sunshine boy

sunshine boy

STEVE ROGERS

— brooklyn, new york, 1939 —

Being twenty-one was like treading water a dozen feet from shore. It’s tranquil in a sense that no one was really there to bother you, yet there’s that impending sense of anonymous dread. To many, it shows itself in the form of a tidal wave of time slowly creeping up on you with its seafoam laced with responsibilities andwhat am I doing with my life?’s that never seem to cease. There’s also the current that could drag you out to sea, lost in the myriad of nothingness that sooner rather than later will drive you mad from confusion. 

To Steve, the dread came in the form of Rebecca Barnes sitting on the stoop of the apartment building, using a stick to torment a cockroach with a disgusted scowl on her pretty face. 

Rebecca was notorious around the neighborhood. The oldest of all the Barnes’ girls, she was the perfect picture of a young beautiful girl that the neighbors have all whispered were inherited from her mother. She shared Bucky’s bright eyes and cheerful smile, but her wit was the downfall of unsuspecting boys who dared to court her. She had long hair the color of obsidian; warm and soft in the sunlight. In the summers, her pale skin pinked and freckled all over her shoulders and face to her everlasting dismay. Steve remembered one instance on a hot July afternoon when he saw Rebecca leaning her back on the archway of the building’s door, her long legs bent at the knee to fit completely within the space of the door. She wore a stark red dress with puffed up short sleeves that displayed the small salmon blobs that the Indiana mosquitos left behind after their last family trip to visit family out west. Rebecca didn’t pay mind to the bites, though, because her attention was drawn to her naked shoulder where she pushed the sleeve out of the way to start peeling off the damaged skin off in thick, long strips. She seemed to enjoy it.

Rebecca was what most of the older women tsked about as being a fish swimming up the river. She wore the powdered blue dresses that her mother forced her into, yet her stockings always had a run in them no matter how much Mrs. Barnes fussed over them, and her oxford’s were always scuffed beneath the frill of her socks. 

No one knew whether she was coming or going, perfect or rebelling, least of all her parents. There was only one thing that everyone was sure about: Rebecca Barnes loved her older brother. Sure, Bucky loved all his younger sisters equally and especially found solace in spending most of his time with them, but Rebecca was one in particular that held most of his affection. Steve once theorized that it was due to the fact that Rebecca was only four years his junior, thus making her the one he could relate to the most. Instead of other women not being able to measure up to Winifred, it seemed the bar was set firmly on Rebecca. If Bucky was to jump off a bridge, Rebecca would holler at him for not inviting her along. 

“Hi, Steve,” she smiled, eyes sharp as she continued to prod at the posterior of the insect.

“Hey, Becs. You’re too early, but Bucky should be in soon,”

“I figured as much,” 

A beat. “Want to wait upstairs with me until he gets back?” the blonde motioned toward the building with his lunchbox, having just completed his own shift for the day. It wasn’t grueling like the dock work that Bucky did, but it was demoralizing standing at a curb with a stack of newspapers that people would walk by without even a glance at him. They all shrugged him off, some going as far as asking him if he should be in school at that hour. It was humiliating on the best of days, but it was easy money that the two desperately needed.

“Actually … I came to see you,” she said, never looking up from the ground, “I need to talk to you about something important,”

“Is it bad?” 

Rebecca shrugged, pushing the cockroach on its back. Prickly legs frailed about quickly, its stomach for all to see in its pitiful display to right itself again. She watched it for a good minute, flipping the stick to hold like a dagger, and came down on it with a force that Steve has only ever seen being used when her brother was teaching her how to throw a proper punch. The stick pierced the body of the insect, no doubt painful as it seemed even more desperate to flee from the young woman’s torment. She got bored of it’s antics, and stood up to press down on it with her scuffed oxfords. There was a sickening crunch, followed by more crunching when she twisted the tip of her shoe on the ground . “Depends on what your definition of bad is,”

She dusted off her skirt as she stood by Steve, patiently waiting for him to unlock the door of the building. Her braids were laying flat down her chest – and Steve willed himself to look away when his face flushed hot. His fingers itch to draw her when she turned from him to look down the street, her lashes touching the bottom of her auburn bangs and the sun shining on her freckles. He considered briefly if he could envision a future with her, if she could ever substitute the gaping hole in his heart that he felt for her brother, but he knew that he couldn’t ever live a happy life with Rebecca. ‘ You two are cut from the same cloth,’ Bucky once lamented.

