ever being able to speak again.

“And he might’ve gotten all high and mighty about jazz and the blues and whatever trendy thing’s coming out of Harlem, but he’d always dance his heart out to a good swing band. Hey, you went dancing with him, right?  I miss dancing.  He’s the only one I’d dance with.  Fellas out at dance halls always want to talk to you or by you a drink or feel you up in a back alley.  So let’s dance.”

Rachel blinks.  She’s always surprised when Beck starts talking and doesn’t stop.  She wishes Beck would keep on ranting, just so Rachel could keep on watching that mouth move.

But then Beck is standing before her, offering Rachel a hand up.  Over the record player, Cab Calloway is telling everyone ' bout the jumpin' jive.

“ Come on, come on,” Beck whines, waving her hand in Rachel’s face.  “Lindy with me.”

“You want to do the lindy hop?  In here?  With the furniture?”

“We’ll move it back.  There’s room.  Come on, I miss dancing.”  Beck’s bouncing in place, bouncing along to the music.

“I don’t dance much,” Rachel confesses.

“I’ll lead you.”

Rachel frowns up at Beck, tapping her chin.  She’s never seen Beck so enthusiastic about a damn thing - except drinking whiskey and The Andrews Sisters - and Rachel’s gonna have to use it to get something she wants, too.

“I’ll make you a deal,” she says.

“A deal?”

“A deal.  You let me tailor your entire wardrobe into something halfway decent looking, and I’ll dance with you.”

“My entire wardrobe for a couple dances? No.”

“Just your shirts then. You’ve gotta good figure, Beck.  I can’t imagine why you want to go around hiding it.”

Beck’s cheeks get even redder and she tugs at the bottom of her shirt.  “It’s comfortable.”

“I’ll make sure they stay comfortable, just not shapeless.”

“One shirt.”

“Six shirts.”

“Three shirts.”

“Deal.”

They shake on it and then do a terrible job lindy hopping, but Rachel can’t remember ever laughing more.  She’s actually disappointed when they have to stop, after Mr. DeSoto from downstairs comes to bang on their door and demand that cut it out with the racket! Decent people gotta work in the morning!

All the laughter is well worth the throbbing headache that sticks with her until her lunch break the next day.

“Stop fidgeting, Rebecca.”  Rachel bites a pin between her teeth and she slaps at Beck’s hip, trying to get her to stand still.

“Will you hurry up?  We’re gonna be late for dinner.  And it’s a sin to be late for Shabbat dinner, everyone knows that.”

Rachel rolls her eyes and considers sticking Beck with a needle.  Unlike her brother - who actually tries to talk to Rachel in Yiddish and recites blessings and listens avidly to Rachel explain various holiday traditions - Beck’s got no knowledge of or interest in religion.  Still, she talks about Judaism with the utmost confidence, like she’s a regular expert, and it took Rachel months of living together to figure out Beck was just doing it to annoy her.

“We won’t be late and the whole thing will go a lot quicker if you stand still and stop complaining.”

“Don’t know why I agreed to this,” Beck grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest and undoing the last ten minutes of Rachel’s work on her shirt.  

“You were drunk and wanted to dance.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m an idiot when I’m drinking.  I’m never doing it again.  No more alcohol for me.”

“You always say that.”

“Well, this time I mean it.”

“You always say that, too.”

They bicker for a few more minutes, but Rachel is finally satisfied with the measurements she collected and the pinning she’s done.  She’ll take the shirt home and work on redoing the seams over the weekend.

“Hurry up,” Rachel says, when she lets Beck go change. “We can’t be late for Shabbat dinner.”

Beck scowls over her shoulder and disappears behind the changing curtain.  Rachel smiles as she tidies up, and she’s so lost in her head, thinking about Beck leading her in a dance around the apartment and the way her mouth looks when she’s worked up about something, that Frank’s got to call her more than once from the front to get her attention.

“What?” she yells back, scolding herself for her daydreaming. Or, specifically, the subject of her daydreaming.

“Come here.”

“Why?”

“Someone’s here to see you.”

She frowns.  All her friends have either been drafted or ended up married to men.  Besides Beck, no one ever comes to see her her, except Steve that one time, and it’s definitely not Steve now.

Wary, she comes out to the front and immediately drops her sewing kit.  

Standing there by the front desk, looking burly and mean and perfect as ever, is Patrick J. Sullivan, in the flesh.  He smiles when he sees her, the wrinkles around his eyes deeper than they were a couple years ago, and Rachel sobs, covering her mouth with both hands.

“Hey, kid,” Sully says.  “Missed you.”

She’s across the room and crying into his chest in a blink.

Sully’s building looks the same, all red brick and big windows, the curtains pulled shut.  

Downstairs is still a bar, but just a normal one run by some normal fella; a tenant that Sully’s wife found while he was in lock up.  The clientele is mostly laborers and navy men now, supporting the war effort and then spending too much money on booze before going home to their families.

A couple men loitering out front whistle at her as she follows Sully around to the side entrance at the stairwell. Rachel shudders and crosses her arms over her chest, but Sully’s glare is enough to shut them up.  She can handle the whistling at any other place in Brooklyn but here.  This is Sully’s bar.  It’s supposed to be too queer for all that.

The second floor is still a couple small rooms, that the new tenant apparently rents out by the hour just like Sully used too.  Sully hustles her past that landing and on up to the third floor and their old apartment.

The place is just the same, save for a thick layer of dust coating everything and the absence of all Rachel’s stuff.  She had the foresight to throw sheets over all the furniture, but they’ve been removed.  The windows are already thrown open to air the place out.

“This new tenant is fine,” Sully says, pulling the front door closed behind him.  He’s looks just the same, too, still tall and broad shouldered.  There’s a little more grey threaded into his auburn hair at the temple and there’s a few more lines around his small, brown eyes, “He’s got another ten months on his lease, but he pays on time and doesn’t complain.  I’ll renew it, if he wants to stay.”

“No plans to open back up?”

“No,” Sully whispers.  “Not right now, anyhow.  We’ll see what happens after the war, but it wouldn’t be the same.”

“No,” Rachel agrees, wiping dust from the mantel with a fingertip.  “It wouldn’t.”

“Sorry,” Sully says.  “It’s still a mess.  I dropped my stuff off here, opened the windows, and then went straight to see you and Frank.”

“He knew you were getting out today?”

“Yeah, didn’t want to tell you until I knew for sure.”

“I can’t believe they let you out early.”

“Well, good behavior, you know.”

Rachel beams at him, so relieved to have this one piece of her family back.  At least Sully is safe and here, and he might look a little worse for wear, but he survived.  The pair of them both look older than when he first went in.

“I missed you,” she whispers, eyes watering all over again.

Sully sits on the couch, squeezing her shoulder.  That’s big for Sully, like a hug.  When she first showed up on his doorstep, all of fifteen and a right mess from living on the streets for a miserable week, Sully had no idea how to respond when Rachel hugged him.  He gave her the spare bedroom immediately, even if he was all wide eyed and shocked after Rachel announced, “I’m queer and I think you are, too.  Please don’t make me leave.  I can’t go home.  I’ll die there, I’m sure of it.”

Sully let her hug him when her gratitude bubbled up and had nowhere else to go.  He learned to pat her back when she was happy or sad or terrified.  

And now he’s squeezing her shoulder because he missed her.

“I missed you, too,” Sully says. He looks her up and down, smiling.  “Looks like you’ve managed alright on your own.  You look like a proper grown up, or something.”

Rachel rolls her eyes.  “I wasn’t exactly on my own.  I had Frank.  And Steve, before he left.”

“And now you’re sharing the boys’ apartment with Bucky’s sister?”  He was smiling and proud a second ago, but now he’s back to frowning.  Beck had been awfully curt when Rachel introduced them at the shop.  Not that Sully was any better.  A conversation between the pair of them would be all grunting, scowling, and a lot of eyebrow movement.

“Rebecca,” Rachel replies, nodding.  “Beck.”

“Beck.  The one you hated?”

Rachel ducks her head, trying to hide her blush.  Sully probably catches sight of it anyhow, but he doesn’t mention it because he’s polite like that.  He’s always given her her privacy. After the rigid control of her mother’s house, coming to live with Sully - where she had her own room, that he wouldn’t go rummaging around in - was like paradise.

“We get along fine,” she says.

Sully smirks and Rachel blushes even more.  “It’s like that, huh?”

“No!” Rachel covers her cheeks and just about dies of embarrassment.  “It’s not like that at all .  Do you really think I’m stupid enough to get sweet on a normal girl?  She doesn’t know a thing about me and I sure as hell have no plans to change that.”

Sully raises one eyebrow and, okay, maybe Rachel’s been that stupid in the past.  Once upon a time, she told Steve Rogers that she was queer minutes after meeting him. She flirted shamelessly with Zelda on the first night they met, too.

But then Sully’s closed, and Zelda left, and Rachel’s been so scared since.  She wishes Sully didn’t have to know this timid, ashamed version of her old self.  Rachel has finally learned to hide, and she wishes Sully didn’t have to know it.

“Hey, that’s fine, kid.  You do what you gotta do to stay safe,” Sully says, squeezing her shoulder again.  “You don’t gotta tell Barnes’s little sister shit .”

Rachel lets out a big breath and nods.

“You’re welcome to come home, you know.”

Rachel blinks at him and very nearly says, “Of course I’ll go home tonight, after I make sure you get a decent dinner.”

It takes her a few more seconds to realize that Sully is calling this apartment home.  Rachel’s stomach flips because she can’t recall the moment when home stopped being this place with Sully and started being a tiny apartment a few blocks away, with Beck breathing in the bed across the room at night.

“Oh,” says Rachel.  

From the moment Sully got arrested, all Rachel wanted was to come back home with him.  The place she shared with her parents stopped feeling like a home after her bubbe passed away, and she’d never felt so loved and so safe as she did living with Sully.

But now there’s Rebecca, pushing all the furniture against the walls and making Rachel dance.  Rebecca, giving Rachel a hard time for getting off work so late, but waiting to eat dinner with her anyway.  Rebecca, and how she frowned when Rachel tearfully introduced Sully, storming out of the tailor shop when Rachel told her that’d she’d have to skip Shabbat dinner, like she wasn’t just angry but hurt, too.

“Or not,” Sully says.

Rachel grimaces.  “I loved living here, you know.  It was the perfect place to grow up.”

“I know.  But you love where you’re living now, too, and that’s great.”

Rachel stares at her lap, shrugging.

“Rachel,” Sully’s hand is back to squeezing her shoulder.  “it’s great.”  

“I guess.”

“The worst part of the whole arrest wasn’t jail or losing the bar,” he says.  “It was leaving you on your own again, so I’m pretty goddamn relieved you like where you are.  And that you like who you're living with.”

If Sully wasn’t so Sully - all strong and quiet, always letting Rachel figure out her own way instead of telling her what to do - he might warn her to be careful with Beck.  He might remind her not to give away her heart so easily.

Instead, he just drags her to the kitchen to proudly show off the groceries he stocked the ice box with.  He’s got all the ingredients for matzo ball soup and as they eat he details his plans to get a victory garden going on the roof, even if it’s a little late in the season for planting.

The next Friday, Sully comes along to Shabbat dinner, even though they really don’t need another Irish Catholic hanging around.  He plays chess with George and drinks whiskey with Winnie instead of the traditional wine.  As expected, he and Beck have a conversation that’s all grunts, scowling, and a lot of eyebrow movement.

“I guess you can invite him back next week, too,” Beck says when they get back to the apartment.  “If you want.”

Rachel goes to bed smiling.

Dear Rachel,

I can’t even express how relieved I am to hear that Sully got out early and he’s home safe.  Can you remember the last time we had some good news?  I sure can’t.  Even if the tides have turned in our favor in the war, this is different.  This is personal.  I think it’s the first good thing to happen to us since 1940 and I’m just so goddamn happy about it.

When he got arrested, it felt like they would just make him disappear, or return him back after decades or something. It really felt like we’d never see him again, you know?  From what I understand about the insane asylums or some of the prisons, it could’ve been a whole lot worse for him.  And I don’t want to say a couple years in the big house is getting off easy, but I guess I’m just so relieved to hear that he’s okay.

It sounds like he’s different, but no more different than we all are because of this damn war.  

Sometimes, I think I’m the most different of us all.  And looking in the mirror, that’s certainly true.  Most of my changes are on the outside.  It’s hard to ignore that I’m tall now.  That I’m strong now.  Did I tell you that all those stunts I did in the movies, even that thing with lifting the tank, none of it was faked.  That was all me.  I can do that sorta stuff now.

Inside, I feel just the same.  Sure, the war’s taken a toll.  There is so much death here but you get used to it.  I’ve gotten used to it.  Maybe that’s the biggest change with me, that I’ve gotten so used to death, but it affects me less than some of the other fellas.  Inside, I don’t think I’m all that different but the same can’t be said for everyone I’m out here with.

I worry about Bucky.  Sometimes, they have him off on his own and I don’t see him for days and when he’s finally back he’s so goddamn quiet.

Did you know, before the last war George Barnes was a charmer? He was always cracking jokes and laughing.  He could hold a decent conversation with just about anybody and everyone wanted to be around him because he was just so lively and bright and smart.  Just full of charisma.  Sound like anyone we know and love?

Sometimes, especially when he’s just back from being away from the rest of the unit, he reminds me of George and that’s okay.  This war… it’s bad, Rachel.  It’s wearing on Buck like it wears on us all, but he’s not talking to me about it.  He’ll catch me looking at him and he’ll force a smile, crack a joke.  I wish he’d stop.

Has he been writing you at least? I got a letter from Winnie, complaining that he’s not writing the family much.  What about Beck?  We’re due from some leave at the end of the month.  Maybe I’ll talk to him about the letter writing then.  Maybe I’ll talk to him about the rest after the war.  Maybe I’ll talk to him about it never.  I don’t want to make it worse for him, if cracking jokes and forcing a grin is what he’s gotta do to get through the day, but I hope at least he’ll write home a little more.

This is a morse letter.  I’ll probably regret sending this in the morning, but for now I can’t sleep and I just miss you a lot.  You did yell at me (again, how the hell do you manage to yell at me so effectively with just a few words scrawled in a letter?) not that long ago for my last forcefully cheery letter.  You wanted more honesty so you got it.

Tomorrow, I’m going to write you a better letter.  I’ll tell you all about Morita and his dry, morbid sense of humor.  I’ll tell you about Dum Dum who’s not actually so dumb at all.  I’ll tell you about Gabe, a genuine college fella.

Tell Beck I miss her too, will yah?  And I hope you’re taking care of yourself, Rach.  I hope the two of you are taking care of each other, though I know that’s unlikely.

Love you.

SGR

1945

The news of Steve comes first.  

It's the third Thursday in March, and for once Rachel doesn't wake up thinking of Steve and Bucky fighting for their lives.  Instead, she’s got Beck on the brain.  The alarm clock rings in her ear and her dream fades, but it definitely involved Beck.  They were doing traveling somewhere,  together, and the details escape her but she felt happy.  Warm.  Safe.

When Rachel opens her eyes the first thing she sees is Beck, with her face all screwed up in distress, her hands pressed to her ears to keep out the wail of the alarm.  Beck’s always so ugly when she sleeps, her mouth slack, her limbs twisted into strange contortions that can't possibly be comfortable, her hair everywhere, but the expression she makes when she is awoken against her will is even more entertaining.  

Rachel ignores her alarm for another moment to watch Beck squeeze her eyes shut and grimace.

"Rachel," she finally says, groaning.  "Shut that damn thing up or I'll smash it to pieces."

With a chuckle, Rachel rolls out of bed to silence the clock.  She stretches her arms high over her head and grins as Beck presses her face into her pillow.

"You want coffee?" Rachel’s got some half formed urge to brush Beck's tangled hair off her cheek, but she shakes off the urge just like she shakes off her dream.

