Chapter Text
When SHIELD found the plane in the Arctic, they couldn’t have known that Captain America was still in there. They couldn’t have known the Cap had miraculously survived, frozen in ice for nearly 70 years. They certainly couldn’t have known that Stephanie Rogers wore the stars and stripes. No one did. At least no one in 2011 did. The world knew the story of Captain Steve Rogers, Stevie had been erased from history. She knew she would be. The Colonel told her as much the day they sent her out on that USO tour, with her hair cut short and her chest bound.
“What the hell?” a man’s voice questioned.
Stevie started to blink to life. She sat up as her vision focused. She was on a medical table surrounded by a least a dozen men and women.
She glanced down and realized that she was no longer wearing the top half of her uniform. The medical bandages that she used to wrap her chest were on full display. When she realized this, she quickly attempted to cover herself.
“Where am I?” She projected in her captain voice. The USO girls had given her voice lessons which ended up paying off once she was on the front lines.
Another man entered the room. He was wearing a long black coat with a black turtleneck underneath. He had an eyepatch. “Captain Rogers?”
“Yes.” Stevie did her best to sit upright and not show any signs of weakness or shame. She could be in enemy territory for all she knew. Just because they sounded American didn’t mean anything.
“You’re in New York. You’ve been asleep for a long time, Captain.”
“Did we win the war?”
“Yes, 66 years ago.”
Stevie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The plane crash couldn’t have been more than a few days ago. The clouds had cleared and she saw the water, then she blinked and was in this room. It didn’t seem right.
The man spoke again, “you gonna be okay?”
Shock was the only word that came close to describing how she felt. “Yeah,” she lied. “I just... I had a date.”
After a beat of everyone continuing to stare at her, a man asked, “I’m sorry, but are we not going to acknowledge the elephant in the room?”
She didn’t know what he meant by that. God, how much had changed in 66 years? The man was wearing a blue suit and tie. The fit and cut of the jacket was
completely different from her time.
The man in black looked around and commanded, “everyone out. Coulson, Hill, you stay.”
With that almost all the men and women began to file out of the room. The one woman who stayed insisted, “no one is to say anything about any of this until Fury gives the word, understood.”
The last few people leaving nodded as the door closed behind them.
Then, it was just the two men and woman left staring at Stevie. The man in black started, “so Cap, I’m assuming there’s a reasonable explanation for all this.”
Stevie barely registered that he said anything. “I’m sorry. Who are you? All of you?”
“Right, I’m Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. Peggy Carter and Howard Stark started our organization after the war ended. This is Phil Coulson and Maria Hill, two of my best agents.” He gestured to the man and woman respectively.
The woman, Agent Hill spoke softly, “Captain Rogers, do you mind explaining to us why your chest is wrapped?”
“You work in intelligence?” she asked. When they all nodded, she cleared her throat. “Then you would know, right? Peggy and Stark knew.”
There was a tense silence. Agent Coulson finally broke it, “I’m so lost right now.”
Hill gave him a damning glare before looking back at the captain. “Can you tell us in your own words?”
Right. Guess if she’s not dead there’s no point in hiding. They’d either imprison her or she’d fight her way out. She took a deep breath. “My name’s Stephanie, well, was before the war. Government said I had to be Steve after I got the serum. Said no woman would be a war hero.”
“There’s no way.” Coulson shook his head.
Fury asked, “how did you get the serum?”
“Buck and I wanted to be nurses for the war effort—” She paused. “You know about Bucky, right? Sergeant Barnes?”
“James Barnes? The Howling Commando?” Coulson questioned.
“James! Where’d they come up with that? Her name is— was Rebecca. We weren’t technically allowed to be Commandos.”
Coulson’s jaw hung slack. “You’re suggesting that two of America’s most famous war heroes were women.”
“What? Like that’s hard to believe?” Hill remarked. “After everything you’ve seen in the last month, you really think that this is the strangest thing?”
He smoothed out his suit and cleared his throat. “No. I suppose you’re right.”
The three of them looked back to Stevie, so she continued, “anyway, so we wanted to be nurses. The nuns at the orphanage used to tell me that my ma was a nurse during the War, never knew if it was true, but it was all I had. Becky, I called her Becky then, got sent overseas. But they wouldn’t let me travel because of my health, so I was stationed at Camp Lehigh. That’s where I met Dr. Erskine and got involved in Project Rebirth.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you got the serum,” Fury pointed out.
