Just How It Is.
Today is Warren and James' final day in America. When the sun goes down, they will be gathering their things, abandoning their car, and sneaking onto a ship. First thing this morning, James woke up extra early to get into the nearest library as soon as it opened. Then, he and Warren worked together to try to figure out how to use the computers. As soon as they figured out how to get in, by following the instructions taped up on the wall, James started researching what ships could get them across the Atlantic.
Lucky for them, there is a cargo ship set for Europe leaving at five o'clock tonight. If they're careful, Warren and James will be able to sneak on board. It shouldn't be too hard. James is trained in this sort of stuff, and Warren can make himself disappear.
James promised Warren they could do one last fun thing in America before leaving, only as a way to soften the blow. Warren doesn't want to leave America. All the movies happen in America, according to him, and their food tastes too good to leave. James knows that's probably only because of the chemicals loaded inside every edible thing, but he understands where Warren is coming from. He's just gotten a taste of the type of life he sees on television. He doesn't want to leave. But they don't have much of a choice in it.
After a good ten or so minutes of debate, Warren finally came to terms with the fact that they were leaving, and he decided that the one last place he wanted to go before leaving was the museum. The second Warren had said it, a monster began to grow in James' stomach. He knows exactly what Warren is hoping to see in that museum, and James doesn't want to see it at all.
But a promise is a promise, and sitting through a museum worth of memories James should have but doesn't is a lot more bearable than sneaking an uncooperative Warren onto a cargo ship without being seen. James doesn't have much of a choice, really, so he parks the car outside of a museum and tugs a baseball cap on his head.
By the time James gets the keys out of the ignition, Warren is already outside of the car, excitedly jumping around on the pavement.
"Warren, bud," James says as he gets out of the car himself. He meets the boy at the trunk of the car and holds his shoulder to keep him still. Warren doesn't always listen properly if he's too busy being excited about things. "Hey. You know we're still on the run, remember?" James asks, raising his eyebrows.
"Yes, Papa," Warren replies. How could he forget that when he's been sleeping in the backseat of a car for over a month? And especially for the past twenty-four hours. Papa had been driving non-stop. Warren rarely even got breaks to pee.
"Good. And that means we can't be recognized by anyone."
"I know, I know, I know. Can we go in?"
Warren turns to look at the entrance to the museum, and James pulls him back just as quick. "Listen. That means you keep to yourself. Don't draw any attention. It means to be on your best behavior. You understand?" James asks.
Nodding adamantly, Warren nearly shouts, "Yes, Papa! Now—"
James laughs. "Yes, we can go in now."
With that, Warren practically starts floating toward the museum entrance. His smile is just as wide as it is in any given library or in the candy section of the gas station. James walks quickly behind him, up the cement steps and through the big, glass doors. James has to give the woman at the counter twenty bucks before they can get in, which James doesn't particularly like, but he figures their US dollars won't be worth much across the world, anyway. The woman gives them two red wristbands in return for the twenty, and just as she's starting to give James a funny look, he thanks her and walks off with Warren by his side.
As soon as they're in, Warren's eyes start to glow. The ceilings are so high up that it makes him feel dizzy, and he's too busy admiring the architecture to notice when Papa puts the red wristband around his arm. The ceilings are decorated with fancy designs probably done by someone a hundred years ago, and floors are made up of fancy, grey-ish tile that reminds Warren of the ballrooms in princess movies.
"Wow!" Warren can't help but exclaim.
Seeing Warren's excitement about all this sort of makes James forget about all the things that will be in here that he doesn't want to see. He lets out a soft laugh, ruffling Warren's messy, brown hair. "If you think you like the ceiling, wait until you actually see the exhibits," he says. Warren spins in a circle, unsure of which way to go first. "Let's go this way first. Sound good, Renny?"
"Yes!" Warren answers instantly.
James and Warren head towards the entrance to a part of the museum that seems to be nature-centered. The first room they walk into is filled with all sorts of taxidermy animals and the ambient sound effects of tweeting birds.
Warren gasps. "Are there real-life birds in here?!" he asks, his eyes wide.
They're probably just recordings, but James doesn't want to squash any of Warren's excitement, so he just shrugs. "I don't know, bud. Why don't we look around and see?" he suggests.
Before he can finish his sentence, though, Warren is already halfway across the room, rushing toward the fossil of a large mammoth. He stares up at the things, admiring each and every bone and wishing he were tall enough to feel the tusks. By the time James catches up to him—a grown man running across the museum would draw too much attention, so James opts to walk—he's reading the little plaque as best as he can.
One thing Warren can't quite figure out, though, is the number on the plaque. "Papa, what is that number?" he asks, pointing to it.
James leans in next to him to see. "Four thousand."
"Holy moly! That's older than you, Papa!"
"Holy moly?" James mimics with a questioning tone. Warren nods, proud of himself. "Where'd you learn that?"
"From the lady at the library."
"Hmm." James still feels weird when Warren says things like that.