Beck groans again. "Maybe in an hour."  She mutters some more about the crack of dawn and Rachel sacrificing sleep for vanity, but she's already drifting off again by the time Rachel leaves the bedroom.

Rachel goes through her normal morning routine, putting on water for coffee, painting her face, pinning her hair, selecting a dress that is always a tad too nice for work.  She leaves a mug on the rickety bedside table by Beck's (Bucky's) bed and tugs down the blanket that Beck's pulled over her head.  

"You'll be late for work again," she whispers, leaning down close to Beck’s ear.

"You are terrible.  I loathe you entirely."

"There's coffee."

"Maybe not entirely." Beck sits up, bleary eyed and sleep rumpled. Rachel smiles and gives her head a friendly pat.

Rachel's back at the mirror, just putting on her lipstick, when there's a knock at the front door.  It's a bit early for guests, but the little old ladies who live downstairs are constantly cooking for them, trading food for any information on the boys.  They all read the same papers and listen to the same radio broadcasts, and the letters they get from the boys are so rare and so brief these days, that Rachel and Beck rarely have anything new to share.  The company is still appreciated and Rachel could talk about Steve all day, even if these little old ladies don't really know him.  No one really knows him like Rachel knows him.

Rachel frowns when she opens the door to Frank, with Sully loitering in the hall behind him.

"I'm not late." Rachel looks at her watch and gets defensive.  She does have a bit of a reputation of not being to work exactly on time, and it’s well earned.

"Rachel," Frank croaks out, his voice rough.  Now that she's really looking, she takes in his red rimmed eyes, puffy from crying.  Behind him, Sully’s clenching his jaw and staring at his shoes.

She goes to the worst case scenario.  That someone's found out that Frank's actually Claudette sometimes, that they are coming for him like they came from Sully and he needs to hide out here until he figures out what to do.

Or Sully’s getting arrested all over again and this time it will be the insane asylum and electro shock.  They’ll attempt to burn his queerness right out of him and it’ll leave him a shell.  

"What happened," she whispers, tugging them inside.

"You haven't--"  Sully glances around, helpless and desperate. He swallows and Frank nods at him. "You haven't turned on the radio? Got a paper?"

"No," she says.  And if her stomach sunk the moment she saw Frank's red rimmed eyes and Sully’s clenched jaw, now it's turned to lead.  The radio means the war .  The radio means Steve .  "No, Beck's still sleeping and I didn't want to wake her."

“He's missing," Frank says when Sully’s can’t manage any words. Sully lurches towards the radio.

"Beck!" Rachel practically screams. She sinks down to sit on the couch as her knees give out.  Sully’s got the radio on, messing with the dial to get rid of the static.

“ The search continues for Captain America ," drones the radio.  " To prevent a payload of bombs from reaching their destination of New York City, he crashed a Nazi plane in the ice planes of the Arctic.  After weeks of searching, Army officials have confirmed that he is still missing in action and presumed dead ."

"Beck!" Rachel screams again, tears already rolling steadily down her cheeks.  Frank sits in the arm chair, legs pulled up to his chest as he stares intently at the radio. Sully’s just standing there, wringing his hands.  “Rebecca!"

The bedroom door flies open and Beck stumbles out, wearing only the over sized shirt she sleeps in. Her legs are bare underneath, the sleeves long enough to hide her hands, and the hem nearly hitting her knees, the thing’s so large.  It's completely indecent, with Frank and Sully here, but Beck only spares them a glance before flinging herself on the couch, nearly sitting on Rachel’s lap she’s so close.

"What happened?" she asks, desperate and panicked as she gets her arms around Rachel, holding tight. “What happened?"

"They can't find him," Rachel manages between sobs.  Her fingers twist in Beck's night shirt.  "They can't find him."

Any other soldier, and they'd tell the family first, they'd tell Rachel because Steve promised that she's listed as his next of kin, but they don't tell her first, because they think Captain America belongs to the country and not just Rachel.  

Frank and Sully stay for an hour, until the little old ladies hear the news and invade the premises, settling in the few available seats and glaring at the men, and glaring at Beck's indecent outfit.

"Don't come into the shop for a while," Frank murmurs.  "Take all the time you need.  I'll be back to check in."

“I’ll be back after my shift at the plant,” Sully says.  He hugs her, long and hard, and does not complain when Rachel wipes her nose on his shirt.

They sit silently around the radio until midday, when various ladies from the building start to prepare lunch.  Winnie appears shortly after, arms laden with food.  She doesn’t say anything, her cheeks splotchy and red, but she hugs Beck for a long time and then hugs Rachel the same.

When Winnie retreats the the kitchen, Beck wraps herself around Rachel again.  At some point she put on trousers but Rachel can’t recall when. The radio drones on, repeating the same information in different ways.  The message is clear.  

In all likelihood, Steve Rogers is dead, his body frozen in the Arctic.

"Where's Bucky?" Beck whispers in her ear, taking the opportunity to talk privately with their babysitters in the kitchen.  "No way he'd let Steve get on that plane on his own.  Where's my brother?"

Rachel cries even harder and so does Beck, hiding her face in the collar of Rachel's dress.

A day later, two solemn men in neatly pressed uniforms appear at the door.  They hand over a letter, offer their condolences, offer their apologies that the media broke the story first.  It's been weeks, they say, and there’s no sign of Steve.  They've searched and they've searched and they'll keep searching, but they are calling him dead, anyway.

"You fiancé was the best of them, Ms. Rosenbaum," one says.  Rachel hand grips the door, fingernails digging into the wood.  It's the only thing keeping her on her feet and she wants them gone so she can sink to her knees.

"Fiancé," she repeats, to numb to be properly surprised.

The soldier nods.  "Everyone living on the east coast owes Captain America their lives."

" Steve ," she says.  "Steve Rogers was the best of them. Steve Rogers saved the east coast.  Captain America was a cartoon."

"Captain Rogers, then," agrees the man.  "His sacrifice saved millions."

She shuts the door in his face, unwilling and unable to hear about Steve's great sacrifice when every little part of her hurts this much.  She doesn't need a man in a uniform to tell her that Steve was the best of them.  She's known that for years.  And now he's gone.

That night Beck crawls into bed with her and they cry themselves to sleep.

2014

At approximately the same time she’s expecting Steve to arrive, a knock sounds at the door.

"Why on earth would that boy knock?" Rachel mutters to herself.  She’s always muttering to herself these days, what with her wife dead and buried.

Rachel's in Beck's rocking chair, a terrible, unpractical, nostalgic decision, because when she tries to push herself to her feet with her hands on the armrests, the chair starts rocking.  Her knees have been shaky for weeks, since she saw the footage of Steve lost in the smoke and fire of those flying barges crashing into the Potomac, so she's forced to sit back down.  If she were sitting in her lift chair, with that button on the remote to raise the seat and push her onto her feet, she’d be up and moving to the door by now.

She'll need another minute to catch her breath before making a second attempt to stand.

And really, there is no reason for Steve to be knocking.

"I've got it," calls Mia from the kitchen.  She dries her hands on her jeans on her way to the front door.  

Rachel honestly forgot she was still here.  Mia’s here more these days - or badgering Rachel until she comes downstairs to sit in the living room with the kids - as no one is willing to let Rachel spend so much time on her own, even if she likes time on her own.

“Thank you,” Rachel calls out, watching Mia cross the apartment towards the front door. "And tell Steve he shouldn't be knocking!"

"It's not Steve!" Mia yells over her shoulder when she gets the door open.  Rachel turns in her chair, craning her neck to get a good look at whoever managed to get all the way up here without being Steve, but the angle is wrong and she can only see Mia’s back.  "Well, not just Steve."

Rachel keeps craning her neck to see, but Mia’s blocking the doorway and they’re all talking too quietly for her old ears to hear.

"Steve!" Rachel voice is too panicked given the benign situation, and her heart is kicking up a riot in her chest even as she tells herself everything is fine .

She can be patient.  She’s waited this long to see him since all the destruction in DC and she can wait a few more seconds. She's heard his voice on the phone half a dozen times in the last couple weeks, first when he was still in the hospital and then when he went to stay at a friend's place.

Her heart rate does not settle and she needs to see Steve, alive and breathing, now . She's suddenly desperate to look at him, to touch him, to assure herself he's still here, by some miracle.  A whole bunch of miracles, really, and Rachel needs him right in front of her.  It was eleven months ago that Beck died.  She can't lose them both in the same year, not after losing Steve that first time, decades ago.

This time, Rachel’s gonna go before him, like an old lady should.  Steve needs to live and live and live .

Before she can work herself up into a real panic, Steve's in front of her.  He's got tears in his eyes, or maybe it’s the tears in her eyes that makes him look like that, all blurry around the edges.  

He doesn't have a scratch on him, not a scratch, and before Rachel can scold him for terrifying her by falling from an excessive height again , Steve drops to his knees.  He kneels before her, pressing his forehead into her lap.

"Oh, bubbeleh," she murmurs, running her fingers through his soft blond hair,  It's growing out a little, closer to how he wore it when he was small but still too modern and spiky for her liking.

With half an ear she listens to Mia murmur something about coffee, hears two sets of footsteps moving away towards the kitchen, but mostly she focuses on breathing and Steve’s forehead pressed against her knees.

She doesn't say anything as Steve cries.  His sobbing is the silent kind, his shoulders barely shaking with it, but her trousers are damp under his eyes.

Rachel cries too, although this is less of an event than it is for Steve.  

Steve did not cry when Sully was arrested or on December 7, 1941.  He did not cry when Bucky was drafted or when he left Rachel on the docks to get on a boat bound for Europe.  He did not cry when Rachel went to Tony's Tower to find him, when she brought him home to Beck, or when they crowded around the bed when Beck took her final, wheezing breath.  His eyes got watery, but if he was sobbing like this, he wasn’t doing it around Rachel.

Steve is long overdue for some crying.

She just strokes his hair and murmurs soothing words in Yiddish.  Nonsense, mostly.  Comforting nonsense her bubbe once murmured at her when she was a little girl, a million and a half years ago.

When Steve lifts his head from her lap and sits back on his heels, his eyes are red.  It hits her right in the chest, how young he is.  He's so unbearably young and his life has been shaped by tragedy and loss more than anything else.

It's been one trauma after another, and now the fucking Nazi organization that he died dismantling, that Bucky died fighting, has been flourishing all this time in the group named after Steve's weapon of choice, the one he threw himself into because it was his duty, because he had nothing better to do and learning to live without the distraction of fighting something was too painful a prospect.  Because it was Peggy’s legacy.

A lifetime ago, when they drank their weight in whiskey after Bucky left for basic, Steve fell asleep against her shoulder and murmured, " At least I was happy in 1940.  I'm always gonna have the memory of that. "

Is that all Steve gets?  One year of happiness and a lifetime of sorrow?  Just the echo of what it felt like to have joy, to be in love?  A handful of distant memories to sustain him through all this misery?

While he was living here, while Beck was alive, Rachel thought he had a real shot at happiness in this century but now he’s nearly died again.  Now his marvel of a body healed from grievous injuries, but his poor heart.  His poor soul .  She’s not sure how to go about healing that.  

Rachel clears her throat so she can speak.  Wiping the tears from her cheeks. she asks, "Better?"

Steve cracks a smile, the one that means he's excruciatingly sad.  It’s a grimace disguised as a smile.

"No," he replies.  And his honesty surprises a laugh out of her.

"It looked bad on television," Rachel says.  "Was it actually worse?"

Steve stares down at his lap and nods.

"Are you gonna tell me about?"

"No.”  Steve shakes his head. "No, not yet.  Maybe, after we find-- Well.  Maybe someday."

Rachel sighs and then sits up a little straighter.  She holds her hands out.  "Help me up.  Mia's got pie ready in the kitchen.  There's leftovers from dinner, too.  If you're interested."

Steve stands up and pulls Rachel to her feet.  She leans on him instead of her cane as they shuffle together towards the kitchen.

Mia's already got the pie out and she's chatting quietly to Steve's friend.  He's a nice looking young black man who seems to be enjoying Mia's pie as much as it deserves to be enjoyed.  Rachel recognizes him from the television.  Falcon, they’re calling him.

"Where are your wings?" she says as Steve helps her into a chair and Mia stands to get more plates and forks.

Steve's friend startles, apparently surprised to be recognized, and then grins.  "We're gonna pick up a new pair from Tony Stark in the morning."

"Tony's in town?" Rachel looks at Steve for confirmation.  "You should've invited him for pie."

Steve shrugs and gets a bite of apples and crust on his fork, but he doesn't actually bring it to his mouth.  He just moves his food around on his plate and this is equally as troubling as the crying.  If she's learned anything about New-and-Improved Super Soldier Steve, it's that he's always hungry, even if he still has a hard time eating when he’s hurting.

"This is better.”  Rachel rests her hand on Steve’s wrist, glancing at his fork.  Steve huffs and takes a proper bite.  "A quiet night in with you, bubbeleh. It's been too long.  And nothing's ever quiet with Tony around.  I'm Rachel Barnes." She remembers her manners abruptly as she turns back to Steve's friend.  "Steve's fiancé," she adds, because that is sure to get a reaction.

Steve rolls his eyes.  It's one little sign of life.  "You gotta stop telling people that."

“You shouldn't’ve told the army we were engaged.”

“It was seventy years ago,” Steve says.  “You gotta let it go.”

That makes Rachel laugh, even if Steve only grins at her for a second before he’s back to glaring down his desert.

"Steve, who’s your friend?” Rachel smacks at Steve’s elbow.  “Introduce us already.  This is getting embarrassing and rude."

"Sam Wilson," says Sam Wilson, sticking out his hand for Rachel to shake. Her hands are shaky, but Sam Wilson gives her a proper handshake anyway.  "I'm a big fan, Mrs. Barnes.  You've done really great work with this group home, and I might've written a fifteen page paper on you for a history of fashion class I took back in college."

"You took a history of fashion class?" Steve revives from his stupor to blink at his friend.

Sam Wilson.  Sam Wilson.  Sam Wilson, the one with the wings.  They’re already calling him Falcon on the news.  Sam Wilson.  Steve’s friend is Sam Wilson, and Rachel already feels the name slipping through the cracks in her old, tired mind.  She repeats it like a mantra, hoping it will stick.

"Sure," says Sam with a shrug. “History of fashion was awesome.  Super fascinating.”

"Mia, he wrote a paper about me," Rachel says.

"I heard," replies Mia.

"I like him," she continues.  "Sam Wilson gets more pie.  And you absolutely must call me Rachel.”

Some time later, after pie, after Mia’s back downstairs in her apartment, Rachel says, “Steve.”

She's settled back in her chair.  The proper one with the motor.  Steve’s in Beck’s rocking chair but he’s not moving at all.  It’s unnatural, to sit in a chair like that and not rock at all. "You're dead on your feet."

Steve shrugs and shoves both his hands in his pockets.  He can't get very deep, given the current trend of tight fitting jeans and the way he’s slumped down in Beck’s chair.

"I'm going to pull out the photo albums." Rachel decides, nodding to Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson . "Make my new friend Sam look at them with me, given that he’s already confessed to liking history and what not.  Save yourself the embarrassment, and go to sleep.  Let an old lady have a chance to have this fine young man all to myself."

Steve rolls his eyes again and if the only signs of life she gets from him right now are sass, she'll gladly take it.

"You're a shameless flirt, Rach," he mutters before turning towards Sam where he’s seated on the couch.  "You don't have to sit through this you know.  This one’s always had a tendency to gush and talk too much."

Rachel beams at him.  Steve treats her like she's twenty instead of nearly a hundred.  He teases her like he always did, and even though he's nothing but patient when Rachel's mind takes the long way around a thought, he treats her just the same.  He doesn't use that gentle, patronizing tone so many other people seem to use when confronted with the horror of interacting with anyone over the age of 65.