He guided her upstairs without ceremony when it hit him that this was the first time that Rebecca would actually see the inside of the apartment. What would she think of the lopsided armchair that relied on three books to stay propped up? Would she think that her brother was too good for a shabby one bedroom apartment? Could she possibly see the warmth and comfort in the space, or would she only single out the melancholy that lingered in the air like a stale perfume? She was smart, just like her brother, after all. 

He glanced at her from over her shoulder, but she only had eyes for the yellow bruise on her forearm that looked a lot like fingers. Winifred did always complain about the roughhousing that Rebecca would get into with Judy. Only fifteen and already leaving bruises like that – he wondered if Bucky would be proud. Poor Rachel, he thought. She had no idea what was coming to her when Rebecca would move on and Judy would turn to the youngest of the Barnes’ to rough house. 

The doorknob was tricky despite the blonde jabbing the key about in the keyhole, but Steve managed to give it a good shove with his shoulder to make the door pop open. Rebecca followed him inside, watching him with a smirk on her dusty pink lips as she walked inside. “You’re stronger than you look, Rogers,” she mused, hands laced in front of her as she moved gracefully around the room. The living room in particular had lovely grand vertical windows that allowed all the light in New York to filter through. Steve liked to think it was his mother hidden in the dust in the rays, dancing around the room while watching him draw or cook while Bucky went on and on about that week’s newest novel. 

He accepted the compliment with a smile, setting his lunchbox on the wooden table before sitting down himself with a slight sigh. “You’re too kind, Becca. Please, sit. I know they ain’t the best, but you get use to the blisters they leave on your ass,” 

Rebecca laughed, shaking her head as she leaned against the sink with her hands cushioning her backside and her ankles crossed. He could practically hear Winifred snapping at her about how it wasn’t ladylike. “Thank you, but I sat out there for a while before you came,”

“Suit yourself,” Steve said. His skin prickled with discomfort, his tongue feeling too big for his mouth. He scratched at a phantom itch that remained from dirt and sweat from the street. “How’s school?”

“Oh,” Rebecca sighed, “It’s alright, I guess. English is my favorite class. There’s this book we read that I really liked – Othello . It’s real old. Ma said that she read it in high school too, but I doubt it. Ma ain’t smart enough to understand it,” her fingers found a thread on her sweater, “Have you ever read it?” 

Steve considered briefly on his own high school experience at George Washington high. It was as uneventful as most things are, and he got decent enough grades for constantly being sick. Most of the novels that Steve read were read to him by Bucky or his Ma, sitting at his bedside and wagging their finger at him whenever he stopped writing notes to watch them. Bucky in his skinny love rose-tinted glasses, and Ma in his child-like admiration. 

“I think so. It’s Shakespeare, right?” Rebecca nodded, “I only really remember the handkerchief part,” 

“That’s the smallest part in the entire play!” Rebecca rolled her eyes, “My favorite character is Desdemona. Remember her?” 

“Vaguely. Refresh my memory?”

“Sure. Well, Desdemona was the daughter of this really important Italian politician. She starts out as this free spirit who loved adventure, and even begged later on to follow her husband to war. She got in a lot of hot water, though, because she eloped with a black man. Imagine that? An interracial couple – half of which comes from an influential family,” she chuckled, like it was an inside joke with herself that Steve wasn’t allowed to know about,  “Anyway, the play is really more about her husband and his best friend betraying him by convincing Othello that Desdemona is cheating on him. The play ends with Othello strangling Desdemona to death,” 

“Christ, and you like this?” 

“I wasn’t finished ! The worst part is that he doesn’t end up killing her all the way. She was still alive when her friend finds her. Even when she’s laying in her bed half-dead , she doesn’t blame Othello. Emilia asks her who killed her and Desdemona just said that she did it to herself. She died truly believing that Othello was innocent for murdering her,”

Although Steve was glad that Rebecca was able to connect so closely with the material she studied, it was a little unnerving as to why she had connected to the murdered daughter of a politician. It was tragic – there’s no doubt about that – but it’s not something a young woman should be connecting to. The blonde hummed to show he was listening, riffling through the mail. All bills. All over-due. 

The young woman didn’t seem to care much about Steve’s two cents, just kept waving her hands around like her mother does every time she speaks. He only interrupted her to ask, “What happened to Othello?” 

Rebecca stopped her analysis on Desdemona’s role in the play, drifting her true blue eyes at Steve. She looked at him as if he was stupid. “He killed himself. The guilt got too much of him, and he died right next to her,” 

“And you like this because …?” 

