Chapter 5
How had Vic Morello done it? How had he figured out what to do next, to move past his experiences in Krausberg, to build a life for himself, to understand what his purpose was?
That question swirled in Steve’s brain in the days after running into him at the dance hall, he and his lovely wife, Estelle. Steve had spent hours chatting with them, till the night wound down and Peggy had poured them both into a cab from Queens back to the west side of Manhattan. He’d learned all about the life that Bucky’s old unit mate had built for himself after getting back from the war; his wife, his family, his kids, his business. He had named a son “Roger” after him. That idea alone had boggled Steve’s mind, a child named for him existing in the world. Even more so, that child was now a grown man with children and grandchildren of his own. It seemed impossible.
Everyone had found a place for themselves after the war…everyone save him, that was.
He woke early the next day - not that he slept well these days, after so many decades of sleep - dressing before dawn's gray light found its way into Peggy’s apartment. He surmised she was dead asleep down the hall, and he took care to ready himself in silence. Steve told himself it was out of politeness, as he was a guest in her home after all. In truth, he knew it was more out of a desire to avoid her patent worry over his moodiness. She would understand, of course, she always did, but she wanted so desperately to make it okay for him, and she couldn’t. Peggy, like Vic, had found a place and a purpose. He…hadn’t.
The priest had told Steve to show himself grace, and he was trying. It had only been weeks, but it itched him, this uncertainty. He wasn’t built for this, for not having an objective and a purpose, a goal in mind. Call it a side effect of his birth - he had been born small and sickly, fighting just to survive the first days and weeks of his life - or perhaps it was just his upbringing, the idea that no matter how hard life got, you still picked yourself up and kept going…but to where? What path was he walking now? He had assumed, naively, that once the war was over, once they all got done fighting he could go back to Brooklyn, build a life, maybe even invite Peggy to join him in it, and do…what?
Therein lay the problem, didn’t it? He hadn’t known what he wanted even before the plane crash that sent him decades ahead in time. He’d not had a chance to really sort that bit out, not between all their missions, the hyperfocus on tearing down HYDRA, and the hunt for the Red Skull. He’d just…never really thought about it. Now, he would have to. Why did that scare him?
Is there a place for an old fashioned guy like me in a world like this…in Peggy’s world?
“JARVIS,” he murmured, softly, gaining the AI’s attention. “The old Holy Cross Cemetery in Flatbush is still there, correct?”
“Yes it is,” the polite voice sounded, softly, over the speakers embedded in the ceiling. “Am I correct in presuming you know how to get there?”
“I know,” he returned, adjusting the cuffs of his sleeves and slipping into a functional wool coat Peggy had purchased for him. It kept off the worst of the chill of late winter in the city, a cold that felt all the more bitter given his decades frozen in ice. He flipped up the collar as he did so, before slipping in the wallet he’d recovered from his things, a battered bit of leather he had been gifted as a graduation present from his mother, his first sign of being a grown man.
“If Peggy asks, tell her I’m out in Brooklyn for the day. I’ll be back by evening.”
“Of course, sir!”
Steve slipped out of the cozy apartment and into the slowly stirring streets of the city he had once called home. Certain things about it still felt familiar. Certainly that smell, the mixture of sea salt and refuse, the lives of millions of people pressed against the Atlantic Ocean, that was something New York could never get rid of. The energy of the place still felt the same, as people shuffled through turnstiles down tile glazed hallways towards platforms where trains howled into stations and picked up passengers, only to howl away again into the darkness, taking them from one part of the city to another. And Brooklyn…Brooklyn, for all of its tall towers glittering in the sunlight rising from the east, it still felt like home, for all that it had changed. He wrapped that thought around himself as he stepped off the train and into the early morning sunlight.