"Dude," says Sam.  "Were you not listening when I said fifteen page paper?  All written about this woman and Frankie Barnes, the infamous fashion house she started with Frank Morelli? Gotta hang out and get some more information if I want to write a sequel."

"Can I read that paper?" Rachel asks.

And Sam, bless his heart, blushes.   Blushes .  He'd probably burn as red as Steve, if his skin weren't dark enough to hide it.

"Okay." Steve almost smiles.  He stands up, wincing, and presses a hand to his ribs, and that’s the first sign Rachel’s seen of him being hurt so bad he nearly died a couple weeks ago.  "I can see I'm just getting in the way of true love here.  I'm hitting the hay."

He nods at Sam and then bends over Rachel to kiss her forehead.  She twists her fingers in the collar of his excessively tight t-shirt to keep him close.  Looking him right in the eye, she says, "Goodnight, Steven.  I love you very much."

Steve's breath hitches and he exhales slowly before kissing her forehead a second time and moving to the bedroom where he's spent so few nights since Beck died.

She frowns after him, fretting and worrying and then forgetting for a moment exactly why she's so concerned before remembering, ah yes, Hydra and a fight to the near death on flaming, flying barges and Steve so painfully alone, no matter how hard she tries to keep him close.

"I want to read that paper," Rachel says because it’s either change the subject or cry.  She's done enough crying today.  "You better have gotten an A plus."

"They didn't really do pluses at my school," Sam replies.  It sounds like he's making a great effort to help her change the subject and she's grateful.

Eventually, if she remembers the plan, she'll swing the conversation back around to Steve and try to get some information from Sam on this new mission Steve's setting off on tomorrow, the one Steve himself won't say a word about.  

"But you got an A," says Rachel.

"I got an A." Sam smirks.  "Although I gotta admit, I never really cared about the clothes.  Like, they look nice and all, and I guess I can see why some clothes make it into art museums, but the history was way more interesting.”  

“Sam Wilson, I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t?”

“You, sir, are a finely dressed man.  I’m sure you cared about the clothes a bit.”

Sam laughs.  “Okay, you got me.  A bit.”

“What’s the paper about?”

“You really want to know?”  For the first time, Sam Wilson gets rather shy and Rachel finds it utterly charming.  It’s moments like this that she can almost understand women who want to sleep with men.   Almost .

“Be a dear, and indulge an old lady.  I really want to know.”

So Sam Wilson moves closer, sitting in Beck’s old rocking chair.  He uses his hands as he talks about the role Rachel’s designs played in various social movements.  He talks about Frank Morelli - God rest this soul - and his elaborate network of trans folks in the city during the seventies, how he used it to deliver bras and binders and special underwear he designed himself especially for tucking or stuffing.  Sam Wilson talks about fashion and revolution.   

“Plus,” Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson says, “Studying the history of the LGBT rights movement helped me a bunch back when I was just a closeted freshmen who thought bisexual was a dirty word."

Rachel was a fool, for thinking that she could stop crying for the night.  At least these tears are of the happy variety.  

Logically, she knows she had an impact.  She and Beck set out to have this sort of impact.  And they were approached hundreds of times over the years by strangers with stories just like Sam's, but it will never stop feeling like a punch to the chest, when she hears that she helped someone feel a little better about themselves, even if it was just for a moment.

"Oh, that's much better than the clothes," Rachel says, wiping her eyes.  "If you want history, go get me my photo albums, farthest to the left on the top shelf of the biggest bookshelf.  Just in Beck’s office, there.  Pull down anything that interests you.  They're labeled by year, I believe."

Sam returns with four photo albums.  He puts Beck's chair to good use, pulling it close to Rachel and placing the oldest photo album in Rachel's lap.

“Sometimes, I like to think about what Steve would’ve been doing,” Rachel whispers, running her fingers down the spine of the album, “if he was around for all this. I think we made him proud.”

“Of course you did.” Sam Wilson. Sam Wilson. Sam Wilson.  He’s watching her intently, like he understands she’s about to tell him something important.

"If you're going off gallivanting into the dangerous unknown with him, you really need to know that Steve Rogers is not the same as Captain America," she says, opening to the oldest pictures Beck managed to find in the Barnes old place after Winnie died.  There on the first page is the whole family, even Steve and Sarah, the photograph taken sometime in the early 30s before the Barneses made it big with the trucking company and moved out of Brooklyn Heights.

"Yeah," says Sam, quietly, seriously.  "I'm getting that."

Sam gets wide-eyed and dumbfounded over a newspaper clipping with a picture of her and Beck leaving the five year anniversary remembrance of Steve’s saving the world.  It must’ve been a big group of them, including Peggy and the Commandos, because Gabe Jones is right there, front and center.

"Gabe Jones," Sam murmurs reverently.  "I mean, everybody loved Cap, but Gabe Jones was just...You knew Gabe Jones. Wow."

So Rachel goes on a mission to find every picture that includes Sam's favorite Commando.

"I didn't know him that well," she says, pausing at a picture taken after some government function commemorating something about a decade after the war.  "We only met in person a handful of times, after these dreadful state sponsored press events or a few reunions with the commandos and Peggy and Howard, but he was involved with the civil rights movement and Beck kept in touch, wrote him all about it.  Someday when we have more time, I'll dig up his letters for you."

Sam lets out a little sound close to a whimper.  "Yes, please."

"They're awfully funny in some parts," Rachel says.  "And awfully sad. They all struggled after the war, you know, but Dugan and Morita were more wild with it, drank more, fought more, and I always got the feeling Gabe felt the need to hold it together for them.  Hold them together.  But you know how that goes.  Steve says you work with vets.”

“Yeah.”

“It all got better eventually, with time as things tend to do. Oh, plus, there was this ridiculous slew of months when he tried to teach Beck French from the other side of the country, just writing letters back and forth.  Needless to say, Beck did not learn French.  Oh look.” Rachel rests her hand on Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson, Sam Wilson’s wrist and he pauses as he flips through the pages.  “That's Gabe and Anita.  Beautiful couple.  And their children.  Oh, and then the grandchildren! Maggie still does the emails with me.  Do you date women? I could set you up.  Talk about a beautiful couple."

Sam gapes at her for a few long seconds and then he gapes some more.  Then he throws his head back and laughs with his whole body, big and deep and genuine.  Rachel knows that she got distracted and went on quite the ramble there, but Sam isn't laughing at her.  He's just laughing and it makes Rachel smile.

"I gotta say," he says when he gets a hold of himself.  "It's been a pretty damn surreal month, starting with Captain America running circles around me and informing me that the good old days weren't all that good, but this, right here, Rachel?  You, telling me that my hero tried to teach your wife French via snail mail and then offering to set me up with his granddaughter?  We are talking whole new levels of surreal here.  What is my life even?"

"Oh, I know just want you mean," says Rachel, nodding solemnly.  "Once a long time ago, my tiny, asthmatic best friend somehow conned his way into basic training with the US Army and the next time I saw him he was the size of a mountain.  And then I saw him seventy years after he died, fighting aliens on the television.  Life is strange."

"Yeah," Sam murmurs, absently turning to the next page of the photo album in his lap.  “Sure is."

When he glances down at the book, he startles a little, blinking rapidly as he leans a little closer to get a better look at the picture there.

Rachel leans towards him, to see what's got Sam's attention.

"That's Beck and I," Rachel says as though it's not obvious.  Or maybe it’s not.  They were so young back then.  "Her hair just kept getting shorter and shorter, until she got tenure and then she kept it like she was Bucky in the 40s.  That was a good length on her, though.  At the chin."

Sam hums his agreement and keeps staring at the picture.  "She looked a lot like her brother, didn't she?"

"That she did," Rachel murmurs.

"She just passed away last year, right?" Sam says, tearing his eyes away from the picture to look at her.  "I'm sorry for your loss."  He's so genuine, says it like he really means it, like he really feels her pain.

"Well, she was a tough old bat.  Lived with COPD for years.  I swear she stuck around just to see Steve again.  I'll always be thankful they both got that."

Sam grimaces and Rachel doesn't know what to make of his expression.

"But maybe seeing her was worse for Steve," Rachel muses.  "He took it hard, losing Beck.  Really threw himself into the Captain America stuff afterwards.  Maybe it would've been easier to have never gotten her back.  To lose Rebecca so soon after Bucky.  Well, soon for Steve.  It'd only been a year for him, not a lifetime.  Talk about surreal."

Sam looks like a soldier now.  Instead of sprawled out and leaning back in the rocking chair, grinning jovially or all wide eyed over never before seen pictures of Gabe Jones, he is straight backed and alert.

"So," he says.  It's overly casual and immediately puts Rachel on edge.  "They were close?  Sergeant Barnes and Steve? I mean, obviously they were close, but you never really know what’s true with the Captain America legend, do you?"

Rachel sits up straighter herself, eyes narrowed.  She's been dealing with these sorts of questions for years. Decades, really. Maybe in the beginning she was eager for the world to know the real Steve Rogers, but then it became clear that no one besides a select few were interested.  They've all wanted to use him somehow, even the more liberal-thinking colleagues of Beck's, who would smirk at Christmas parties after too many mugs of eggnog and say, " So Captain America and Bucky Barnes, just how close were they, huh? "

There’ve been rumors about Steve and Bucky since her relationship with Beck came out in the early 70s, when Rachel made it very clear to the press that Steve knew all about her queerness and had no problems with it.  And on occasion or two, here or there, when working with particularly downtrodden youth, Rachel would hold them close and whisper in their ears.  " Let me tell you something about Steve Rogers.  He was like you ."

Sam might be the first true friend Steve's managed to make in the 21st century all on his own.  And he might've written a fifteen page paper on the role of fashion in revolution, with Frankie Barnes at the start, and he might be star struck over Gabe Jones, but Rachel met him a matter of hours ago and it will take more than all that for her to trust him.

"Sure they were," she replies.  "On the playground and the battlefield, they were inseparable.  Haven't you heard?"

For the first time, Sam Wilson looks rather annoyed with her.  "Did you get that straight from the Smithsonian?"

"Darling, what makes you think the Smithsonian didn't get it from me?"

Sam sighs, his posture going slouched.  Suddenly, he looks almost as exhausted as Steve.

"I don’t mean to pry,” says Sam.  And Rachel still can’t fathom why talking about Bucky has Sam looking all serious and intense.  “I just figured if Steve Rogers is different than Captain America, Bucky Barnes probably doesn’t look much like his comic book character either.”

“Well, you’re not wrong.”

"Steve said he never wanted to go to war. That Steve was raring to get over there, but Bucky never wanted it.”  Sam keeps his voice so quiet, like he doesn’t want any super soldiers with super solider ears to hear him.

Rachel’s fighting back tears again.  Sam must be a genuine friend, for Steve to talk to him about Bucky like that.  Maybe one day, when Steve’s not so distraught, they’ll even get together.  They’d make a fine couple.  And Steve might find some happiness here.

“He told you that?”

“Sure.”

“I’m glad.”  Rachel squeezes his hand and does not cry.  “You’re not going to tell me anything about this super secret mission of Steve’s are you?”

Sam smiles back.  “Nope, sure won’t, ma’am.  He asked me not to.”

Rachel beams.  “And you agree with Steve?  That whatever it is, it’s too important to stay here for just a week?  You both could use a break.”

“Yeah.”  Sam crosses his arms over his arms over his chest.  “It’s important to Steve.”

“Maybe a three day break?”

Sam smiles, shaking his head.

“Alright.” Rachel sighs.  She’s ready to sleep now.  Maybe her dreams won’t be quite so riddled with explosions, now that Steve’s back under her roof.  Even if it’s just for the night.  “I guess I can trust you to look after him for me, then.”

1945

The news comes about Bucky a week later.

Rachel comes home from the shop to find Beck sitting alone in the dark with her knees pulled up to her chest.  She’s rocking slightly, staring straight ahead.  When Rachel opens the door, she flinches away from the light coming in through the hallway, but she doesn’t speak or turn her head.

“Rebecca?” Rachel’s voice cracks.  She already knows, without Beck even saying the words.  All week, Beck’s been whispering about her brother and a plane that went down in the Arctic, and Rachel feared the worst, too.

And here it is.

“The telegram came today.” Beck sobs, pressing her face to her knees.  

Rachel’s knees threaten give out, but somehow she makes it to the sofa to wrap herself around Rebecca.  They are right back where they were a week ago, wailing out their grief, only this time there’s no more hope that at least Bucky will make it home.  It’s both of them gone, the pain of it compounds until Rachel’s not sure how they’ll ever manage to get up off this sofa.

Life will go on, even though Steve and Bucky will never come home, but Rachel can’t imagine how .

When Rachel finally cries herself into that blessed state of numbness, the sun has set.  Beck’s shuddering against her, hiccuping into her neck.

“I’ve gotta go home,” she whispers and Rachel holds her tighter without meaning too, like her arms will be strong enough to get Beck to stay.

Without Steve and Bucky, there’s nothing left to tie Rachel and Beck together.  This is not Rebecca’s home.  She’ll go back to the warm embrace of her family and Rachel will go back to Sully’s and that should be enough for Rachel.  Sully is free and that’s such a blessing, so much more than she thought she’d have again.

But she still wants Beck to stay.

“Ma came and told me.”  Beck sits up, pulling her face from the crook of Rachel’s neck and wiping her nose with her sleeve. She takes Rachel’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and that’s not enough for Rachel either.  She wants Beck back in her arms. “Just half an hour before you came home.  I told her I had to wait to tell you and she wasn’t happy I wouldn’t go with her straight away, but I’ve gotta get home.  We can stay there tonight.”

“ We ?”

“You think I’m gonna leave you here alone?  Come on.  Pack a bag.”

Rachel shakes her head and holds back her tears.  Eventually, she’ll stop getting invites to Beck’s parents house.  None of the Barneses will want her around now that she’s nothing to them.  Not Steve’s future wife.  Not Bucky’s friend.  Not anything.  

And it’s better to just stop going over there now.  To quit those Barneses cold turkey.  The longer she delays the inevitable, the more it will hurt when she doesn’t have George to start Shabbat dinner with or Winnie to cook with or the twins to run around with or Beck, always nearby and singing.

And worst of all, Steve and Bucky are never coming home again.

Rachel chokes on another sob.  “No, you go on.”

“Without you?” Rebecca blinks, all teary eyed and beautiful.  

“I’ve gotta tell Sully.” Rachel’s not sure she’ll be able to get the words out.  Maybe Sully will just  look at her and know, like he always seems to know.

Beck frowns, her cheeks getting redder, and for a moment Rachel’s sure Beck’s going to protest, loudly , but she just nods and gets up.  They walk two blocks together, arms brushing, until Rachel goes right to Sully’s and Beck takes a left towards Park Slope.

Rachel hardly leaves her old bed for three whole days.

Sully tries to make matzo ball soup, but he’s never learned to properly cook despite all his years living like a bachelor.  Even if the soup was made by her bubbe, The Mistress of Matzo herself, Rachel doesn’t think she’d be able to get it down.

The thought of eating anything at all has her stomach turning.

Sully’s working as a foreman at some factory that makes bullets or planes or something for the war, but when he’s home he sits at the foot of Rachel’s bed and reads to her from his favorite books with queer characters.  The Whitman poems put her right to sleep, but she gets wrapped up in The Picture of Dorian Grey , until she remembers it was a favorite of Bucky’s and asks Sully to stop.  From then on it's a series of increasingly absurd and scandalous pulps that should be hilarious, when read in Sully’s deep, rumbling monotone, but Rachel’s sure she’ll never find anything funny ever again.  

Frank stops by during his lunch breaks.  His wife made apple cake just for Rachel and she tries to smile but she doesn’t have the energy for it.  He tries to get her interested in knitting or hemming a few dresses, just to give her a task to focus on.  She doesn’t have the energy for that either.

