Chapter 3
There was a faint chattering sound.
It was annoying and grating in his ears. He wanted it to stop.
He groaned as suddenly his head exploded into pain, while he could feel it pulsate in rhythm to his heartbeat. All at once, the memories of what had happened before he fell asleep, or was he dead, came flooding back to him and a sense of urgency flared in his mind.
He needed to get up. He needed to find out what was going on.
How he was alive.
He forced his eyes open to see a white ceiling. A fan was spinning lazily above him and he could hear chatter coming through a radio more clearly.
He forced himself to sit up. There was a video on one side of the bed. He could see buildings outside of it, but something just seemed..off about it..too still.
He looked back at the small room before his attention refocused on the small radio sitting on a desk at the end of the bed. It was a ballgame. A familiar ballgame. One he and Bucky had listened too.
Something was WRONG.
His head snapped to the door when it opened, and a woman stepped in. Her makeup done over a little too much, and her hair styled a little too perfectly.
"Oh your up. That's good." Her voice and words a little too practiced.
He regarded her with a look of suspicion. "Where am I?"
"In a recovery ward in New York City." New York? He had been there before. But....it was too quiet outside for him to be there. And when he focused instead of hearing the chatter that came with the busy city all he could hear was silence.
He paused a moment than gave her a light glare, standing up and looking down at her, unintentionally towering over her, but he didn't care.
"Where am I really?"
She looked up at him and met his stare. "Sir?"
"It's too quiet to be New York. Besides, the game, on the radio, its from May 1941. I know because I listened to it, with my friend. So I'll ask again. Where am I?" His eyes flashed down to her hand when he heard an almost inaudible click, to see a small black box with a glowing red light on it. He snapped.
"Captain Rogers-"
He cut her off. "Who are you!?"
Suddenly the door behind her opened, and two men dressed in strange black uniforms entered, making him take an involuntary step back.
Anger flashed in his eyes, he was so confused and his body still ached in places. He threw one man through the desk when they came at him, before ducking under the punch the other through and then rearing his leg up and kicking the man through the wall.
He stared for a moment and then took his chance. He fled, leaving behind what he now knew was a room inside a box. He could hear the woman screaming behind him words that sounded like 'Code 13'.
He burst through the silver metal doors and down a hallway. He stopped for a moment and looked around when he emerged into a hallway with more men dressed like the ones from before. He could hear the woman's voice echoing through the hallway.
He turned and looked down one direction, as the men started yelling and running after him. He didn't waste time and took off in the other direction, pushing the men trying to stop him down as he went.
He came upon several glass doors, and could see a street just outside them so he changed course. It was a street, but on them where several machines that looked like cars, but different.
So he ran the other direction from them. Incidentally the direction they were going.
He stopped to look around when he came into an area that was surrounded by skyscrapers. There was so much noise, and lights.
It was all just a bit overwhelming.
Suddenly several of black 'cars' surrounded him and he tensed in case of a fight when he heard a yell. "Stand down soldier!"
He snapped around to face the call and was met with a man in a black trench coat with an eyepatch over his eye.
"Look, sorry about that little escapade back there, but we wanted to break it to you slowly."
Sabo was confused. "Break what?" He was panting slightly. He felt as if he hadn't run in years. But that didn't make sense.
The man hesitated and Sabo narrowed his eyes at him. "...You've been asleep Captain. For almost 70 years."
Sabo couldn't come up with a response. In all honesty he didn't want to believe the man, but with everything around him, so different and new, and everything else.
He couldn't find a logical solution to refute the man's claim.
He evidently had been quite too long because the man with the eyepatch decided to break him out of whatever silence he had just entered. "You gonna be ok?"
He looked back at the man and stared. How was he supposed to answer that? No he wasn't going to be. 70 years. 70! What would that mean for him, for his brothers?! But this man didn't know about them. He didn't know who or what Sabo really was.
He nodded slowly. "Yea. Yea, maybe."
No. He won't be okay. And he never will be.