It took some time to find a florist, and another bit of time to down a quick breakfast of coffee and a bagel - that at least had been a familiar note from his youth, working weekends at Goldie’s gym - but finally he made his way to the simple stone gates of Holy Cross Cemetery. This too felt like a bit of comfort, strangely enough. The sight of it still standing there, ancient and mossy stone dating back to before his grandparents were born, held the memories of a hundreds of pilgrimages over the years, he and his mother, hand-in-hand, there to visit the simple tombstone that marked his father’s grave. Now it marked both of their graves, husband and wife, together in death as they hadn’t been in life. The path was as familiar to him as his old neighborhood, the gravestones strangely unchanged in the decades since last he visited.
It had been a long time.
Steve had made sure to come and visit his parents in his brief time back in New York before shipping out to Italy with the USO. It was his first time leaving US soil, and it was only supposed to be a quick trip, a brief boost to the boys before he was meant to come back and stump for more war bond sales. He had thought he would be back within months, weeks even. He hadn’t known how his life would change. Guilt gnawed at him as he picked his way past marble and granite, to the small corner near a copse of ancient, leafless oak trees where a single marker said “Rogers” in faded letters. He stopped to stare at it, the gray stone with the names of Joseph and Sarah etched under it, the years of their life far too short to be fair. It had worn somewhat since he last remembered it, edges rounded, the letters not as obvious, but it remained, the last connection to his parents.
Beside it, a smaller plaque had been installed, one of black granite. He knew without asking whose it was. Steve’s guts twisted uncomfortably, a chill running across his skin as the hairs prickled. His name was carved into the dark rock, the dates on his stone as brief as those of his parents. The only difference was the small etching of his old shield there in the corner, and the “Captain America” title under his name. He winced as he studied it, but it wasn’t as ostentatious as he had feared. Obviously, it was Winifred or George Barnes’ handiwork, a small and simple memorial to the boy they had helped to raise, and nothing like the horrific concoction that sat in Prospect Park, a statue that Senator Brandt had commissioned in his memory. Peggy had showed him pictures and he had heartily wished she hadn’t.
It was macabre, staring at his own grave…well, grave marker, he supposed. They had never found his body, and had nothing to bury. Still, he shivered again, ignoring it in favor of the spot where his parents lay. One of the bouquets he had in hand he placed near his mother’s name.
“Hey, Ma,” he murmured, stooping to brush off dirt and leaves from rough stone, with the same gentle motion she’d used on him when he’d been sick as a child. “Hey, Pop!”
The tombstone was silent as he brushed it clean, removing the collected detritus of who knows how many years of neglect. He imagined the Barnes’ had come every now and again as long as they could, but after them, there had been no one else. All the family he’d had in the world had gone. There had been no one to remember the couple who had grown up all their lives in Brooklyn, the children of Irish immigrants who’d known each other since their days playing stickball, who grew up to fall in love, only to have a war tear them apart. He was back now, though, and he knew their story. He could keep living and keep their memory alive.
“I wish I could explain to you the crazy journey I’ve been on since I was last here.” He stood back up, chuffing softly into the cool air. “I thought telling you about Erskine’s serum was crazy, but that doesn’t have anything on what happened after I went to Europe. I told you I would be there and back again. Turns out, I was wrong about that…about so many things, really. And somehow I’m standing here, living to tell the tale.”
So he did. Perhaps it was strange to the random passer by, a man talking to a gravestone, but no one wandered his way, and there wasn’t anyone to hear him mull through his adventures in the war - of how he had gone there on the tour, only to reconnect with Peggy and find out about the attack on Bucky’s unit, of his daring infiltration and even more dangerous escape with Bucky and all of the men of Krausberg in tow, of the Howling Commandos and hunting down HYDRA through Europe, of Bucky’s fate…of his own. It spilled out of him, half in explanation to long-dead parents, half in acknowledgement to himself that he had in fact lived this. That had been his life, and if he were feeling disconnected and discombobulated, it was a small wonder.