Rachel sleeps, drinking big glasses of wine before shutting her eyes in hopes of staving off her nightmares.  

She’s got no idea what time it is, what day it is, when someone takes her by the shoulders and shakes her awake.  Her vision’s blurry when she opens her eyes, but that’s definitely Beck’s face hovering above her, looking mad as hell and so beautiful Rachel wants to die.

“You didn’t come home last night,” she says.  “Or the two nights before that.”

Rachel sits up on her elbows, her head spinning.  “How do you know that?  Weren’t you staying at your parents?”

Beck rolls her eyes.  “I only suggested that when I thought you’d come with me.”

Falling back to the bed, Rachel groans and covers her eyes with her forearm.

Rachel knows that eventually Beck will realize that there is nothing keeping Rachel in her life, but she’s currently doing her damndest to make it as difficult as possible for Rachel to ease away gracefully.

“It ain’t even noon.  Have you been drinking?” Beck demands.

“Not nearly enough.”

“Okay, get up.  We’re going.”

“Where?”

“To my parents.  I’m sure all my uncles are there by now.  There’ll be plenty of drinking.”

Rachel can’t say no to Beck.  She gets up and gets dressed, knowing full well that it won’t be good for her in the long run.

They get to the front stoop of the Barnes' house and Rachel freezes.  Last time she was here, they were all so hopeful.  The boys were alive. Bucky was writing more regularly again.  The news was full of allied victories and axis retreats.  They could finally taste victory.

Now, even with the end of the war growing more imminent by the day, Rachel’s sure she’ll never hope again.

"Rachel." Beck breath is warm on the shell of her ear, her hand warm on the small of her back.

"Just, can I have a moment?"

Beck nods and doesn't take her hand away.

Rachel’s awake and about to grieve with the Barnes for their son and his best friend.  The whole war wasn't just a terrible dream.  Steve and Bucky are really gone, and Beck, grouchy, prickly Rebecca, is here, but she won’t be for long.

And she just wants Steve to come home and talk to her while Bucky putters around in the apartment, either laughing at them or giving his two cents or calling them ridiculous.

She kinda hates both Bucky and Steve, because she won’t get that again.

"They're really gone," Rachel whispers for not the first or the last time.  "Aren't they?"

"Yeah." Beck leans down to rest her forehead on Rachel's shoulder.

"Who do you think went first?"

"I don't know.” Beck rubs circles on Rachel’s back and doesn’t shy away from Rachel’s question.  “In the news it didn't sound like Bucky was on that plane, but he coulda been on that plane.  Just because we found out about him second doesn’t mean that was the order of things.  They could’ve both been gone for weeks and weeks before they told us about it.  They could’ve both been on that plane."

"Or maybe it was just Steve on the plane,” Rachel muses, apparently in a mood for self flagellation.  There’s no reason to be discussing this, or even thinking about it, but Rachel can’t help it.  She wants to know.  “And Bucky did something stupid and brave with his grief, and followed right after."  

It's morbid talk, and it makes Rachel cry even harder, but all these missing details are maddening.  She thinks in circles over the possibilities and doesn't understand why knowing the particulars is so important when the results are the same.  Any way you slice it, Steve and Bucky are gone.

"Yeah, or it coulda been the opposite," says Beck, sniffing.  "Crashing that plane coulda been the stupid and brave thing Steve did with his grief."

Rachel let out a laugh, the sound wet and tragic.  "Sounds like Steve."

"Sounds like them both. Come on, Rach.  We’re late enough as it is."

Beck pushes gently at the small of Rachel's back and she takes a step forward, up the stairs and into the house.  

In the living room, it's quiet.  George Barnes sits at the bay windows, staring blindly outside.  Hank and Hannah are on either side of him, Hannah with her head leaning on her father's shoulder, Hank with his arms crossed tight over his chest like he's attempting to hold himself together.  

Strangers are seated around the room on a hodge podge of chairs, obviously collected from around the house.  They glance up at Rachel and Beck, nodding in their direction but staying quiet.  Rachel blinks at the men with unshaven faces, the women with dark eyes and dark hair.  A tall candle burns on the table.  A sheet is thrown over the mirror hanging on the opposite wall.

From what Rachel understands, George’s side of the family has never been around nearly as much as Winnie’s, but they’re sitting Shiva for Bucky now, even if there’s been no funeral.  Even though there will be no body to bury.  They are doing what they know, even though this family is a complicated one.

It must be more for George Barnes than anything else.

Without thought Rachel says, "Baruch dayan ha'emet."

A few eyebrows go up in surprise and a few relatives nod back at her.  Speaking gets the attention of Hank, who leaps out of his chair and throws himself at Beck.  He's so tall now that Beck doesn't even need to duck to hug him.

"What's your name?" An old woman speaks Yiddish and reaches out a hand towards Rachel, her fingers thin and weathered.  There’s a ripped black ribbon on her lap.  She is painfully familiar, so similar to Rachel's own bubbe.

"I'm Rachel," she replies, her Yiddish stilted with disuse.

"And you knew my grandson?"

"Yes, he was my friend."

"Only his friend?" she asks, like nothing would make her happier to know that Bucky left this world with the love of a nice Jewish girl.

But Rachel will not lie, even if it’s a kindness.

"Yes," she says.  "I was... I was with his best friend."

"Oh." Bucky's bubbe smiles.  "Steve.  He was nothing but trouble when he was a child."

"That never changed."

They both laugh before remembering at the same moment that Bucky and Steve can't cause any more trouble, now.

"Baruch dayan ha'emet," says Bucky's bubbe.

"Baruch dayan ha'emet," Rachel echos.

In the kitchen, a whole different family mourns in a distinctly different way.  

She's heard stories of the Buchanan brothers, Beck's four uncles involved in shady, criminal business that was solely responsible for intimidating the competition and making Barnes Delivery and Trucking the biggest transporter of goods in Wallabout Market before they shut it down to expand the Navy Yard in ‘41.

But she’s never seen them all together at the same time.  They’re more intimidating in a group.

Bucky’s uncles are crowded in next to Winnie at the circular table in the kitchen, two on each side of their sister.  On the table before them is a stunning array of liquor bottles and half empty glasses. In the kitchen, an older woman with frizzy grey hair and a petite, attractive blonde are cooking frantically, like if they don't cook enough food to feed an army the world will stop turning.

All four brothers - who have faces stunningly like their sister's - seem to be talking at once, their voices low and their speech slurred, accents so heavy and Irish that Rachel can barely pick up a word.  At her side Beck cracks a smile, so Rachel's sure what ever the infamous brothers are discussing, it’s at least amusing.

Only Winnie stays silent, swirling a glass of whiskey and staring blankly at the tabletop.  It's the same stunned expression her husband wears in the other room, the pair of them apparently mourning in similar ways surrounded by dissimilar families.

"Ma," says Beck.  She squeezes Rachel's elbow and steps around her as Winnie gets up to hug her.

"Glad you made it back."  Her accent is stronger than the last time Rachel heard her speak.  "After you ran off last night."

Rachel stares at her feet, suddenly so ashamed that she let Beck spend nights alone at the apartment.

"Told you I'd come back first thing," Beck mutters, crossing her arms over her chest.

“It’s after noon .” Winnie grumbles something under her breath and turns to Rachel, reaching out to squeeze her hands.  "You should've been here,” she says to Beck.  “With the family.  This is a time for family."

Rachel winces and bites back more tears.  Most of her family died in the last couple weeks, and this family will eventually forget all about her, now that she’s nothing to them.

"I know, Ma. That's why I had to go get Rachel.  She woulda been family if.  Well.   If ."  Beck starts crying, which makes Rachel cry again.

"Come on," Winnie says, sighing.  "Have a drink."

"She wants me to move back home," Beck says, her breath hot in Rachel's ear.  They’re trudging up the stairs, towards the apartment, leaning heavily on each other and the railing.  Rachel will not let them fall.  They’re drunk but not fall-down drunk.

It was a long day that changed from a subdued lunch with both sides of the family to a bit of a raucous party when the older folks went home, leaving a few of George’s cousins and the Buchanan brothers.

By the end of the night, Rachel's Yiddish wasn't so rusty, she'd learned no less than three Irish dirges, and she was all set to sleep it off on the Barnes' couch.  Beck shook her awake and insisted they go home, forcing the youngest of the Buchanan brothers - Tommy, Rachel thinks - to walk them back to Brooklyn Heights.

"Who wants what?" Rachel asks, blinking against the harsh light in the hallway when they get to their floor.  Beneath her feet, the floor ripples and swirls.

"My ma," Beck spits out.  "Didn't you hear all that?"

Rachel shakes her head, letting Beck deal with the unlocking the door.

"Wow, you really were passed out.  We were arguing right there next to you."

"Don't argue with your ma.  She's sad and you're sad.  Let’s just all be sad together and not argue."

"So." Beck pauses with her hand around the doorknob.  "You think I should listen to her and move back home?  Now that we aren't just keeping the apartment until the boys gets back.  Now that it’s really over, you think I should just leave?"

" No ."  She’s still not sure if she even likes Beck - fierce, funny, irritating, beautiful Beck - but she is positive that she doesn't want Beck to leave.  

Okay.  So maybe she accidentally started to adore Beck somewhere over the course of this goddamn war, but she’s rather sure that Beck doesn’t like her back all that much.

"No, no.”  Rachel shakes her head. “Don't leave. Please don't leave.  I don’t want you to leave."

Beck sighs and pushes through the door into Steve and Bucky's apartment.  With her eyes open Rachel sees their ghosts in every corner, so she hides her face in Beck's neck.

"She's a hypocrite is what she is." Beck keeps talking as they sway together towards the bedroom.  It's slow progress.  Rachel's not sure who's holding up who at this point. "Telling me it’s time to settle down and find a man.  Learn to be a wife!”

Rachel huffs.

“She's not a wife like that, not really.” Beck’s working herself up towards a good rant.  Rachel could easily fall asleep to the cadence of her voice.  “She loves my tateh, sure, and it’s his name on all the trucks, but if you think for one minute that she's not in charge of the company then frankly, Rachel, I don't even want to know you.  She's the boss.  She's her own boss, so what the hell is she doing trying to make me into someone's wife?"

"Yeah," says Rachel.  "What the hell. You're staying right here with me."

Beck barks out a laugh and attempts to deposit Rachel on Steve's bed, but Rachel holds on tight, pulling Beck down with her.  They land in a tangle of limbs and Rachel takes an elbow to the chin but she hardly feels it.

Beck's still muttering about her mother, lying on top of Rachel and doing very little to help Rachel arrange them in a more comfortable position. She kicks off her shoes, and then grumbles when Beck doesn't do the same.

"Rebecca," she whines.  "No shoes in the bed."

"Alright, alright."

Now without shoes, Beck settles back down with her head on Rachel's chest.  it's too hot to sleep in a pile like this and she'll regret not changing out of her clothes in the morning, but she's too comfortable and too drunk to move.

"Hey.”  Beck’s lips move against Rachel's collarbone as she talks.  Rachel shivers.  

It's been so long since Zelda, since she was touched like this.  But Beck is not kissing her.  Because Beck's not like that and Beck doesn't like her at all.  Plus, two queer kids in one family?  Rachel's not that lucky.  

"Do you think we should stay here?"

"Yes," Rachel says, breathing out the word and melting back into the mattress.  "It's comfortable.  You're comfortable."

Beck laughs again, but it turns into a sob.  "No, no.  I mean in this apartment.  Should we stay?  They're not coming back.  They're gone. They're dead , Rachel."

And Rachel thought she was too tired to cry, that she'd gone through her allotted amount of tears for the day and any more crying would have to wait, but here she goes again.  She runs her fingers through Beck's thick hair, until it falls free of the braid. Beck gets snot all over her dress and Rachel couldn't give a damn.

Eventually, they both quiet, sobs turning into sniffles.  Rachel doesn't let go over her grip on Beck and this time when Beck's lips move against her collarbone, it’s deliberate.  LIke a real kiss.

It would be so easy, to adjust slightly, to hitch up the skirt of her dress and wrap her legs around Beck's narrow hips.  Just a small movement, and her hands could cradle Beck's face, pulling her up into a real kiss.  It would be hot and wet.  Maybe Beck would taste like she smells; clean, crisp, fresh.

Instead, Rachel says, "Goodnight, Rebecca."

She's asleep seconds later.

In the morning, with the both of them hung over and red eyed, hair a mess and breath sour, Beck pulls Rachel back down into Steve's bed when she tries to get up.  She doesn't say anything, just cradles Rachel's face between her hands and stares.  Rachel can't breathe and her heart gets caught in her throat.

She's stopped herself from being tender with Beck for months now.  Even before Beck moved in, Rachel's been sitting on her hands to keep herself from reaching out to smooth back Beck's hair.  She's wrapped her arms tight around herself so she wouldn't pull Beck into a hug whenever she walks through a door or walks out of it.  

With Steve and Bucky gone, those rules have slipped slightly, but they’re good rules and sleeping tangled up with Beck like this was dangerous.

Everything with Beck is so tied up in the war, tied up with Steve and Bucky and grief and loss and pain.   Rachel’s not been able to parse out how she feels about Beck and just Beck, with no other outside influences.

Rachel's lost her whole family twice.  First when she was fifteen and her mother tried to beat her queerness out of her.  The second family was more important than her first.  It was the one she found herself, the one she pulled together and loved madly, and sure, she got Sully back after they took him, but the same won’t happen with Steve and Bucky.

Maybe she's just grasping at Beck because she’s got so few people.  Maybe Rachel only feels this huge thing for Beck because she doesn't want to be alone again.  Maybe when the pain of losing Bucky and Steve gets less sharp, she'll go back to finding Beck annoying and off-putting.  Maybe this is just sorrow and Rachel's own strange way of grieving.  Maybe it’s not about Beck at all.

Maybe it doesn’t matter how it all started.  Rachel doesn’t want Beck to leave, and maybe that’s the only thing that matters.

Still, Rachel is so sad and so angry and so terrified and so painfully unsure of this, but Beck is staring at Rachel like she is sure.

This is the harsh light of morning.  They've cried themselves dry over their boys.  This is not a drunken mistake or the hot press of Beck's lips on Rachel's neck before they both fell into a fitful sleep.

Beck’s staring at Rachel like she’s the last good thing in the world and Rachel stares right back.

Beck moves closer and Rachel glances down at her lips, that endlessly distracting mouth.  It makes Beck smile faintly.  Beck takes her time, goes slow enough to make sure Rachel knows her intention here, giving Rachel every opportunity to duck her head and pull away and keep this from happening.

She's not kissed anyone since Zelda, hasn't been brave enough to try since Sully, and this is not how she imagined it happening with Beck.  Her face is puffy from crying.  She hasn't brushed her teeth.  She must look a mess and ideally she'd slip away to the bathroom to freshen up, but leaving now would be like rejecting Beck and Rachel can't crush this fragile, huge thing that grew between them when she wasn't paying attention.

So Rachel closes the distance between their lips, kissing Beck gentle and firm.  It's nothing like kissing Zelda.  That was all lust and heat, the wild rush of first love, more fun than anything else.

But kissing Beck, just the soft, tentative press of lips, is bigger than all that, somehow.

Rachel feels this kiss way down deep, feels it in her bones, in her heart.  Kissing Beck is like unlocking some secret to the universe, and before the kiss is even over, Rachel has been changed, made new and fresh and older and wiser, too.  It's such a heady thing that tears gather behind her closed eyelids and when Beck whimpers, her fingers curling into Rachel's jaw, Rachel lets out an answering groan.  She kisses Beck harder, opens her mouth and licks Beck's chapped lower lip, tastes her sour mouth and finds her tongue.