The young woman got bored of playing with the loose thread, and has since moved on to tracing her nail within the grooves of the wooden countertop. The knicks and markes engraved into the grain were overlooked as she followed the original lines that were there before Steve and Bucky started hacking at it with knives and such. She was quiet for a long time – long enough that Steve was opening his mouth to change the subject – when she spoke again, “It’s never revealed why Iago wanted to take Othello down. It’s hinted at that he was passed over for a promotion, but I think it’s deeper than that. I think Iago couldn’t stand the thought of Othello being with someone else. Lots of people think that Iago was in love with Othello and the only way he could get Desdemona out of the picture was by making him believe that she was cheating on him,” she grimaced, “Would you?”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “Would I what?” 

“Would you betray Bucky if he got married and moved away? Would you … I don’t know, manipulate him into staying?” 

Steve stopped midway of setting the bills down on the table top, his chest suddenly tighter than ever. It felt like hot coal gathered at the bottom of his stomach. Cut him open and there would be enough coal to power the entire city for the winter. The truth was that he doesn’t know what he’d do — he wouldn’t go as far as to kill her, but the fact that it gave him pause at the thought was scarier than any book Rebecca had to read for school. He wished he knew what he’d do when Bucky leaves. Maybe he’d catch a train to Coney Island, toe off his shoes, and walk into the ocean while the sounds of seagulls and screams lulled him into the icy waves. Maybe he won’t go down as quietly, opting to find content numbness at the bottom of a glass in a bar with sticky rings and crack his skull on a brick wall while some asshole gave him the what for. Then there’s the possibility of fading away like Ma — wrapped in blankets smelling of morning dew and roses, listening to the world that would continue to turn long after he was gone, and drift into the arms of someone he thought he’d never see again. 

None of them felt comforting enough. Even in the seclusion of the blankets, it all still felt too loud. 

All he knew was that he was tired of thinking about Bucky leaving. Every day for almost six years, that was the one constant that had stuck around. He woke up thinking about how he’d survive the harsh winters without Bucky helping him, and he fell asleep thinking about how he’d miss the gentle string of snores that have morphed into a twisted lullaby.  

Steve sighed heavily, rubbing his eyes with both hands. “Rebecca, you should be happy that your brother would find someone that made him happy,” the girl’s face pulled into a snarl, but he continued, “You don’t even know her. What if you gals end up hitting it off? You can have a new best friend,”

“I don’t need a best friend,” no longer looking for something to distract her gaze, Rebecca crossed her arms across her chest. Like armour, though against what, Steve never did find out. “You didn’t answer the question,” 

“ Christ, Rebecca —” 

“It’s not that hard of a question, Steve! Yes, or no?” 

“ Enough!” 

He didn’t mean to raise his voice at her. The regret set in the moment he saw her flinch, eyes wide in the way that only young girls get whenever in the face of danger. Doe-like and lithe, she looked close to tears for a moment. Steve hated it, but he couldn’t help seeing his friend in her. He sighed and rested his forehead into his hands, willing away the moment into nothingness before even thinking of saying another word to her. He felt it deplete into a sigh, then looked up at her. “I’m sorry, Becca. I didn’t mean to yell at you. There’s no excuse for that,” he said, shoulders caving in. 

Rebecca was quiet for a moment, eyes drawn down to look at her shoes. There was a thin, horizontal white scratch that stretched from the toe to the sole that Steve remembered coming from the time she insisted on playing baseball in the park with them and stole third. Mrs. Barnes threw a fit when she saw her oldest daughter running out the house with Bucky’s old shorts cinched around her thin waist, baseball glove under her arm and hair pulled under a cap. According to Judy, their mother saw the scratch and bruised knees and immediately left the home with a sigh, no doubt to smoke a cigarette without the prying eyes of her children. 

She shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s okay because it ain’t, but … I’m sorry for insisting. It’s a sore subjects, I should’ve pried,”

“It’s not that, Becs,” he muttered, tucking his hands into his pockets, “All I ever think about is Bucky leaving. He says it won’t change things, but I know it will. He’s just so full of good, he’ll be a great husband and father, and I also know that he’ll try to stretch that good onto me. I can’t do that to him. I can’t force him to shoulder me too,” 

“You don’t know that,”

“But I do. I know he doesn’t do it on purpose, Hell, I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. It’s his life, though. All we can really do is be there for him when he needs us,” Steve relaxed the tension from his shoulders, smiling up at her, “Your brother is a really great person, Becs,”

Rebecca moved to join him at the table now, sitting down heavily onto the creaking wooden chairs. Her hands cupped each other on the counter. “What if he doesn’t think about us anymore?” she whispered, lips barely moving, “What if he moves far away and we never get to see him again?”