“So here I am, decades later, in a new century.” He turned to regard the field of stones tucked into the still brown swath of grass, broken here and there by more ostentatious monuments hulking in the landscape. “It’s…weird…strange. Almost like the world I remember and yet not. Everyone is obsessed with the new technologies and what everyone has for breakfast. Not even the Dodgers are the same. They moved to California.” His mother would be heartbroken at that. “But I am trying. It’s just like you used to say, the only thing we can do is keep moving forward. We can’t let the bad things in the world defeat us.”
He’d been fighting all of his life, after all, what is one more?
Thoughtfully, he reached in his pocket, pulling out the old compass, now battered and tarnished with cold and salt. “I still have this at least, Pop. That made it through. I still have a way to find my direction, even here.”
He thumbed it open, to the fading picture of Peggy inside. Gently, he brushed his thumb pad over her face, remembering the taste of her lips last night, the smokey scotch she’d been drinking, as heady as the feel of her fingers threading through the short hair at the back of his head, pulling him closer.
“I still have Peggy,” he muttered, softly, “or at least I think I do. I’m not sure.”
Steve glanced at the silent stone, wishing for all the world his mother was there beside him, as she used to be, patient and understanding as he poured out all the woes of his boyish heart to her for advice. “I met her during the war. She’s…you’d like her. She’s tough as nails and twice as sharp. Certainly gives me a run for my money. She’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen in my life. She came through time just to save the world, and maybe to find me buried in ice. I think I want to spend the rest of my life with her, but that’s about the only thing I do know right now. Everything else in my life is a giant blank, an unknown quantity. Captain America, all right, I don’t even know what in the hell I am supposed to do with my life! How in the hell am I supposed to commit to someone if I can’t even figure out where I fit in this world…in her world.”
Where did he fit in all of this? Peggy had stepped forward into the future of her own choice with a singular focus in mind, and in the typical Peggy fashion had set about it as quickly as she could adapt. She’d been a spy in the war, fitting in was how she survived, and it was frightening how she just seemed to slip into all of this, even while she was still Peggy. She had a place in space putting together this team of operatives, scanning for trouble, working on threat assessments. It was awe inspiring to watch her think. It took his breath away to see her, and he was so proud of her and amazed that she had run with whatever bits people had thrown her way and done wonders with it. She shined so much and he was back at home in New York, his city, a soldier created for a war that ended decades ago, without a clear purpose or a singular vision on what he could do now. What did one do with a weapon when the purpose of that weapon no longer existed?
He’d been Steve Rogers before he was ever Private Rogers or Captain America. What had that guy wanted then? Even thinking back on his days with Bucky opened a gapping, aching wound filled with loss he hadn’t even begun to deal with, but he did anyway, trying to think what little Steve from Brooklyn had wanted to do with his life before war and loss had upended it all. Primarily, he’d just longed for a job that would pay him steadily enough to cover half of rent and expenses, maybe enough to set aside for art school like Mrs. Barnes had harped about. Mostly, he’d just wanted someone - anyone - to see him for himself, as a person and not just a wall ornament. Strange, being strong, tall, and handsome Captain America hadn’t changed that aspect of his life. People still saw him as a wall ornament, a decoration to trot out for their purposes, just a more useful one.
His self-reflective circle snapped at the sound of rattling and shuffling feet. More out of muscle memory and habit than true self-defense, he whipped around to the grounds keeper wandering about with a pack of garden tools on his back, a wooly hat on his head to protect from the lingering chill as winter gave way to spring. The poor fellow paused at Steve’s sudden turn, grimacing apologetically. “Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you!”
“No problem,” Steve waved it off, as it hit him how very high strung he was, even here in this place, a cemetery he’d been visiting since he was born. It was if he wandered through his life, just waiting for an ambush, or stray shot, or something else to come from around the corner and turn his life inside out. “I was just heading out, anyway.”