For a kiss that started so gentle, it escalates too quickly, and Rachel loses track of everything but Beck, the way she tastes and moves and sounds.  She finds a little bit of hope again, in the kiss, and she’d gladly just go on like this forever.

It's Beck who pushes Rachel back against the pillows, rucks up the skirt of Rachel’s dress around her waist, and settles between Rachel's splayed thighs.  It's Beck that sucks at the pulse point on Rachel's neck and strips them both.  It's Beck that runs her hands over Rachel's chest with so much reverence that it pulls a broken sob from Rachel's throat, and it's Beck that presses her fingers into each of Rachel's ribs, dipping her thumb into Rachel's belly button.

But it's also Beck that stops abruptly.

"Rachel," she whispers, resting her forehead against Rachel's.

Delirious and so hot, it's a struggle for Rachel to get her eyes open.  "Yes," she manages, reaching up to push her hands through Beck's hair. "Yes, Beck?"

"I haven't-- I don't know--"  Beck shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut, and lets out a frustrated little whine.  "Have you?  With a girl, I mean."

Rachel blinks and doesn't let herself get distracted by this first glimpse of Beck's body, her strong shoulders and tapered waist, her small, symmetrical breasts and tiny, pink nipples.

"Yes," she says, pulling Beck a little closer to kiss the corner of her mouth.  Beck huffs out a breath that hits Rachel on her chin.  It makes her shiver and writhe.  "I have."

Beck frowns and blushes.  "Tell me how," she whispers.  "I want touch you right."

Rachel shivers again.  "Okay, Beck," she says. She takes Beck’s hand, drags it down her stomach. "Okay."

Rachel sits by the open window on the sill, blowing out smoke.  A cigarette after sex is a habit she picked up from Zelda but that memory is so distant and muted, now that Beck is filling up her head.  The compulsion to smoke remains without all the heartbreak.

Beck followed Rachel out into the living room when Rachel expressed the need for a cigarette, and now she’s lounging on the couch with just a sheet wrapped around her.  She's laid out on her side, facing Rachel with her head propped up on her elbow. Rachel stole Beck's blouse when she rolled out of bed for her cigarette and she's glad it forced Beck to stay naked.  It's drastically improved Rachel's view. Beck's hair is a mess from Rachel's fingers, her lips kissed red, and Rachel can't stop smiling at her, even when she turns her head to blow smoke out the window.

"You gonna finally tell me now?" Beck asks.  It looks like she's having a hard time hiding her own smile.

"Tell you what?"

"Tell me what you know about Steve and Bucky."

Rachel smiles a little wider and then grimaces when she remembers all over again that there is no more Steve and Bucky.  Each time she has to remind herself, the pain is so sharp and fresh, coming at her in waves.  

They're not coming back. She closes her eyes and just works on breathing, in and out, even and deep, until the urge to crumble into a sobbing heap passes.

"Why don't you tell me what you know first."

"Bucky loved him," Beck says immediately.  "Really loved him.  It was so obvious,"

Rachel chuckles.  "It kinda was, huh?  Your brother was such a dope over Steve."

"He was," Beck agrees.  

Rachel pulls her legs to her chest, as if closing herself up will relieve pain back in her chest.  

It doesn't.

"Why do you think I hated you so much?” Beck rolls her eyes and almost manages a smile.  “Thought Steve loved you back and my brother would be miserable about it."

Rachel laughs again, her head spinning from this ricochet between grief and good memories.  "Yeah, Bucky was a little wary about me when I first met him, too.  But that turned around real quick when he realized I was more interested in Zelda than Steve."

"You and Zelda?" Beck sits up, clearly shocked, and the sheet slips a little, improving Rachel’s view.

"For a while."  She doesn't remember when she stopped missing Zelda, when her heart healed over.  She’s had about a thousand things to grieve over, since Zelda left, and that stopped being so bad in comparison.

"Huh," Beck says.

"We had a good thing going for awhile," Rachel says.  "With the four of us all stepping out together, we had the whole neighborhood pretty well fooled.  Your family, too."

"So does that mean--"

"Yes." Rachel got tears in her eyes, but it’s not just misery.  Before they died, they had each other.  They loved.  They were the real deal, and it's not much comfort but it's something.  "They were together. Officially together since '39, but unofficially together before that, I think. Steve loved him back just as fierce, Beck.  I promise."

"Oh." Beck turns over, lying flat on her back.  "Good,” she says and then she bursts into tears, covering her face with her hands and her whole body shaking.

"Shit." In her haste to put out her cigarette, Rachel singes her fingers.  It takes her too long to rush to Beck's side and wrap her up in her arms, murmuring soothing sounds into her hair and rocking her.

"I'm glad," Beck says through her tears.  "I'm glad he had that, had Steve, before, before, before-- "

Rachel does not say, the only good thing about them both dying is that neither one had to learn to live without the other.  It seems too morbid and Beck’s already upset enough as it is.

They both have themselves a good cry on the sofa.  They both have themselves yet another good cry on the sofa. 

Roosevelt dies and Truman becomes president. The Soviets take Berlin and Mussolini hangs.

The allies liberate Bunchenwald, Belsen, and Dachau, and the American press is finally paying attention to the mind boggling scale of the Nazi horrors in the camps.  Rachel thought Auschwitz would be the worst of it, but there’s more .  So many bodies.  So much death and torture and pain that Rachel can hardly comprehend it all.  

She doesn’t get out of bed all day, and Beck crawls in beside her, holding her tight and kissing forehead and saying nothing because there’s nothing to say.

The next morning, when Beck brings home the headlines detailing Hitler’s suicide, Rachel feels everything all at once.  Relief, that it’s over.  Sharp, gleeful joy that such a man no longer walks the earth, and bubbling rage that he still died on his own terms, that there will be no cruel vengeance or great reckoning.  

But it’s mostly grief still.  It’s always grief, these days.

When the war in Europe ends, all of New York seems to pour into the streets.  People laugh and cheer and celebrate.  People hold each other and sob, happy tears and relieved tears and tears for all they lost.

Rachel presses close to Beck as they wander through the crowds.  She squeezes Beck’s hand and it’s the only thing in the world that feels real.  Beck’s wide palm and her strong fingers and her nails, bitten down into nothing.

Rachel’s not the only one in a daze.  She’s not the only one who has no idea what to do, now that the war’s over (or almost over, given that Japan’s still a problem).  For years, the war has loomed large, tainted every thought and affected every action.

“Rebecca?” Rachel’s voice sounds like it’s coming from somewhere very far away.  “What do we do now?”

Rebecca bites her lip and squeezes Rachel’s hand.  She brings her lips to Rachel’s ear and whispers, “We live.  What else is there?”

It ends in August, with bombs, huge, massive bombs like something out of a science fiction novel, first in Hiroshima and then three days later in Nagasaki.  It ends with unconditional surrender and civilian casualties that grow past ten, twenty, and then fifty thousand as the estimates continue to trickle in.

The war was long, and compared to the millions and millions that died over the last four years, that fifty thousand and maybe more doesn’t sound like all that much to Rachel.

She shivers, horrified by her own mind.  She’s exhausted and grieving, but refuses to be so bitter, so cynical, that suddenly thousands and thousands and thousands of Japanese lives don’t mean all that much to her. Not when she’s feels the millions of Jews gone like a missing limb, a hole in her heart, and ache that’s never gonna leave her.

She tries to count to just a thousand, reminding herself with each number that it was a person, with a whole vibrant life, with their own personalities and quirks.  Mothers and children, and queer folks and normal folks.

She can’t even make it to a hundred before she’s sobbing so hard, she’s sure she’ll die like this, unable to breathe.  

Rebecca makes her promise never to do that again.  “You can’t take it all on, Rachel.”  She glares and frowns, but her voice is gentle and she strokes Rachel’s hair.  “It’s too much.  Sometimes, you just can’t let yourself feel it all, for your own well being.”

So Rachel tries not to feel it all.  She grieves selectively.   She focuses on missing Steve and Bucky and not much else.  It makes it easier to get up in the mornings and smile for customers at work.

Beck’s got the opposite problem.  If Rachel feels too much, Beck feels too little.  She’s like a stone, stoic and steady in the months after she loses her brother and America wins the war. Rachel worries.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Beck says, when Rachel brings up Steve and Bucky.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Beck says, when they read the paper and some new, horrifying detail of the war comes out.

“Rachel!” Beck screams, when Rachel asks Beck what she plans on doing next, what with the war over and the work force at the Navy Yard going through layoffs.  “I don’t fucking want to talk about it!  Not any of it.  Not ever!”

Rachel gets very angry and then very sad, all in a matter of seconds. Beck’s struggling, too, and even if the yelling is uncalled for, she can have patience for Beck, like Beck’s had patience for her.

“Sometimes you just gotta let yourself feel things, Beck,” she whispers.  “You just gotta let yourself hurt for awhile.”

So they get a bottle of whiskey and drink the whole thing.  Beck talks about her brother, who isn’t coming back, and the love of his life, who isn’t coming back either.  She smiles at some childhood memory and then curses God, the heat of her rage filling up the apartment, so powerful Rachel thinks they both might burn.  But then Beck cries and cries and cries.

In the morning, Rachel wakes Beck up with gentle kisses on her eyelids, cheeks, forehead.  “Feel better?” she asks.

“No,” Beck says, scowling.  She sighs and rubs her hands over her face.  “Maybe,” she amends.  “A little.  Not much.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says.  “Me too.”

It’s not called a funeral, but a remembrance. There are still no bodies to bury in Arlington - there probably will never be and Rachel’s sure they’ve stopped looking by now - but the government decides to dedicate a monument to Captain America in the national cemetery anyway.

It’s not a funeral, but the droves of important people turn up in black anyway.  In her pale blue dress, one she made herself special for the occasion, Rachel sticks out like a sore thumb in a sea of mourners.  People actually crane their necks to get a good look at her.  Rachel stands tall and proud, her chin held high.

She’s here as Captain Rogers’ fiance.  That’s what Steve wrote on all this forms, without ever even telling Rachel about it.  When he listed her as his next of kin, he described her as his fiance, which meant money.  Lots of money.  More money than Rachel ever thought she’d see at once.  It’s taken months to come through, but she has it now.  A small fortune.

Rachel doesn’t want it.  She’s got no plans to touch a penny, unless it’s to finally get Beck into some college classes.

The government brought all the Barneses up to DC for the event, paying for train tickets and hotel stays.  They stand together in an uncomfortable little clump, the only people at this morbid affair that actually seem to have known the real Steve and Bucky.  Even if Rachel were in dark clothing, they’d stick out anyway in this bunch of politically connected swells.

The monument is not as bad as Rachel thought it might be, just a simple (if not overly large) shield stuck into the earth at an angle.  It’s surrounded by gravestones, Steve’s the largest with a dedication Rachel doesn’t even bother reading, and Bucky’s next to it, a little smaller.

After a bunch of senators and generals blather on about honor and bravery and Captain America, Rachel and the rest of the Barnes are hustled up onto the dais where the bigwigs sit.  President Truman’s there.  He says some more bullshit about Captain Rogers and Sergeant Barnes and moves on to the hand shaking.  

George is all stiff-upper-lip about it.  He murmurs his thanks and bows a little, respectful as anything.  Winnie and Beck both cross their arms over their chests, offering the president very similar glares, and he doesn’t try to shake their hands.

He turns to Rachel last, talking about her fiance’s great sacrifice.  Rachel paints an empty smile and manages to refrain from saying, “ he was queer as all get out, you ninny ,” to the most powerful man she’s ever met.

The president and all these politicians want to gush over a superhero but know nothing about Rachel’s friend.  Without Steve, Captain America would’ve stayed a cartoon, a simple piece of propaganda meant to smile pretty, look brave, and punch Hitler in the jaw.  Captain America was only able to win the war because of Steve’s own idealism and determination, but now that he’s gone, these politicians are already turning him back into that mindlessly patriotic cardboard cut out.

Rachel thinks the president can go fuck himself, him and the rest of the bigwigs who only knew Captain America instead of Steve Rogers.  

A photographer snaps their picture.  Rachel doesn’t want to see the paper running it in the morning.

Back in DC after the dedication, there’s a big party. Winnie and George take one look around at all the rich and powerful people gathered in the ballroom of the Hay Adams, and frown at each other.  

The one upside to this whole absurd venture is a two night stay at the fanciest hotel Rachel’s ever seen.  The government paying for her and Beck to share a room, giving them an excessively comfortable and large bed in which to commit downright illegal acts.

But for Bucky’s parents, a second night at a hotel is not worth suffering through the party.

"We're getting on a train back to New York tonight," Winnie says after she and George have one of those silent conversations, where they just stare at each other for a few minutes and somehow come to a decision.  The twins protest loudly, but go quiet when George hushes them.

"I'm not," says Beck, eyeing the waiters walking by with trays of champagne and tiny, fancy appetizers.  "You think I'm going to give up a free night in that room?  When am I ever going to get to sleep in a bed like that again?"

Winnie looks at Rachel, like Rachel might decide to go back early and leave Beck on her own.

"Someone needs to make sure Beck doesn't try to steal the bathrobes," she says.

Winnie shakes her head and hugs them both before leaving.

At Arlington, the endless parade of politicians and important people left them alone for the most part.  There were stares and whispers, but people respected a grieving family and kept their distance.

The same cannot be said for the party, and far too many try to talk to them about Steve like they knew him.  It makes Beck clench her fists so hard that Rachel has to elbow her in the ribs a couple times to remind her to be nice.  

Or at least not downright mean.

After a few of the noisier ones get a couple drinks in them, they start asking Rachel about Peggy Carter.

For years, Rachel has had no idea what to make of Peggy Carter, and the same holds true today.  Steve mentioned her in his letters, identified her as the woman with the impeccable red lipstick waiting for him in the car when he came to tell Rachel to move into his apartment before he went and got all enlarged .  

A couple of the more nonsensical newsreels hinted at a romance between her and Captain America, showed clips of the pair of them with their heads bent over a map, strategizing.  They called her the fiery British bombshell in the newsreels but in his letters Steve called her Agent Carter, and then later, Peg.  

Rachel could never suss out what was real and what was just more of the Captain America myth.  Maybe they were giving the public a good romance to distract them from all the death in Europe. Maybe they were colleagues and nothing more.  

Or maybe, after years of Bucky absolutely insisting that Steve find himself a lady, Steve had finally complied.

An hour into the fancy affair, Rachel hears whispers about Captain America messing around on his fiance (“ I heard she’s a Jew, too, can you imagine ?”) with Miss Carter.  People glance over their shoulders at her and talk behind their hands.  Beck notices too, and starts glaring at everyone .  

It seems like as good a time as any to retreat to a table in the corner with a plate of food and another round of drinks.

"You're not going to eat anything?" Beck scoots the plate closer to Rachel, moving it over the fine white linen table cloth.  Under the table, Rachel bounces her knee and tries to keep her face impassive, sitting up straight, chin held high.

"I'm not hungry."

"But it's good, Rachel."

"Champagne's good, too." Rachel knocks back her fourth glass and keeps an eye out for a waiter, wandering around with full glasses on trays.

Beck sighs, squeezing Rachel’s knee under the table.  Rachel latches onto her hand and won't let go.

Fifteen minutes later, Beck's stuffed with fancy food and Rachel’s pleasantly tipsy.  She leans close to Beck’s ear, ready to suggest going upstairs to make good use of that feather bed when she’s interrupted by a person appearing on the other side of the table.

Rachel straightens up, sizing up Peggy Carter as she stands before them.  

She's gorgeous, and easily recognizable from the newsreels, where she was always loitering near Steve and smiling at him in the background of a group shot.  Although she was always in uniform, the press never made it clear what she actually did for the war effort.  That was inconsequential, totally irrelevant when they were offering titillating speculations on Captain America’s love life.

If the whole romance was concocted after some army official caught Captain America staring a little too avidly at his loyal sidekick, then Rachel would be unsurprised.