“Bucky would move Heaven and Hell for you, Becca. That will never be an issue, I promise you,” 

“That’s not true,” Rebecca chimed, looking up at him from under her lashes, “There’s always going to be someone more important to him,” her gaze felt hot, staring into him in a way that he only ever saw once when he was too young to even remember their faces. It felt like a threat.

“What’s all this about?” 

Rebecca sighed again, pressing and rubbing down on the skin between her thumb and pointer finger. A nervous tick — a new one, replaced from a phase in which she would suck the back of her hand until it left a wet purple mark. “This morning Momma asked me to go pick up some stuff she needed for dinner tonight and I saw … Bucky with a woman,” 

His chest felt numb, but he pushed down the dread and cold, the blue suddenly fading into a dull gray. Rebecca continued, “She’s real pretty too. He was smiling so wide, and he gave her some flowers,” a small black speck moved in the corner of Steve’s eye and he realized that it was a spider. It’s thin legs moved slowly and cautiously around the wood, moving eerily like a possessed man. Rebecca must’ve noticed it too, because her eyes were on it the second it made itself known with its languid movements. 

There’s a thing about Rebecca that Steve has noticed over the years, wordlessly watched it developed since she was old enough to hold her head up and stare at Steve like she was pondering all the ways she could fight him. Despite his own failed mental arguments, there’s a darkness about her. She didn’t flinch or scream at the sight of a spider the same way Judith or Rachel would, nor did she immediately call attention to it the way Bucky would’ve. Instead, she chose to sit and watch it, eyes burning a hot hole into the animal. 

She looked at it the same way Steve imagined God would at humans; debating whether to grant it mercy, or snuff it out of existence. He always felt like she was more Old Testament in most aspects. 

The girl opened her palm, hand flat on the wood and still like the dead. She moved slowly, almost on par with the arachnid. When she spoke, he felt his heart rate pick up without reason. “He looked so happy with her. I heard someone call her Dolores, but he called her Dot,” the spider froze. Two black needles prodded around until it poked the soft, pink skin of her hand. Steve wanted to tell it to run. “It was like the whole world melted away when he looked at her. She just kept talking and talking. Never shut up. He just smiled and listened. I bet she could’ve socked him in the street and he wouldn’t do anything,”

There’s a shift. It starts with her eyes — it always starts with her eyes — then down to her shoulders. Her body becomes loose, pliant. A sense of vulnerability littering the air, but he knew better. It was her Siren’s song, so to speak. Appeal to a man’s Alpha senses, make herself irresistible. They’ll inch closer, slowly, moving like a harmless house spider. She’ll hold out her hand, offer herself up for the taking, just so long as they make the effort of moving to her. 

The spider — Adam, bewitched — climbed into her hand, poking and testing the landscape. Once deciding it was safe enough, stead enough to support it, the animal started the roam about her palm. Rebecca lifted her hand up, elbow resting on the wood and moving it to keep her eyes always on the thing. 

The predator is now the prey. 

“Reminded me of this guy my friend Annabeth was with. An absolute mouth breather, ya know? I think his name was Ben,” the spider paused somewhere between her fingers, and Steve wondered if it bit her, would it die instead, “He liked Annabeth well enough, I guess. I liked her more, though. She’s my best friend, I knew her better than anyone. That’s why I noticed it when no one else did,” 

She shifted her wrist, the spider startled and ran down her forearm. Rebecca put her other hand in its path, fooling the poor thing into running back towards the danger it was desperately trying to escape from. The clock ticked faintly on the wall. “She stopped wearing dresses to school, then started wearing sweaters. I asked her once about a bruise and she spun a whole novel about how she got hurt climbin’ a tree. She forgot I know all about her fear of heights,” her voice turned cold, bored. Like she was repeating something back to him, her mind otherwise occupied as she brought the spider close to her eyes. Look upon me and despair. “Last week I went over to his house to try and talk to him,” her other hand crept up behind her other, still and waiting. The spider looked upon her. “He didn’t like me talking to him, said I didn’t show him respect. A goddamned rapist,” 