“Right. Well, they gave the serum to about six guys before Dr. Erskine realized that the Y chromosome and the serum didn’t get along. I volunteered to take it, figured I wasn’t worth much as it was. Against all odds, it worked. But then Dr. Erskine died and I was the only super soldier. The government said I wasn’t worth anything, so they dressed me up and created Captain America.”
“My God,” was all Coulson could muster.
Hill tried to keep an even tone. “Thank you for telling us. Would you like me to get you some clothes to change into?”
Stevie was still very aware of her exposed skin. She nodded quickly. “Yes please. Thank you.”
The two men followed Hill out of the room, leaving her alone for the first time in the 21st century. She looked around the room. White walls and metal tables surrounded her. In one corner there was some kind of machine that looked far more advanced than any of the tech Stark ever showed her. Made sense, they would have new technology in the future. She was living in the future, like one of Bucky’s H.G. Wells novels.
Agent Hill came back into the room alone this time. She handed Stevie large gray clothing made of soft cotton. “I’m sorry about all this. I’m sure it’s a lot to take in. I can take you to a bathroom so you can wash up.”
The simple kindness gave Stevie a moment to breathe. She released the tension from her shoulders as she put the hooded sweatshirt on. Hill led her down a hallway and into a public restroom with showers. Stevie noted how the Agent leaned against a sink and never left the room.
Trying to prevent things getting awkward, Stevie joked as she dressed herself after her quick shower, “what? Am I running track?” She gestured at the athletic wear she had on.
Hill huffed out a small laugh. “They’re casual clothes now. Figured you’d want to wear something more comfortable after everything.” She paused. “I can get you a dress if you want.”
Stevie looked at what Hill was wearing, a black body suit. Then she looked at herself in the mirror. She still wasn’t entirely used to her frame. It was quite the adjustment to go from being barely being 5 feet with small features to 6 foot and broader shoulders than most men. Her short blonde hair was still wet and clinging to her forehead. She didn’t think she looked much like a woman, hadn’t since the serum.
“No. I haven’t worn a dress in a long time.”
The Agent nodded before asking, “Captain, can I ask you a personal question? And it’s alright if you don’t have an answer.”
“Shoot.”
“What name do you want me to call you by?”
Well, wasn’t that a loaded question. She had been called Steve for as long as she had been called Captain America. She didn’t care too much about it. She still knew who she was, she wasn’t concerned with what others thought. Maybe things are different now though.
Before she could answer, she had to check. “I won’t get locked up if I say the wrong thing, will I?”
“No. Of course not,” Hill assured her. “None of that’s a crime anymore. You can say whatever you want.”
“Stevie. That’s what people who knew called me during the war. That works.”
“Okay, Stevie. And can I ask one more question?”
Stevie nodded.
“Do you want to be a woman now?”
She shrugged. “Well, I don’t want to be a man anymore if I don’t have to be. Never really liked the locker room talk.”
That seemed to suffice Hill’s inquiries. She led Stevie to a conference room and handed her a folder.
She explained, “here’s some of the things SHIELD thought would be important for you to know. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I’ll just be getting some work done while you read.”
Stevie opened the folder. The first page had a replica of the paper from September 2, 1945.
After finishing her crash course covering the last 70 years, Hill took Stevie to base quarters. She noted how she still had not gone outside or seen any windows. Wherever they were must be big. She couldn’t remember if they had said they were in New York or not. She felt like she needed to lie down.
Finally, she was left alone in a room. She wondered if there were any listening devices.
She turned the lights off and went to bed. The mattress was too soft and not at all like the floors she had gotten used to sleeping on. She realized she had no idea what time it was. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.
She reached for the chain around her neck. Somehow, she had managed to keep it through all the chaos. She ran her fingers over the letters. Even in the pitch-black room, she knew she was holding Bucky’s dog tags. Barnes, Rebecca. She felt each letter under her thumb.
She thought about how they had joked when they got them. Bucky thought it was so funny how the Colonel was forcing them to conceal that they were women and yet right there on their necks was the truth.
After a particularly intense mission, Stevie suggested they wear each other’s tags ‘til they got home. That was only about a month before Bucky fell from the train.
Looking back, she didn’t know why she wanted to switch the tags. They both knew Stevie had no plans on making it through the war. There was no life left for her in Brooklyn. The government probably would have kept her until they could figure out how to make male super soldiers. Then what? Would they have killed her?
Maybe she couldn’t die? Wasn’t that what she just proved, 66 years in ice.
Everyone was gone. The folder told her as much. Peggy lived longer than the rest of them, she passed only a year ago. They couldn’t they have found her sooner? She read all about how Howard spent years, decades looking for her to no avail. Why now?