But maybe Steve loved this woman for real.  Rachel can't imagine a reality where Steve didn't love Bucky, but if anyone could figure out how to really, truly love two people at once, it would be Steve.  He always did say he liked girls, too, and Rachel absolutely sees the appeal of Peggy Carter.

Not only is she breathtaking, but she’s got a powerful presence.  So far she's done nothing but stand there, and still she seems totally in command.  Confidant and collected in a way Rachel's never quite been able to pull off, despite all her best efforts.

Rachel aims for confident and collected now, but she lost all her ability to talk to women this beautiful after Zelda left and now she finds herself staring, gaping even.

Beck's certainly noticed.  Rachel can feel the glaring at her side.  Underneath the table, Beck wrenches her hand away.

"Hello," says Peggy Carter, her accent to die for.  Rachel melts and Beck glares harder.  "I am--"

"We know who you are," Beck interrupts, rude as ever.  She's always been irrationally jealous on her brother's behalf.  All of Rachel's gaping is certainly not helping matters.

Rachel collects herself, determined to keep Beck from doing something reckless and angry.  

"You'll have to ignore Rebecca, Miss Carter," Rachel says with minimal stuttering.  "We don't let her out among civilized folks very often."

Beck elbows her in the side and Peggy Carter smiles.  It’s dazzling .

"It's Agent Carter, actually," she says.  "They never seem to get the title right in the paper."

"Yeah, I wonder why that is." Rachel rolls her eyes, and Agent Crater actually laughs .  "Do you want to sit?"

Under the table, Beck kicks her in the shin, and Agent Carter murmurs a thank you, sitting in the chair across the table.  Rachel will not be adding to the gossip, so this is going to be a cordial conversation.  

Plus, she'd like to spend a bit more time looking at Agent Carter, maybe make her laugh again.

"Please," she says, "call me Peggy.  They told me so much about you both, I feel like we're old friends.”

“Yeah?” Beck crosses her arms over her chest and looks down her nose at Peggy.  “They never mentioned you, not once.”

Rachel steps on Beck’s foot under the table, and smiles instead of grimacing. “Of course they mentioned you.”

“You must be Rachel," Peggy says.  Her name in that accent makes Rachel blush and Beck kicks her again, harder this time.  "And Beck.”

"It's Rebecca ," says Beck.

Rachel rolls her eyes some more and bites back a sigh.

"I'm sorry," says Peggy.  "Rebecca.  And I also owe you an apology, Rachel.  I imagine all the speculation on my relationship with Steve must’ve been quite difficult for you.  He talked about you often, but failed to mention you were engaged to be married."

Peggy Carter is undoubtedly annoyed with Steve for leaving this out, and Rachel's glad.  It makes it seem like Peggy actually knew Steve, the real Steve and not the Captain America cartoon.

Plus, Rachel's pretty damn annoyed with Steve, too.  This fiancé business has been nothing but trouble.

"You don't have to be sorry," says Rachel.  "Steve's an idiot.”

That startles a laugh out of Peggy and Rachel’s cheeks get a little warm.

“I've only ever been his friend and nothing more,” Rachel insists.  “But when he got all big he decided we should go ahead and get married, so I'd be taken care of if anything..."  

And her words get caught in her throat, her grief finally catching up with her.  The pain is something she's started to get used to, these last few months, but sometimes it hits her fresh, the realization that she'll never see Steve again, never see Bucky either.

At her side, Beck scoots her chair closer, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.  Rachel leans into her, breathes deep and keeps from crying, somehow.

"Sorry.”  Rachel blinks back tears and tries not to ruin her makeup as she wipes her eyes.  Peggy is gracious enough not to comment.  "Anyway, I told Steve there was no way in hell I was marrying him and the stubborn idiot went and did the next best thing, I guess."

"I see."  Peggy leans back in her chair.  She lets out a big breath like she's relieved and Rachel's even more convinced there was something real and strong between her and Steve.  She desperately wants to ask for details, to say, “ But what about Bucky ?”

Rachel’s also not sure she wants to know.  

Peggy glances at Beck and Beck glares back.  Peggy must be confused about Beck's obvious hate.

"Beck," Rachel murmurs, rubbing her leg under the table.  Beck doesn't relax, but she stops glaring so hard.

"I--" Peggy cuts herself off.  She clears her throat and tries again.  "Well, I am not sure what to say.  I'm sure you've heard it all, right?  How the whole nation is sorry for your loss.  How important their sacrifice was.  How they won Europe for us.  But that must all be empty words to you both by now."

"Yeah," says Beck.  She's surprisingly civil and obviously exhausted.  "That's exactly it."

Peggy smiles, but it’s sad.  It reminds Rachel of Steve, smiling when he was hurting, in pain but trying to bear it quietly.

"Then let me just say, I miss them everyday."  To all these politicians, Bucky Barnes is a side note, easily forgotten and overshadowed by the ever-growing legend of Captain America. Peggy knows better.  She saw them for the unit they were, and maybe she didn't know all the ways they were wrapped up in each other, but she talks like she understands they were in it together.

"Yeah," says Beck again.  Rachel still can't talk.  "Every day."

"The papers calling me Miss Carter instead of Agent is really very mild compared to they way some of the men would treat me, you know," Peggy says, her eyes a little watery.  "But never Bucky and Steve.  They saw me.  They respected me.  And I'll never forget them for it."

Rachel smiles a little.

"They used to make me play the damsel in distress when we were kids, you know?" Beck says.  Her eyes are so far away.  "Always had me waiting around for them to rescue me.  I put a stop to that nonsense when I was about six.  Glad the lesson stuck."

Peggy laughs and that makes Beck laugh and that makes Rachel laugh.  A few powerful people glance over, disappointed to see laughter instead of a jealous argument.  It feels good, to laugh loud and free, banded together as people who actually knew Steve and Bucky.  But it dies off quickly, as they all go back to grieving.

A familiar man with a moustache and a bowler hat comes to stand by Peggy’s chair, arms laden with about six liquor bottles, very obviously pilfered from the bar.  The rest of the remaining Howling Commandos flank him.  

“What’d you say we move this party, huh,” says Dum Dum Dugan without bothering to introduce himself.  “It’s getting harder and harder not to punch out these politicos.  What a bunch of blowhards.”

“We’ve got a room,” says Beck.

And that’s how they end up in a fabulously fancy suite at the Hay Adams with Peggy Carter and every commando they ever saw with Steve and Bucky in a newsreel, drinking stolen liquor and listening to war stories, laughing so hard they cry.

“When did you figure it out?” Beck whispers into the dark bedroom.  

It’s Christmas, and they have spent a quiet day at the Barnes’ house.  They went over first thing in the morning and while Beck went to Mass with her mother and the twins, Rachel cooked in their kitchen.  Sully tagged along, playing chess with George, neither of them saying a word.  The gift giving was subdued.  Conversations were hushed things, whispered during dinner.  Everyone seemed to catch everyone else crying, at one point or another.

It was the same as Chanukah, a few weeks ago, and Thanksgiving, a few weeks before that. Every holiday since last March, when they lost both the boys, has been quiet and joyless.  Rachel’s learning to go through an average day without so much grief, but holidays remain painful.  

“Figure what out?” Rachel words are muffled against Beck’s collarbone.  They lie naked together in beds that have been pushed together since last summer, under every blanket in the apartment.  Beck’s fingers are in Rachel’s hair, and Rachel can’t understand why Beck’s talking when Rachel just wants to sleep this painful day away.

“That you were never gonna want a fella,” Beck says.  There is something safe about this room, about the dark, that has Beck saying things she wouldn’t in the light of day.  She sounds vulnerable when she asks, and Beck usually goes to great lengths to avoid being vulnerable.  “When did you figure it out?”

Rachel sits up, disturbing their blankets and letting the cold air in.  Beck hisses, pulling the blanket up to her chin, but Rachel’s wide awake now.  

“I don’t know,” Rachel confesses, running her thumb over Beck’s lip.  She can’t make out her face in the dark, but touch is the next best thing.  “I just always knew I had no interested in the life my mother had, the one she wanted for me, with the husband and the kids and the being a wife.  When I learned the word lesbian it was a revelation.  When I heard my parents whisper about Sully being queer I knew I was, too.”

“What about the boys?”

Rachel swallows.  Beck, who’d spent the summer yelling at Rachel to shut up whenever she brought up Steve and Bucky, is now far better at talking about them than Rachel.  Beck can enjoy a memory, can remember that love, without it devastating her.  Rachel still cries at the mention of their names.

She wipes her eyes now and says, “Bucky was like me.  He figured it out young, always knew that about himself, but he was pretty convinced he could ignore it.  For a long time he thought he could manage to be okay finding a wife anyway.”

She and Bucky had gotten drunk once in the middle of the day, while Steve was taking (or maybe teaching) an art class and Zelda was somewhere.  The bar was slow, and Rachel had told Bucky about whispering to her bubbe at age eight that a husband were not for her.  And Bucky told her how terrified he was at age seven, when his Ma casually mentioned his future wife and kids.

“Ma wanted that so bad for him,” Beck replies.  “For both of us.”

“Yeah.”

“And Steve?”

“Well, Steve would’ve been perfectly happy with a wife, if he found a woman he could love.”

Beck scoffs.  “Like Peggy?”

“ Maybe .”  Rachel rolls her eyes and lies back down, getting her arms around Beck and pulling until she’s laying on Rachel’s chest, the blankets a warm little cocoon around them once more.  “Steve once told me that he might not’ve ever figured it out.  He liked girls just fine, and because of that it was easier to ignore.  If Bucky wasn’t right there, and Steve wasn’t desperately in love with him from the start, Steve might’ve just gone on in happy denial.”

“I’m glad he figured it out.”  Beck somehow manages to say a thing like that without crying at all.

Rachel sniffs and agrees.  “Steve was pretty damn glad, too.”

“I wish I’d’ve gotten to see them, really together like that.”

Rachel smiles against Beck’s hair.  “They were pretty much the same, giving each other a hard time and laughing.  Maybe there was just less kissing when you were around.”

“Ew.  I don’t need to see my brother kissing anyone.”

“Exactly my point, motek!”

Beck huffs and Rachel laughs and then they’re quiet in the dark again.  Rachel considers letting them drift off, now that Beck’s got her questions answered, but the conversation has left Rachel with questions herself.

“What about you?” she says.  “When did you figure it out?”

“I’m not sure I ever did.”  Beck holds Rachel tighter, like she’s worried her honesty will have Rachel fleeing.  

A ridiculous notion.  

Rachel’s seen this woman at her very worst, ugly and bitter and mean.  She’s seen Beck in the morning, grumbly with waking up and soft with sleep.  She’s seen Beck screaming and fierce, holding firm against her mother’s increasingly irate demands to move home, to go on a date every so often, to dress like a lady for once in her life.

She survived a war with this woman.  No amount of honesty would drive her away.

“That’s fine,” Rachel replies. “You never have to, if you don’t want to.”

“I--” Beck’s voice breaks.  “I figured out that I love you.”

“Really?” asks Rachel, breathless, barely daring to hope it’s true.

“Yes, really .”  Beck huffs.

Rachel laughs, delighted, pressing kisses against Beck’s mouth, nose, forehead, anywhere she can reach.  “I figured that out, too, you know.  I love you.”

“Well, I figured it out first .”  Beck’s rather breathless herself.

“Of course you did, darling.  Of course you did.”

“I just--”  

Beck goes quiet, but Rachel can be patient.  Rebecca Barnes loves her.  Rebecca Barnes isn’t going to leave. And she’s gonna float happily through life on the knowledge of that alone, and it means she can wait on whatever Beck’s working out how to say.

“I just didn’t understand, why anybody would want to get close to anybody, why anybody would want to marry anybody, before you,” Beck confesses.

“Yeah?”

“Like, I’d look at my parents.  It’s pretty obvious that they’re a love match.  Or I’d see the way Bucky’d stare at Steve and just want him, you know?”

“Oh, I know.”

“But I couldn’t imagine ever wanting that myself.  Not the romance or sex or companionship.  I didn’t want any of it, not with a man or a woman.  I could be perfectly happy without all that for the rest of my life.  That’s strange, ain’t it?”

Rachel can’t claim to understand.  She always wanted a companion, a wife , desperately, painfully, but if she learned anything from Sully, it’s that there’s no wrong way to be queer.  And this is just Beck’s way.

“No,” Rachel says, running her finger through Beck’s hair.  “No, it’s not strange.  It suits you, I think.  It’s rather fitting.”

“Maybe.”  Beck chuckles, pressing her nose into Rachel’s jaw. “And then you.”

“And then me.”

“I met you, and I hated you.”

Rachel laughs some more.  Oh, Beck had hated her.  Right from the first moment Rachel opened the door to Steve and Bucky’s apartment, expecting to see Zelda and meeting Beck’s glare instead.  She can laugh now, knowing how Beck defaults to prickliness, generally does not like strangers, and thought Rachel was trying to steal away her brother’s sweetheart.  It’s funny now in a way it wasn’t all those years ago.

“But then I started spending all my waking time with you,” Beck continues.  “And I was so shocked, to find myself wanting you.  To be near you.  To touch you.  I wanted you.  I didn’t like it at all.”

Rachel laughs again. She’s not sure if laughter usually plays such a prominent role in love confessions, but her joy just keeps spilling out of her, in giggles and guffaws.  

“How do you think I felt?” she says.  “I thought you’d sock me in the jaw if I got drunk and accidentally admitted to enjoying your company.”

“For awhile there I was pretty torn between wanting to strangle you and kiss you.”

“Well, can I just say, you made an excellent choice with that one.  Good call, kissing me.”

“Strictly speaking, it was you who kissed me.”

Rachel, in no mood to argue the details, kisses Beck some more. She keeps smiling against Beck’s mouth, laughing more when she feels Beck smile back.

“I think you got it figured out pretty good, Rebecca Barnes,” Rachel says.  Beck huffs and pushes Rachel down flat on her back and settles between Rachel’s legs, her lips moving down Rachel’s neck.

“Figured out, really good,” she amends, when Beck puts that painfully distracting mouth to good use.

1946

Rebecca goes back to work for her parent’s company, when her Navy job ends.  She clerks in the office, like she started doing at age eight.

In the spring she uses a ledger to keep track of how much money she’ll need to save for a couple years tuition, assuming she works weekends for her family, and maybe summers too.

“I might be able to start part time next year,” she decides, tapping her pencil on her carefully plotted out calculations and sitting next to Rachel on the sofa.  

(It’s not their sofa.  It’s still Steve and Bucky’s sofa.  It’s always going to be Steve and Bucky’s sofa. Rachel’s spent the better part of the year crying all over it, but it’s still not her sofa.)

Rachel frowns, examining Beck’s messy scrawl, and then plucks the notebook from her hands, setting it gently on the coffee table.  Beck scowls at her, but let’s Rachel hold her hands. “So, I’ve got this blood money because Captain America left me his fortune.”

Beck’s shaking her head before Rachel even finishes, ripping her hands away and crossing her arms over her chest.  “No.  No way in hell.  Absolutely not .”

“I don’t want it!”

“That’s stupid.”

“I won’t use it.”

“Even stupider.”

“It’s just gonna sit in some account till I die.”

“So stupid.”

“Please,” Rachel whispers.  She crawls into Beck’s lap, straddling her legs and wrapping her arms around Beck’s neck.  Beck’s scowling, and she might try hard to be tough as nails, but Rachel learned months ago that her close proximity tends to make Beck soft, tends to make Beck less stubborn and more willing to listen.  “I can’t think of anything better to spend Steve’s army money on.  He’d want it for you, Beck.  I want it for you.”

Her fingers find their way into Beck’s braid. Rachel hovers above her, lips separated by an inch. Beck’s eyes are wide, her mouth slack.  Her hands find Rachel’s hips and dig in.