The groundskeeper nodded as he prepared to move to whatever part of the landscape he was working on prepping for warmer weather. A thought occurred to Steve as the man turned, however. “Say, how well do you know this cemetery?”
The man paused, curiously studying. “Okay, I see a lot of names all the time when I work.”
That was at least a start. “Do you know if the Barnes family is close to here? George and Wihemina? Maybe James is buried with them?”
The other fellow considered carefully, frowning in thought as he looked over the grounds. “Yeah, I think so. Over there, maybe?” He waved a hand several yards away from where Steve stood. “I’ve seen them, I think.”
“Thanks,” Steve returned, waving at the man who returned to his work. With a final parting farewell to where his parents lay, he wandered to the next section, filled with the headstones of other names, many Irish, some Italian, all of whom sounded familiar to him from the old neighborhood. He knew of O’Brians, Malloys, McIntyres, and Learys. He stopped dead to stare at the headstone that had the name “Mcgillicuddy Neil” etched into it, and realized with sadness and a surprising amount of loss, that he was the childhood bully who had terrorized them all as children, the very one that had brought he and Bucky together as friends. Judging from the date on the tombstone, he’d died during D-Day. Steve and Bucky had spent their childhoods loathing a man who had struck fear into all their hearts, and he’d died just like so many others had on that beach in Normandy. As much as he hated the guy, somehow Steve wouldn’t have wished that on him. It was, he realized, as a reminder that for every Vic Morello who got to come home from horrific circumstances, there was also a Cuddy Neil who didn’t.
It took him another twenty minutes to find the Barnes’ plot. He’d known George’s family had old roots in Brooklyn, and he’d finally found the cluster with all of her names and graves, going back to the 1840s and 50s in Brooklyn, when the first Irish immigrants had come to the city, fleeing their old lives in famine struck Ireland. Steve, too, had relatives that went back that far, hard working immigrants who struggled to make a life there in a new world. Of all of them, only he remained that he knew about. All the Rogers were gone now, save for him. The same couldn’t be said for the Barnes clan. He wandered the various tombstones and markers till he came on George and Winifred first. Theirs was less worn than his own parents. George had died sometime in the early 1970s, from a heart attack according to the files JARVIS had found. That had hurt bad enough, knowing how Bucky’s gentle, steady father had gone, his heart giving out one icy day in January, trying to shovel the sidewalk. Had Steve had been there, he could have taken care of it for him, filled in for Bucky, who’d have gently argued with his father about managing it.
Winnie Barnes had died nearly twenty years later, in the 1990s, a fact that made him smile considering how young his own parents had died. He’d never cross Mrs. Barnes in an argument, and somehow it hadn’t shocked him she’d lived till her late 90s, doting on grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She finally passed away in her sleep, peacefully, and had been buried by her beloved husband, much mourned by the extended family. With her died the last of the Barnes family left in the old neighborhood. Rebecca had married a guy who had moved her far away from Brooklyn, ending up in Boston, close enough to see her mother, far enough away she no longer was tied to this place. She’d died not long after Winnie, a grandmother several times over, having led a full life. For their sake, Steve was happy for them. Bucky would never have wanted them to mourn his loss forever, and Steve would have been crushed if they hadn’t had good lives well after he’d seemingly been lost in action. Still, it hurt to know that out there were Becky’s children, grandchildren, and possibly great-grandchildren, none of whom he had ever met or who knew him enough for him to connect with. The small thread that had bound him to the Barnes’, the only family outside of his mother he’d ever known, snapped that day when he flew the Valkyrie into the ice.