Most of the time, Warren seems a little bit like an alien who has just landed on planet Earth. He's still learning how to be a person, and it's sweet. He asks funny questions and says words wrong, and James finds him quite cut. When he starts saying things a normal kid would say, like holy moly, it's just a little surprising. Out of the ordinary. Or, at least, out of the Warren ordinary. Warren's ordinary isn't exactly the same as the general public's ordinary.
But, no matter how amusing James finds it when Warren gets things a little bit wrong, he supposes it's good that Warren is starting to catch on to things like that. It helps them blend in, for starters, and it probably makes Warren feel a little bit better about himself.
As soon as he's finished reading the plaque about woolly mammoths, Warren goes skipping off into the next room over, which just so happens to be the dinosaur room. In the center of the room, there is the fossil of what James assumes to be a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It's large and scary and incredible. On one of the walls, there are a plethora of differently sized torosaurus skulls, all lined up from biggest to smallest, and below it is a row of triceratops skulls.
Across from the skull wall is a large screen, playing a realistically animated video of a relatively small dinosaur drinking from a lake. Hidden in the trees behind the small dinosaur is a larger one. If James listens carefully, he can hear quiet audio coming from the speakers around the screen, and just a bit quieter than the sound of the lapping water is the soft growling of the larger dinosaur. Warren stares at the screen, his eyebrows pinched together, and watches as the large dinosaur steps out from the trees and sinks its teeth into the body of the smaller dinosaur. It thrashes, the smaller dinosaur hanging from its mouth, and bites down harder. Then the video cuts off.
Warren's jaw hangs slightly open, his blue eyes glassy. "Holy moly," he whispers.
James gnaws on his lip and steers Warren away from the screen. "Let's look at something else."
"Can we please, please, please go to the part about Captain America?" Warren asks. That is the one question James was hoping Warren wouldn't ask. But alas, he's asked it. "Please, Papa? I'll be very good. Обещать." Promise.
"Yeah. Sure," James murmurs, although part of him hopes that this museum doesn't have anything at all about Captain America. But who is he kidding? A big museum like this, in the US, with nothing about Captain America?
Besides, it will be good for James to see it. To see Steve's face. Maybe even his own face. It will be weird, and it might make James feel sick to his stomach, but it might bring something back. Maybe a memory—a morsel of who he is. It will give him something to write about in his journal the next time Warren falls asleep. Maybe some answers, too.
Since the nature section of the museum has proven itself to be a bit too brutal for Warren to bear at the moment, their visit to it is short-lived. They leave the section only minutes after entering it, and instead go across the great, big lobby to a section labeled World History. Warren doesn't see how they could possibly fit the whole world's entire history in one single section like this, but it's apparently possible, because the moment they enter, they're met with a timeline wall.
On the left side of the wall, where the beginning of the timeline is, Warren reads the words early human history. There seem to be hundreds of little labels in between that and the other end, so Warren just skips all the middle. On the right side of the wall, the furthest dot is labeled 21st Century.
Warren's eyebrows furrow with curiosity. "What is 21st century?" he asks, looking up at his papa.
"A century is a hundred years. So, the 21st century is the 21st group of a hundred years," James explains in the most simple way he can. It's weird to think that it's really the 21st century. Every time he remembers just how much time has flown by since he got that metal arm, he starts to feel a little bit dizzy.
Luckily, Warren is there to snap him out of it. "We're in the 21st century now?" he asks.
"Yep. Look at your bracelet," James says. Warren pulls up the sleeve of his hoodie and squints his eyes at the small, black text printed on the red wristband. He sees the numbers 10-29-2014, but he doesn't necessarily know what they mean. "That's the date. 2014—that's the year. The two-zero in the beginning means it's the 21st century."
"Then why doesn't it start with two-one?" Warren questions.
The answer to that is a bit more confusing than James thinks Warren can understand right now, so he only shrugs. "Good question. I guess that's just how it is," he says.
Warren huffs. "I don't like when things are just how they are."
James laughs at that, and Warren gives him a glare, and then they make their way into the historical exhibit. Warren doesn't care one bit about most of the stuff he sees. Exhibits about cavemen, Vikings, Indigenous peoples, and the Revolutionary War—Warren breezes through all of them. He only looks at the pictures and artifacts, not bothering to read any of the words around them, until he finally reaches the room he's been looking for.
Right in the center of the room, there's a screen, much smaller than the one in the dinosaur room, but bigger than the computer screen in the library. It's playing a video, which is fuzzy enough for even Warren to recognize that it's from long ago. It looks like soldiers are being interviewed. Warren makes his way over to the screen, and as he gets closer, he can hear the audio playing softly from the little speakers. The soldiers are laughing together.
It's funny, Warren thinks, how soldiers could still be so happy, despite having to fight. Warren hates fighting, and when he had to do it, he wasn't the least bit happy. It was miserable. Sucking the life out of others sucked the life out of him, too. The only times Warren was happy was when he got to see his papa. Maybe that's why soldiers can still be happy. They have each other.