“We’re in this together, right?” Rachel murmurs.  That’s what Beck told her, after they messed around that first time and when Winnie started her campaigning to get Beck to move home and Rachel still wasn’t sure that Beck wasn’t gonna just disappear.

She’s still not sure, some days.

“Yeah,” Beck agrees.  She does not sound happy about it.

“We’ve been in it together, since you moved in here.  Before that, even, when I helped you with your interview outfit or maybe when we cleaned this place up before Steve came home.”

Rachel sways, momentarily overcome with a wave of sadness when she remembers that Steve’s not coming home this time.

“We’re in this together,” Rachel continues.  “We love each other.  So let’s do this together, too.  Take the blood money.”

It takes some kissing and some nibbling on Beck’s ear, and a promise from Rachel to cut back her hours with Frank so she can work on her own designs, but Rebecca agrees.

On the first anniversary of their deaths, Rachel spends the day in bed with the covers pulled up over her head.  Then she just sorta stays there.  She calls in sick with Frank for a week and she doesn’t sketch or sew or do anything other than stay in bed.

Rebecca makes her matzo ball soup.

When Rachel manages to emerge from the bedroom (Steve and Bucky’s bedroom.  It’s always gonna be Steve and Bucky’s bedroom) Beck takes her out to dinner and buys her a nice meal.

“It’s our anniversary, too,” Beck explains over her steak.  She grimaces about it, like she regrets not seducing Rachel before the boys died, just so they could avoid this very situation of grieving and celebrating at the same time.

“This is an anniversary meal?” Rachel smiles, just about bursting with fondness. “Aren’t you just full of surprises, Rebecca Barnes.”

“Yeah.”  Beck blushes and looks down at her food.  “But I also wanted to talk to you.”

“Uh-oh.”

“You’re not gonna like it.”

“Uh-oh.”

Beck sighs, dropping her silverware.  Rachel does the same, losing her appetite abruptly.

“I think we should move.”

Rachel gasps.  Beck clenches her jaw, and ploughs gamely on.

“When I start classes, it’s gonna take me at least an hour to get to the school from our apartment,” Beck says.

“Steve and Bucky’s apartment,” Rachel corrects, automatically.

“That!” Beck jabs a finger in Rachel’s direction and Rachel would smack it away, if they were in a slightly less nice resturant.  “You can’t even think of the place as our home.  It’s always gonna be Steve and Bucky’s and it’s not good for you, Rachel.”

“I’m fine.”

“Just because you’re out of bed and not crying your eyes out every three seconds don’t mean you’re fine,” Beck insists.  “When was the last time you worked on your dresses?  Or sketched anything new?  Or sewed anything that’s not tailoring for Frank?”

The answer is a long, long time.  Rachel just sticks her chin up in the air and shrugs, prim as anything.

“You won’t let me get rid of that dining chair that splintered into a thousand pieces last week,” Beck says.  “You won’t even let me rearrange the furniture.”

“It’s fine the way it is!”

Beck sighs and leans forward, brushing her fingers against the back of Rachel’s hand where it sits on the tabletop.  Rachel puts both her hands in her lap, refusing to meet Beck’s eye just like she’s refusing to admit that Beck’s got a point.

“It’s like we’re living in their tomb,” Beck whispers.  “A mausoleum.  It’s been over a year, Rachel.  It’s time to stop waiting for them to come home.”

Rachel’s lip quivers and she goes back to her meal without tasting it.  They finish eating in silence and Beck pays.  They walk home with a good five feet of space separating them on the sidewalk, and Rachel’s still in no mood to talk to Beck for the foreseeable future, but Beck also took her out for an anniversary meal.  Rachel can’t just sleep on the couch on their anniversary.  

So she curls up with Beck on the pushed together beds (Steve and Bucky’s beds).

In the morning, she emerges from the bedroom to find Beck sitting at the table in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the paper.  She clears her throat and can’t find it in her to apologize.  Instead she sits in Beck’s lap, steals a sip of coffee right from Beck’s mug, and asks, “Where do you want to move to?”

Beck refrains from gloating, except to smirk for a quick second.  She flips through the paper, to the apartment listings where she’s circled at least ten options, all in the same neighborhood.

“The Village?” Rachel asks.

“I hear it has a tendency to be pretty queer,” Beck replies, kissing Rachel’s shoulder.  “We’ll fit right in.”

“I still don’t understand why you picked The Villiage, of all places,” Winnie mutters, up to her elbows in soap.  She’s washing the dinner dishes while Rachel stands at her side, drying.  Beck’s putting everything away in its proper place, talking over her shoulder to George.  Since they finished with dinner, they’ve been trying to organize their move next month with one of the company trucks.

“I told you,” says Beck, gruff as anything.  It’s been a long time, since Beck has been anything other than gruff with her mother. The tension’s been constant since the boys died and the war ended.  Winnie’s been relentlessly trying to get Beck to come home, to commit to running the company someday.  Beck’s been equally relentless, making brutally clear that she’s got no intention of doing anything her mother wants her to, ever .  

When Beck offers no further explanation to Winnie’s question, Rachel pipes up. “It’s in the middle.  Half an hour by train to Barnard.  Half an hour by train to my job in Williamsburg.”

Winnie, despite having heard this answer before, does not like it any more than she did when they first told her of their plans.  

Rachel finds herself in the middle of a stare off.  Winnie glares at Beck.  Beck glares back.  Rachel withers under the intensity of all the glaring and looks over her shoulder at George where he’s sitting at the kitchen table.  He just grimaces, and cleans his reading glasses on the bottom of his sweater.

They manage to finish the dishes in stony silence.  Beck slams the cabinets with too much force, banging around and making the hinges rattle. Winnie scrubs at a sparkling clean dinner plate like she’s dead set on washing the finish off.  Rachel tries not to get caught in the crossfire.

“If you’re moving anyway,” Winnie says when the kitchen’s clean, “then why not just move all the way up to Morningside Heights?  You could be in walking distance of your classes.  And then you can sleep here on weekends, after work.”

“I told you.”  All the signs of Beck’s rage are there.  Red cheeks.  Clenched jaw.  Twitching eye.  Fisted hands.  “Rent’s cheaper with me and Rachel splitting it, and I ain’t gonna make Rachel commute all the way back to Brooklyn everyday.”

“This was a lovely evening,” Rachel says, talking too loudly.  She wraps a hand around Beck’s elbow, trying to drag her towards the foyer where their shoes are lined up by the door.  Step one, get shoes.  Step two, get Beck outta here before this fight can get any worse. Step three, let Beck rant about her mother all the way home and then kiss her silly behind the locked door of the apartment, until Beck forgets all about this most recent argument with her mother. “Dinner was excellent as usual.  George, next week we’ll start planning the menu for Passover, alright?”

George looks relieved and he opens his mouth the reply, to help Rachel change the subject, but his wife speaks first.

“If you insist on moving all the way up there, away from the family, I fully expect you to be in the pew with us every Sunday, young lady.  This week I’d like you to say hello to Patrick O'Malley.  Nancy and John’s son.  He’s a college boy, starting in the fall.  Going on the GI Bill. You’ll have plenty to talk about.”

Beck, who was letting Rachel drag her towards the front door, abruptly stops, digging her heels in and ignoring Rachel’s grip on her arm.

“No,” she says.

“No,” Winnie repeats, quiet and deadly.  

“When have I ever agreed to any of these dates you try to set up?  Give it a break already.  It ain’t happening.”

Winnie huffs out a breath through her flared nostrils, reminding Rachel of a bull.  She regrets wearing red tonight, and tugs fruitlessly on Beck’s arm.  

“You’re nearly twenty-three years old, Rebecca.  It’s long past time you find yourself a husband.  I’ve indulged you a great deal, tried to be understanding when you decided to run off to college to study history instead of taking leadership at the company, but I really must insist on this.”

Winnie is calm as anything.  Goosebumps raise on Rachel’s arm, and she watches Beck warily out of the corner of her eye.  She barely breathes, wondering if this is it, the last time they’ll socialize with Beck’s family.  

In many ways, it was so much easier for Rachel to cut her own cruel, unloving parents out of her life.  George and Winnie are different.  They genuinely love their children and want what’s best for them, even if they’ve never been able to understand this.

Rachel will miss Shabbat dinners and the warmth of this home, but if Beck no longer wants to see her parents to avoid dreadful conversations like this, then that’s what they’ll do.

“No,” Beck says again.

“No?” Winnie smacks a hand down on the countertop, a rare show of anger.  It makes Rachel jump.  “Why on earth not?”

Beck laughs.  Rachel watches, utterly amazed, as Beck relaxes her shoulders, unfists her hands, and takes a deep breath.  She suddenly as serene as Rachel’s ever seen her, calm in a way that is totally disconcerting and distinctly not Beck-like.  She turns to look at Rachel, smiling slightly and raising a single eyebrow, silently asking a question, even as she deliberately moves to stand closer, pressed into Rachel’s side.

Still unable to believe that this is actually happening, Rachel nods.

“Ma,” says Beck.  Her tone has Winnie standing up straight.  George slowly gets to his feet, coming to stand by his wife, shoulder to shoulder.  Across the kitchen, the four of them stand facing each other, two teams.  Two couples .  Nobody moves.  Nobody breathes.

“Ma,” Beck says again.  “You know why.”

Winnie blanches.  George breathes in, sharp and startled.

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you mean,” Winnie says.  George reaches down to hold her hand.

“Yes, you do.  You’ve done this before, and you know exactly why I’m saying no now.”

The best part of loving Beck, are the surprises.  She’s always surprising Rachel, with anniversary dinners and confessions of love.  Moments when she is so thoughtful and still.  And now this, with her bravery.  Rachel’s in awe of her, the way she holds her chin high.  Her voice doesn’t even quiver as she tells her parents no.

Rachel smiles down at her shoes, slipping an arm around Beck’s waist and blushing when Beck presses even closer.

Everyone’s a little surprised when it’s George who breaks the silence.

“I am so sorry,” he says.

For the first time since she made the decision to tell her parents, Beck falters.  She blinks, frowns, startles a little.  “Sorry?”

“It’s Bucky first,” George murmurs.  His gaze is far away, his voice quiet and so mournful that Rachel’s stomach turns.  “And now it’s you.  One time, and maybe it’s coincidence.  But for you and Bucky to both do this.  Well, it’s our failing.  We went wrong, somehow.  We raised you wrong.”

“Tateh.”  Beck shakes her head.

“Everyone warned us, against marrying outside our faiths,” he continues, frowning down at Winnie.  He runs his thumb over her cheek.  “Maybe they were right.  Maybe we should’ve raised you just one way.”

“I was raised one way.”  Rachel’s shocked that she found the courage to open her mouth at all.  The Rachel of 1938 woulda had the nerve to speak up, but that hasn’t been her in a long time.  Except now, Beck’s so brave.  And it makes Rachel remember what that’s like, too.  “My parents were both Jewish.  It’s not about that.  It’s nothing you did.  It’s just who we are.”

Winnie glares at her like Rachel’s lost the privilege to speak in this house ever again and George grimaces.

“Something else we did wrong then,” he says.  “Or several things we did wrong.  We are so sorry, Rebecca.  That we drove you to this.”

All Beck’s calm has evaporated.  She’s a tense little ball of fury again, and that’s better than all this sadness Rachel’s dealing with.  

“You didn’t do anything!” Beck stomps her foot and waves her hands around her head.  “Jesus H. Christ.  This is just how I am.  How Bucky was.  We’re fine.  You two did fine .”

Winnie and George exchange sad little smiles and that really gets Beck going.

“You know what?” she shouts.  “Don’t believe me.  I don’t care if you understand. I don’t care if you think you ruined my life and made me this way, even if that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard because the way I am is great.  The bottom line here is that you’re gonna lose me, just like you lost Bucky.”

Beck’s parents flinch back against her words.  

“If you keep it up, trying to get me to go out with men, or ban Rachel from this house, or do anything to me like you did to Bucky, I’m gone,” Beck says.  “We’ll disappear into the city and that’ll be it.”

For a moment, everyone just stares.  Beck’s breathing heavily and Rachel’s ears are ringing.  George is gaping, his mouth open, and Winnie’s trembling with rage, her hands fist and her nostrils flaring and her cheeks red.

And then Winnie, fierce, terrifying Winnie, actually bursts into tears.  She cries with her whole body, shaking violently.  She hides her face in her stunned husband’s chest, and Rachel gawks at her.

Beck, apparently unsurprised by the shocking turn of events, just sighs.  “I know you regret it.  I know it haunts you now that he’s gone, that you lost so much time with him.  There’s years and years you won’t get back, where you weren’t in his life.  I don’t think you want to do it again.  I love you both, but this ain’t gonna work.  It’s your choice.”

With that, Beck grabs Rachel’s hand and drags her out of the kitchen, drags her all the way back to Steve and Bucky’s apartment.

On the day they are scheduled to abandon Steve and Bucky’s apartment forever, George and Winnie knock on the door just after breakfast.  Rachel’s been weeping on and off all morning, and the appearance of Beck’s parents - looking wary, and a little sad and a little scared, but here, oh, they’re actually here - sets her off all over again.

Winnie and Beck disappear into the bedroom, navigating around the boxes and crates in the livingroom that contain all their things, all Steve and Bucky’s things.  Or at least all of Steve and Bucky’s things that Beck’s letting her keep.  

(This week Rachel’s been forced to say goodbye to old dish towels that no amount of mending will salvage, as well as a good portion of the boys’ wardrobes.  She cried more than was reasonable over a pair of Steve’s old socks and wouldn’t speak to Beck for all whole evening after she dropped most of the boys’ clothes off at the donation pile in the church.)

Rachel busies herself with a broom, sweeping and avoiding George’s eye.

“Truck’s waiting downstairs,” he says.  “Tommy’s gonna help load everything.”

“Oh.”  Rachel blinks at him, gripping the broom tight.  “Thank you.”

“And I was hoping you’ll be at Shabbat dinner next week,” he says.  “Even if you’ll have to get on a train to do it.  The blessing isn’t the same without you.”

Rachel’s crying again.  Mr. Barnes is gentleman enough not to comment.  “I’d like that very much.”  

He nods and offers her a strained smile before moving off to carry the first load downstairs to the truck double parked on the street.

When Beck and Winnie emerge from behind the closed bedroom door a few minutes later, they’re both teary eyed and smiling, walking arm and arm.  Winnie nods at Rachel and then grabs a crate from the living room, disappearing into the hall.

Beck doesn’t say anything.  She just wraps Rachel in a hug, pressing her forehead into Rachel’s neck.  Rachel sniffles and holds her, swaying them gently.

“Your father asked if we’ll be at dinner on Friday,” Rachel says.  “Will we?”

Beck nods, lifts her head, and kisses Rachel gently, thoroughly.  “Yes,” she says and then she moves away, taking a load of boxes out of Steve and Bucky’s apartment forever.

It doesn’t take long to pack their whole life into the truck, and the remnants of Steve and Bucky’s life along with it.  Even with Rachel’s dawdling - trying desperately to hold off the inevitable even for a few more minutes - the place is empty and clean by noon.

They stand in the desolate living room, Beck with her chin hooked over Rachel’s shoulder, arms around her waist and pressed into Rachel’s back.  

“It looks so small,” Rachel whispers.

Beck just hums, kissing her neck.

“We don’t need this place to remember them,” she says, more to herself than Rebecca.

“No, we’ll do a fine job of that on our own.”

She looks for a while longer, committing it all to memory.  She’ll remember Steve and Bucky in the kitchen, getting in each other’s way as they cooked dinner and touching each other more than is helpful for that sort of thing.  She’ll remember Steve with a sketchbook open on his lap, frowning over a drawing that wasn’t working right and his hair going every which way.  She’ll remember Bucky’s smirk and the way the pair of them took her in, became her family.