Gently, he placed the other bundle of flowers on George and Winnie’s shared headstone. “I made it home, finally.” He felt like he had to assure them, somehow. Mrs. Barnes had been so angry with him for taking the serum and joining the army. Worried as she was for Bucky, she’d scolded Steve, reminding him she’d promised his mother she would look after him. Mr. Barnes had been the one to remind her that Steve was a grown man, and like Bucky wanted to defend his country. Still, neither had been thrilled with the idea of Steve taking off to Europe with the USO tour, and even less happy when Bucky informed them of Steve’s escapades once he got there. How heartbroken they must have been to get the news of first Bucky, then himself. He had wanted to write them about Bucky, but it had been so new and raw then, a dull, horrible ache within him, he hadn’t thought to, assuming he would have time after Schmidt was captured and brought to justice. He of course didn’t, and they never heard from Steve about how he’d gotten their son killed, of how courageous Bucky was, of how hard he had tried to reach him.
The memory of Bucky’s scream as he fell down that ravine echoed as he turned to the stone with his name on it.. It was identical to Steve’s stone, save for the Captain America part, underscoring the fact that the Barnes’ must have put it there. Like Steve’s, it was only a name, no body had ever been recovered. Like Steve, he was buried in ice and snow, far away from home and those that he loved. Unlike Steve, he’d not have the second chance to live out his life in a crazy new future. That idea hurt worst of all..
“Hey, Buck,” he sighed, knowing his body wasn’t there, but feeling the need to address him all the same. “If you knew half of what I got myself into, you’d have kicked my ass to Paramus and back.”
Just the daring motorcycle ride into Schmidt’s alpine compound alone would have set Bucky off, let alone the flying a plane into an iceberg by himself. Still, Bucky would have understood as well, even if he thought Steve was an idiot for it. In the end, Schmidt was gone, HYDRA with it, and the Tesseract was gone, lost at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. They had succeeded, even if it was at a horrible price.
“So, anyway, the future,” he mused, looking around the quiet cemetery, silent without the blaring sounds and glaring lights of the world just beyond its gates. “It’s crazy, Bucky. You’d love it. They don’t have Stark’s infamous flying cars here, but they have all sorts of other technology that boggles the mind. I talk to an invisible voice that can pull up any information I want or need whenever I ask, so there’s that. Not going to lie, though, the internet is so helpful. I wish we had something like that when we were younger. All the information in the world at your fingertips. The entire world is linked together through communications networks! I can speak via video to someone on the other side of the world. It’s like Dick Tracy, only way more real.”
It hurt not having him there to share this with, to explore this all with. Since he was nine, he’d always had Bucky there to have adventures with, and now he had to figure this out on his own. Something about that felt infinitely wrong. “I miss you, pal. I keep thinking about what you would do if you were here, how you’d react to television, or the crazy billboards in Times Square, or the movies people watch now at days. I mean, it’s great, don’t get me wrong, a lot of this new world is interesting, brilliant even, and I think once the shock and awe of it all wears off I will finally get used to it enough to enjoy it. I just feel…overwhelmed by all of it, you know, like everything has come at me at once, and I don’t know how to process all of it.”
Steve had never had this trouble adapting before, not even when he’d added nearly a foot in height and over a hundred pounds in weight. He’d adapted to his larger, taller body easier than he was adapting to all of this, and it frustrated him in a way he never could quite articulate, not even to Peggy. He felt somehow as if he should.
“Anyway, I’m not all alone here. Peggy, impossibly, is in this world too. I think you would be less shocked about that than me.” How many times had Bucky urged him to finally just take a chance with the girl of his dreams? How many times had Steve made excuses? He hated to admit that Bucky was of course right on that score. He should have taken his chance ages ago.
“I don’t know where I stand with her just yet. I mean, yeah, I know, common sense says she came through time to where I was at and all, but I don’t know. She’s got a life here and a purpose. She’s trying to save the world, or universe, or whatever, and here I am, just the schmuck who crash landed into a glacier, finally woken up after all these years. She’s trying to stop the murder of half of all life and I can’t even figure out how to not screw up a date. And I did that, last night, by the way, totally left her on the sidelines at that old dance hall in Queens we went to, while I got wrapped up in Vic Morello’s life. He’s still around, by the way. Survived and married his girl, had a family, lived a life. All the things we used to think we wanted, and now…hell, Buck, I don’t know what I want to do next! Peggy’s got plans for herself. I am just not sure if I fit into those plans, or if I want to fit into them. She says she wants me to head up her team. I’m good at it, I know, and God it would be easy to step back into that role again, be Captain America, do what is right and stand up for the little guy. I can do that. I don’t know if I want to.”