Her face twisted horribly, tight jaw and furrowed eyebrows. Her body shook from the coldness of her heart seeping out, gripping the apartment in a way that Steve never felt whenever in the presence of Bucky’s radiance. The spider didn’t know what hit it as her palm snapped into a fist, a mock imitation of a venus flytrap pouncing on its meal. Only, she didn’t do it for survival. She hunted for game, for the crunch of a body and the prone feeling of a lifeless corpse. Rebecca Barnes tightened her fist with her other hand, keeping it close as if she wanted to keep its very soul trapped inside the cavern of her hands. A Hell hidden in a teenage girl’s body. “Let’s say that I haven’t seen Ben in a while,” 

Steve’s blood ran cold, and the sense of dread hit him harder than any quarter-life crisis. There was a way that Rebecca looked at him – piercing through him with deep blue eyes. It was hard to tell who the true Rebecca was. She was little Becky who liked to play dolls with Bucky or stomp her foot when they wouldn’t let her play kickball with them. She was Rebecca who taunted a life in her hands, ready to snuff it out of existence with a mere quirk of her eyebrow. It made him wonder if that deep seated darkness and anger had always resided in her, if she was just born angry to a world that made no sense so she had to take it upon herself to purge of its evil. 

To kill the infestation of filth like cockroaches, spiders and men like Ben. 

A primal side of Steve told him to stand still, and not run. Prey run. Predators chase and kill. Seventeen years old and already Rebecca was bending her future in her own way. Securing the future in her favor. He was jealous. 

“ Fuck, Rebecca,” he said, his hands trembling nowhere near as severe as the shaking in his guts, “Please tell me you didn’t ...,” 

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking,” she doesn’t look at him, just opened her hand so the black remains of dismembered sticks and a torso tumbled out of her hands like dice. She watched it fall to her lap. As if nothing, she brushed it off her to the floor. “I think I scared him off, though,” 

“Anyone ever tell you you’re terrifying?” 

Rebecca laughed sweetly, the light shifted back on her face now that the ugliness and darkness was fed its sacrifice. It felt intoxicating, pulling the corners of his lips up also. She leaned her chin on her crossed arms on the table, looking up at him from under dark lashes. “We all got a dark side, Stevie,” she said, “I hope I never see yours,” 

Steve opened his mouth to ask, but the door swung open with an orchestra of creaking and moaning to reveal the starlight that was Bucky’s radiance. He looked tired, eyes barely staying open, but he grinned wider than anyone would upon seeing his sister sitting at the table. 

Even Rebecca perked up when she saw him, snapping up to a proper seating position. The two shared a silent greeting all their own, a telepathy that Steve has long since stopped trying to crack. The two were notorious for their close relationship in Brooklyn, often warranting strange looks from the older women upon their steps as they passed by in a flurry of laughter and songs. “Hey, Becca,” Bucky mused, setting down his lunchbox with a dull thud, “Whatcha doing here?”

She shrugged a shoulder, leaning towards the man like a sunflower would towards the sun. She looked at him like he hung the sun. “Just missed you, I guess,” she muttered, smiling, “Judy isn’t as fun to get into trouble with as you are, Bubba ,” 

Judith Barnes, second daughter and current sole heir to Rebecca’s hand-me-downs, was the exact opposite of her older siblings. While Bucky and Rebecca reveled in mischief, Judith preferred to weigh and measure her options before partaking in anything remotely dangerous. She was the voice of reason among the siblings, a fierce belief in rules being set in place for a reason, no matter how far-fetched or wrong. The phrase of lex malla, lex nulla was nonexistent to her. She was homely compared to Rebecca. Her duty was to become a future housewife, the feed the world casseroles and babies — a fate that she revelled in. The two sisters often butted heads, leaving Rachel to weave their relationship back together after a few particular arguments that could have shattered that friendship forever. 

Bucky shook his head at her, coming close to them and resting his hand on the back of Steve’s chair. The heat from his body sent shivers down the young man’s spine, washing away all fears and doubts until all that remained was a dull buzz. Steve felt blue. 

“You leave that poor girl alone. Ma has to at least have one proper daughter,” he chuckled, Rebecca following with a roll of her eyes and a giggle. She tapped the wood with her fingers, keeping in tune with the clock. 