Papa and Steve had each other.
Just as the thought comes to Warren's mind, the screen flashes, and the soldiers who were once there are now gone. Instead, there is the image of a stage, lined with red, white, and blue decorations, and in the center of that stage stands a man in a costume just like the one Warren saw Steve wearing. Only, this one looks a lot cheaper and faker. Warren gets close up to the screen, and if he squints his eyes, he can see that it really is Steve wearing that costume. He's speaking to a large crowd, it looks like, but instead of that audio, there's a narrator explaining this all.
"Steven Grant Rogers, better known as Captain America, was born July 4th of 1918..." the narrator rambles on, listing off facts about Captain America that Warren has already read out of countless books.
Behind Warren, James quietly scoffs. Warren turns and gives him a questioning look. James sighs, regretting having made the noise at all. "His birthday—it's not July 4th. That's just a rumor," he reluctantly explains.
Warren's eyebrows shoot up—his face has been getting progressively more expressive ever since he's been watching TV for hours at each motel they stop at. "You remember?" he gasps. James shrugs. He doesn't know how, but he does remember. Maybe seeing all of this, and with how long it's been since his memory has been wiped, he's starting to get his memories back. Some of them, at least. "Then, what's his birthday?" Warren asks.
"September 28th," James replies.
"Why do they lie?" Warren questions in an accusatory voice. He is not a fan of accidentally believing false information. "Is his second name really Grant or is that a lie also?"
"It's really Grant."
"Can mine be Grant?"
Again, James scoffs. "No," he says, shaking his head as if he can't believe Warren would ask that. Really, though, he knows it's quite on-brand for Warren to ask something like that.
"Can it be Steve?"
"No," James says again.
Luckily, before Warren gets the chance to argue, his attention is pulled away by something across the room. He gravitates towards it, and James follows behind him. Warren stops right across from an image of Steve and James. They both look roughed up, with bruises on their faces and mud staining their clothes, but they're both smiling. Looking at each other and smiling. Warren looks up at his papa. He's staring at the ground, his face empty and cold.
Warren looks all around the room, his eyes dancing over real World War II artifacts, video screens, and families standing around looking at it all. In the back right corner of the room, there are two women, who look to be about the same age as Papa in the photos, looking at a soldier's uniform. At their sides, in between each other, their hands are linked together. One of them says something, and they both start laughing and smiling at each other just like Papa and Steve in the photos. But—these women—when they're done laughing, one of them kisses the other right on the lips, and then they walk off to the next exhibit.
From beside his papa, Warren nearly gasps. That doesn't happen in the movies. Princesses always kiss the prince, like in Cinderella and The Princess and the Frog. It's strange, Warren thinks, but maybe just because it's something he's never seen before.
"Papa," he whispers. James looks up from the floor, meeting Warren's curious eyes. "Is it allowed for boys to love each other?"
James' face stays frozen, but his heart pumps hard in his chest. He feels something he doesn't fully recognize, yet it's achingly familiar—maybe a feeling he used to get when he was young, before HYDRA, before the Winter Soldier. He hears a man's voice in his head, telling him the answer to Warren's question. No, not telling him the answer, but screaming it over and over and over until James can't hear anything else.
The only way James can think to make it all stop is to say it out loud. So he says it, his voice firm and harsh enough for Warren to take it as a scolding, though the words come out quietly enough for no one else to hear them. "No," James spits. Warren shrinks in on himself, his blue eyes darker than before. "Boys don't fall in love with each other, Warren, and neither do girls. Where the hell did you get that idea?"
Rather than answering Papa's question, Warren fires back with his own. "Well, why not?"
For some reason, he finds himself feeling defensive about it. For the women in the corner, maybe, because they were smiling and happy, just like Papa and Steve, and if that's not allowed, then Warren isn't sure this free world is all that good after all.
"Because that's just how it is," James answers. His cheekbone aches and his eyes feel like lead. He feels like a little kid again, not much older than Warren. That's just how it is. That's the rules. How the world works. How it is.
"I hate when things are just how they are," Warren growls.
His frown is so deep that he looks like a cartoon character. It sort of makes James feel guilty, honestly, but there are some things that Warren will have to learn, whether or not he likes them. Otherwise, he'll never survive in this world. He needs to know the rules. And this is one of them.
"Yeah, I know, bud. Let's just keep going," James murmurs uncomfortably. He holds his hand out for Warren to take, but he's left hanging. Warren crosses his arms over his chest, turns, and walks the other way.
The single question ruins the rest of the museum visit. Warren doesn't utter another word. James doesn't dare to, either, but even if he wanted to, he's not sure he could. Something lurks in the back of his mind. He doesn't know what it is, but he's scared that if he opens his mouth, it will all come falling out. James and Warren keep their mouths sealed shut, and soon, America is only a fading skyline in the distance.