She’ll remember opening that door for the first time to see Beck scowling at her from the other side.  

“You want a minute alone or something?” Beck asks, her breath warm on Rachel’s ear.

“No,” she replies, shaking her head.  “No.  Let’s go home.”

Beck smiles and takes her hand.  Rachel pauses in the doorway for one last look.  She blinks tears out of her eyes, touches the nail in the wall next to the door, and then follows Beck out into the hall, follows Beck to The Village and their new life.

2014

When James Buchanan Barnes knocks on the sliding glass door in the kitchen, Rachel drops her cane and breathes out the name, “ Rebecca .”

Rachel’s wandering mind has only gotten more winding and confused since Beck died, and for a moment she truly believes that its the ghost of her dead wife, knocking on the back door.  Rachel breathes and squints, until it becomes clear that this vision is actually a man, standing at the door on the balcony, his shoulders broader than Beck’s ever were.  

Beneath his grey hooded sweatshirt is a whole lot of bulk, like he’s wearing layer upon layer even with summer in full swing now.  His hair hangs in lank, knotted strands around his face, cut in a jagged line just below his chin.  An overstuffed bag hangs off one shoulder.

When he catches her staring, he lifts his right hand and waves.

And if it weren’t for his face - Beck’s face, her bright eyes and her high cheekbones and her cupid’s bow lips - Rachel would assume some homeless vet somehow found his way up five stories onto her balcony.

But it is Beck’s face and Rachel blinks, attempting to get the premonition to disappear in a wisp.  

This is far from the first time she’s seen Beck since she died, but that’s always been on the periphery of her vision, just a familiar silhouette or a shadow and it always disappears when Rachel looks right at it.

This man with Beck’s face is not disappearing.  And he’s not a random homeless veteran.  And he’s not a ghost.

All these options seem far more plausible than the alternative, that it’s actually Bucky Barnes back from the dead, until Rachel remember she lives in the age of aliens. Steve Rogers came home only two years ago, so why not Bucky?

It only takes Rachel a handful of seconds to accept that the man on her balcony is indeed Bucky.  He looks just awful , his face gaunt and skinny, dark bags under his eyes, hair a mess, when the Bucky in her memory was as particular about his appearance as Rachel herself.

She’s getting very good at accepting the impossible, what with so much of it happening these last few years.

Hands shaking, Rachel stands there in the kitchen, as straight as she’s able, ignoring the ache in her lower back and the creaks in her knees.  If she bends to retrieve her cane from the floor she’ll probably end up breaking a hip, so she leaves it be and makes the slow shuffle to the back door without it.

“Bucky?” she whispers when she manages to get the door open.  Her voice breaks, her mind reeling.  He looks so much like his sister.

“Why do they call you Rachel Barnes on the internet?” The words fall out of his mouth like he’s not used to speaking, his voice rough and low but still undoubtedly Bucky’s, with just a little less Brooklyn than she remembers.

Rachel laughs and Bucky’s cheeks turn pink, like he very much wishes he hadn’t spoken at all.

She decides right then and there that tonight she’ll get James Buchanan Barnes a shower, fill him up with matzo ball soup, and call Steve.  In that order.

They don’t speak much after Rachel hangs up with Steve.  Bucky absolutely insists he can’t see Steve yet, that if Steve came to Brooklyn, Bucky would immediately leave it. Steve agreed to stay away but now Bucky looks downright morose about it.

Rachel has no idea where he’s been the last seventy years, or why he’s so young, or what happened to his arm, or who did what to him to make him forget, to make him hurt Steve in DC.  Rachel is certain that she does not want to know.

Bucky does the dishes, cleaning up after their dinner.  Rachel shows him the spare room - Steve’s room - with Sarah Rogers’ landscapes of the beautiful green expanse of Irish hills, and a wooded section of Prospect Park that looks like something far out in the country rather right there the city.  He stares at them for a long time but doesn’t say anything.  

On the phone, Steve said they made him forget, but Bucky stares at the paintings like he’s seen them before.  He specifically requested matzo ball soup before Rachel could suggest it and he remembered how to make it with only minimal guidance from Rachel.

He certainly remembers enough to be so heartbreakingly similar to the Bucky Barnes living in her memory.

When Rachel leaves to get ready for bed, Bucky follows instead of staying in Steve’s room.  She’s got to tell him to stay put in her bedroom as she retreats into the bathroom to change and brush her teeth.  It’s been a good day, at least for her old bones, and she can manage it all on her own.  Sometimes, she’s got to call Mia up for help.

Bucky helps her into bed, even though there are handrails and Rachel could do it on her own. When Rachel’s settled comfortably back against the pillows, Bucky wrings his hands and bites his lip and generally looks like he’s got no idea what to do next.

“Can I brush your hair?” Rachel asks.

Bucky startles, bites his lip some more as he thinks it over, and then nods.  At her instruction, he goes off to retrieve a soft brush from the bathroom, along with a spray bottle of detangler that Mia uses when Rachel’s arthritis is flaring up and she can’t manage to brush her hair on her own.

Bucky hands over the supplies and sit on the bed with his back to her.  Rachel leans closer and Bucky brings his legs up, tucking his knees under his chin.  She goes slow, keeps her movements as gentle as possible, ignoring the way her own hands shake.

“He’s right,” Bucky murmurs.

“Who’s right, tateleh?”

Bucky hums.  “Someone used to call me that.  But it wasn’t you.”

“No,” Rachel replies, smiling.  “Your bubbe called you that.  And your tateh.  I mostly just called you James Buchanan, but long lost boys who come home get new nicknames.  Unless you don’t like it.”

Bucky’s quiet for so long that Rachel forgets what they were talking about.  She knows she was waiting for his response to something, but she’s lost the grasp on what so she just keeps brushing.

“I like it.” Bucky curls down, hugging his knees even tighter until he’s as small as possible, a ball of a man sitting before Rachel with his head tilted back to make the brushing easier.

“Good.”  She doesn’t know what Bucky likes, but he showed up on her balcony today looking like a man very unused to liking things.  Anything he likes, is something Rachel will encourage.

Rachel keeps brushing, pleased with her progress.  He’s still in dire need of a haircut, but when she’s done his hair will be soft, all thick and shining like Rebecca’s, simply brown rather than auburn.  That was always the biggest difference between the two.  Hair color.

And general disposition.

“He’s right,” Bucky says.  And Rachel gets the feeling he’s said it before, but doesn’t dwell on it.  That’s a lost thought.  She has so many now.

“Who’s right, tateleh?”

Bucky huffs, the sound almost a laugh.  “On the phone.  Tonight? When he said that I didn’t remember.  That I forgot everything .”

“Well.”  There are no more knots in his hair, but she keeps running the brush through it anyway.  He seems to enjoy it.  “That’s certainly not the case at the moment.  You remembered how to make matzo ball soup and you remember my name.  You remember Sarah’s landscapes. That’s not everything.”

“It’s coming back,” he agrees.  “I couldn’t remember your name at first, but when I went to the exhibit at the Smithsonian I knew your face was missing from the tiny little display they had about him before the war.”

Rachel’s been a pillar of strength since Bucky came back from the dead only a handful of hours ago.  Steve was like a practice run.  She fell apart all over him at the foot of Tony’s tower, and decided not to do that again.  This is not about her grief.  It’s about making this coming back to life thing a bit easier.

Rachel promised herself that she wouldn’t do this, but Bucky knew that her face was missing from the display in the Smithsonian even when he couldn’t remember her name and Rachel cries.  A sobs escapes her lips and she drops the brush, resting her hand between his shoulder blades.  He’s too skinny, the bones sticking out harsh against his skin.

He’s up in a flash, standing with his back against the wall, and looking extremely wary.  His lower lip’s caught between his teeth again, and it looks like he’s dead set on chewing the thing clear off.  “I made you cry ,” he whispers.

“Oh, tateleh,” Rachel says, clutching at her heart.  This is why Bucky gets a new nickname now that he’s back from the dead.  He’s different than he was, quiet and unsure and so painfully earnest that Rachel’s heart aches between her ribs.  

Back in the 40s, she was never so consumed with this rush of affection and protectiveness for him.  That she saved for Steve, who was small and sick and queer, and an orphan like her.  She wanted to bundle Steve away from the world and never let any harm come to him, but back then Bucky seemed like he’d be okay.  He had his family and his charm and his easy smile.  Maybe this vulnerability was always there, underneath the carefully constructed, easy going demeanor he projected.

This version of James Buchanan Barnes, that’s been through hell and forgotten everything but remembered her face and found his way back home.   Well .  He gets called terms of endearment.  Rachel’s going to do her damndest to make sure nothing ever hurts him again, even if she goes to her grave doing it.

It might be a useless endeavor, being as her mind wanders and she can’t think her way outta a paper bag, but she’ll do her best.

Rachel smiles around her tears and reaches out a hand towards Bucky.  He regards it with extreme suspicion, still acting like making Rachel cry is an atrocity from which he will not recover.

“James Buchanan,” she murmurs, “these are the good kind of tears.  The cathartic kind.  You didn’t make me cry.  I just missed you so much, thinking about it hurts a little.  And I’m so damn glad you’re here.”

Bucky still watches her with narrowed eyes, his back to the wall, creeping towards the door like he’s still seriously considering fleeing into the night.  “Really?” he asks.

“Yes,” she insists.  “Yes, I promise.  Come back here.  I’ll teach you how to pull your hair back with an elastic, if you want to keep it out of your face.”

It takes five minutes, and a series of small, cautious steps for him to inch his way back to the bed.

Rachel can’t sleep.

She stares at the ceiling, heart racing as she imagines Steve banned from Brooklyn, unable to come home because the love of his life asked him not to.  She imagines Bucky in the bedroom at the end of the hall, staring at the landscapes instead of sleeping when it’s so painfully apparent that there’s nothing he needs so much as he needs rest.

The sun’s not even up yet when Rachel gives up on the whole endeavor of sleeping and retrieves her phone from where it’s charging on the nightstand.  Steve picks up in one ring.

“Rach?  You okay?  Did something happen?  Is it Bucky?”

Rachel sighs.  Next time she wants to call Steve, she’ll text him first, warning him that her upcoming phone call is just a phone call, not an emergency signal or a forbearer of doom.  Every time she calls, he’ll be working himself into a tizzy otherwise.

It’s a good idea, the texting, but not one she’ll probably remember come morning.

“Everything’s fine.”  She speaks to Steve as gently as she speaks to Bucky.  “I can’t sleep, is all.  Figured you might be in the same boat.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, heaving a great big sigh. “I was keeping Sam up, with all my tossing and turning.  Finally gave up and took a run about an hour ago.”

“Did it help?”

“No. But it’s beautiful up here, at least.  I found a nice bench by the water. Where’s Bucky?”

“Well, if he’s anything like us, he’s not sleeping in your room right now,” Rachel says.

“Yeah.” Steve breathes deep.  “Wow.   Fuck .”

“Yes, that about sums it up.”

“Don’t check on him, okay?” Steve’s talking in a rush again.  “He’s traumatized, Rach.  It was bad .  He could lash out or who knows what.”

“I don’t want to know,” she says.  “I absolutely don’t want to know what they did to him.”

“Well I sure as shit wasn’t gonna tell you.  But you need to be careful, okay?  He might be dangerous.  If you startle him, he could hurt you without even knowing what he’s doing.”

Rachel frowns, picturing Bucky from just a few hours ago, when he pressed back against her bedroom wall, looking like the worst thing he ever did was make Rachel cry.

“I’m serious,” Steve continues.  “Sam thinks it’s the worst idea in the world, letting Bucky stay with you.  And we don’t really know what he’s like now.  If something could trigger him and he could forget again, get dangerous again.”

“I don’t care.”

Steve sighs.

“He’s staying here,” Rachel insists.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t care what Sam says.  We’ll deal with what happens, when it happens.”

“Yeah, okay.  If he wants to stay with you, then he should stay with you.”

“I’ll be careful,” Rachel says, because she also saw the footage from DC, with the masked man on the bridge with his metal arm and his single-minded determination to kill Captain America.  “But he came home, Steve.  He came home .”

Steve sobs on the phone and Rachel clenches her jaw.  She does not say, “ You come home, too.  Come home, and let me take care of you both the way you used to take care of me .”

“Bubbeleh,” she says instead, “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.”

“What do you got to be sorry for, huh?”

“I told you not to come home.”  Rachel’s crying herself now.  This has been a very long day. “You’re hurting, and I had to tell you not to come home.”

“It’s not your fault he doesn’t want to see me.”

Steve is so petulant, Rachel actually manages to smile. “It’s not that.”

“Sure it is.  You said he wouldn’t stay with you if I didn’t promise to stay away.”

“It’s not that he doesn’t want to see you,” Rachel says, because it’s true.  “He’s just overwhelmed.  He remembers more than he thinks, and it’s overwhelming.  I overwhelm him.  Getting his hair brushed overwhelms him.  And you are so huge to him.  He just needs to get a little steadier with himself, before he sees you again.  Please, try not to take it personally.”

Steve sighs.  “When did you get so wise, Rach?”

“Well, a century on this earth, making every mistake under the sun, will do that.”

Steve laughs, loud and bright, although Rachel can’t imagine why.

“How is he, though?” Steve asks.  “How is he, really?”

“Quiet,” Rachel says.  “And unsure.  But it’s still Bucky.  He’s right there.  I’m sure of it.”

“I can’t think of better place for him to be right now.”  Steve takes a deep breath.  It shudders out of his lungs like a wheeze, like Rebecca used to breathe.  “Yeah, I wish he was with me, but you’re right.  Better that he’s with you.  It’s less complicated.”

“I’m worried about you, bubbeleh.  This is your safe haven, too.”

Steve brushes off her worry, but his words ring hollow in Rachel’s ears.  His platitudes and insistence that he’ll be fine do nothing to uncoil the knot sitting in her stomach.

He starts talking about plans, how he’s going to keep Bucky’s location a secret from the various government agencies looking for him.  How Sam knows, because Sam’s there, but he’s strongly considering telling Natasha, too.  And if he tells Natasha, that’s as good as telling Clint but that might be a good thing, because Clint is apparently intimately acquainted with brainwashing and Bucky’s been brainwashed so Clint might be able to help, but no one else.  Not even the rest of the Avengers.  Steve’s gonna keep galavanting around with Sam, pretending to look for Bucky and destroying more Hydra strongholds in the process and it’s all far too much for Rachel, so she stops listening.  She hums in agreement and lets Steve talk himself out in her ear.  The familiar cadence of his voice still does nothing to ease her worry, but it’s enough to have her eyes slipping closed.  Eventually, she drifts off to sleep.

In the morning, Rachel wakes to find Bucky in the kitchen.  He’s making coffee, adding sugar just like Rachel’s always prefered it since 1937. She’s so relieved to find him safe in her kitchen - and not gone, disappeared back into the city, never to be found again - that she gets almost gets weepy.

But Bucky gets worried when she gets weepy, so she just smiles at him.  He ducks his head, suddenly so shy as he hands over a mug.  

“Good morning, Rachel.”  He whispers, like he’s not quite sure that this is the right thing to say, but he’s trying it out anyway.

It makes her smile.  It makes her heart ache.  “Good morning, Bucky.  How do you feel about pancakes?”

He frowns at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, I feel like pancakes.  Would you mind helping me?  My hands are so achy today.”

So they make pancakes, and Bucky’s eyes go wide when he tastes the maple syrup.  Rachel says they can try French toast tomorrow, and she’s pretty certain that the promise of more breakfast food will keep him here, at least for another day.

It works.  Bucky stays.  He stays and stays.

Rachel goes to sleep knowing that Bucky’s safe in the room down the hall, and that Steve’s at least with people who care about him, who will watch out for him.  Rachel closes her eyes and she’s got nothing but hope, that it will all work out.