It was the first time Steve had admitted it out loud to anyone, the idea that he possibly could or would be anything else other than the man behind the shield. It felt liberating to say, even to a cold slab of black granite shoved into the ground. “I got into the war because I wanted to help, to make a difference, and I think I did. But I had hoped to go home too, to live a life, maybe settle down with the right partner, and just be Steve Rogers. I had hoped, maybe, I could talk Peggy into it after it was all said and done. But now I realize that that kind of life maybe isn’t what Peggy wanted, what she ever wanted. And I’m not so sure I want to throw myself back into a new and different fight that isn’t my own. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be doing something good, standing up for people, but…I don’t know if I fit into this. I’m just a snot nosed, scrawny kid from Brooklyn with a big mouth and a too much righteous indignation for my own good. Peggy is telling me about aliens and time travel, and I don’t know, feels very…big.”
He couldn’t almost see Bucky rolling his eyes at his self-pity, asking him so now what? Would he walk away, figure out a life for himself in this new world and leave the fighting to others for a change? Steve knew his answer even before it was formulated. No…no, he wouldn’t just walk away. That felt wrong, unnatural, and a part of him felt deeply ashamed for even thinking about it. After all, when did he ever shy away from doing the right thing, especially when it was for his own good?
“Maybe I’m just standing here talking to my best friend’s gravestone like an idiot because I have my head up my ass, as usual.” He sighed, a soft chuckle, swiping a toe on the dewy, sere ground. “I saw a priest. He told me to have grace with myself, and I’m trying. It’s been weeks, maybe, since I woke up, and I get it. It’s not like I need to figure this all out this second, but the further I get into this world, the more I realize I can’t wait forever to decide, either. I can’t just sit around and dwell forever on what was lost. But damn, if it’s not hard, always picking up and moving forward again and again. I’d just like peace enough to build something stable that I won’t lose again.”
That was the dream, at least. Maybe he could, still, even in this strange place. Peggy promised him all the time and space he needed to figure this out, to decide what he wanted. She wasn’t walking away from him, nor was she forcing him into choosing. He knew she couldn’t wait forever, but she had waited this long for him. That was a hopeful sign, right?
The sunlight shifted, and he glanced at the watch he had slipped on that morning, his old army issued one, reading 9 AM. Peggy would have already gotten up and made her way to her office at the SHIELD headquarters in Times Square. If he timed it right, he could meet her there, perhaps ask her out for lunch, convince her to step away from her desk and show him around this new world his old home had become. Agent Peggy Carter had to be pried away from her desk in London with a crowbar, but Director Peggy Carter of the Avengers Initiative might be persuaded, especially if he got Cassie Kam on his side.
Shuffling in his pocket for change, he rifled through the coins until he pulled out one shiny, copper one with Abraham Lincoln’s profile raised on it. It was a newly minted coin, or fairly so, 2011, and it gleamed in the sunlight as he set it on Bucky’s gravestone. No one else would know who James Buchanen Barnes was, but he would remember, and so would Peggy, and as long as he was around he’d remember his name and the good man and hero that he was.
“See you soon, Bucky,” he murmured, rising to stand straight once more, ignoring the tingling burn in his eyes and nose as he turned to walk back the way he had come. What was left of the morning mists were gone, as sunlight flickered, golden, in a robin egg blue sky. From the west, a breeze blew promising warmth and sunlight, green grass, and a return of spring. He’d been in the cold so long. It would be nice to feel warm, centered, and certain once again.