“First Rachel, now Judith. Next thing we know I’m going to be the cute little wife Ma keeps telling us about,” she said, “That is, until you get married off,” 

Bucky gave a proper, gut laugh. The kind that makes him throw his head back and laugh towards the sky, high in the blue of it. Steve could feel the vibrations through the thin backing of the chair, and his heart wept in yearning. “Becca, my love, when I go down, I’m taking you down with me,” 

Rebecca huffed a piece of her bangs off her eyes, and Steve didn’t miss the split-second glance she threw his way. For a moment, the blue was replaced with a vile green. It felt sticky and scaley, like touching a fish down in the market. He could see the emerald corruption of rot and decay, a warning painted in a color reserved for money, greed, poison, and jealousy. It disguised itself as grass and nature, life and seafoam. The feeling of fear and impending doom was green. Steve shuddered. 

The blue returned in a rush of comfort and prickling cold, the kind that meant melancholy. A word that’s just for them, for the pinky that touched his back just then. Rebecca flashed between the two colors, sometimes turning a sweet turquoise that reminded the young man of his own mother and her love of her friends. It felt ancient and divine, fresh. The siblings shared another laugh to a joke that Steve didn’t hear, but he saw them flash that beautiful melody of color and he wondered if maybe he had been too harsh on Rebecca. 

The blue left him, moving over to the young green that sat before Steve and lifting her up over his shoulder. She squealed in protest, snorting a laugh that made Steve bubble with giddiness at the sight of them. Strands of onyx hair flew by him, creating spider veins across her flushed cheeks and rosy lips. Bucky spun her around, his back muscles moving in a way that displayed them for every ripple under olive skin. An Adonis in the body of a mortal and Steve desperately wished he could join him as a myth. 

Rebecca’s voice travelled around the apartment. A mix of “ Let me down!” and “ I’m flying!” as she spun around. The sun caught on her eyes, flashing Steve with the honey-comb of her irises as she was spun around their kitchen. Rays of sunshine blinked in and out, their shadows casted long yet friendly, the girl’s bracelet projecting orbs of white all over the ceiling and walls. At first she stretched a hand out to Steve, grazing his shoulder and jaw each time she completed a circle, her face vanishing behind Bucky’s own smile. Now, though, she twisted herself head up to the ceiling and laughed. If he didn’t know any better, Steve would’ve guessed that she was trying to bask in the sunlight. She stayed that way for a little, then in her glee, reached back out to Steve. 

This time he accepted her hand, holding tight to stop Bucky in his twirling or else risking dislocating the girl’s shoulder. He looked between the two, rolling his sister down an arm and to the ground in a smooth transition that Steve wished he could capture for reference. 

Rebecca moved her other hand away from Bucky, only to be pulled back roughly. 

A thread from Bucky’s shirt caught on the girl’s bracelet, pulling out a good two inches as she tugged before realizing what was the cause of her entrapment. She frowned at him. “Look what you did, you big oaf!” she chastised him the same way Mrs. Barnes does. Or did. She still waits by the window, waiting for Ma to come waltzing into the building after a shift and completely ready to get accosted by her best friend among the stairs. He wondered if she’ll still be there thirty years from now, older, and still waiting for Ma to come home. 

“ I’m the oaf? I’m not the one with fish hooks for a bracelet,” 

“Oh please, if they really were fish hooks, they’d only latch on to catches. Not morons from Brooklyn,” 

“Careful there, Becs. I’m pretty, but I ain’t no mirror ,” 

Rebecca tugged harder, and Bucky screeched. Once satisfied, she unclipped the bracelet’s lock from her wrist, sliding out gracefully. “Let me get that,” she whispered, fishing around Steve’s desk for a pair of scissors. He normally hated it when people riffled through his thing, usually getting ready to decapitate Bucky for even hovering near it, but Rebecca was mindful as she shuffled the pages of sketches and scattered pencils until she came upon the shears. 

She moved over toward Bucky, an urgent motherly stride taking over her as she took the thread between her fingers. It straightened, its length longer than they all originally thought. 

Taking the scissors, Rebecca cut the thread. 

Something happened. Steve can’t put his finger on it. He had the urgent feeling of dread sitting heavy in his stomach, his heart beating faster. He felt the need to tell someone about something, but he couldn’t figure out what. Sighing, he willed his body into calming down. He focused on the two siblings in front of him, teasing the other the same way they’ve been doing since they were kids. 

He merely smiled and turned back to start preparing dinner, making a mental note to ask Rebecca if she’ll be joining them. He thought a nice traditional Irish dish sounded good, something his mother would’ve made if she knew they were having guests. Beef stew, perhaps. 

Wiping the table down with a rag, his hand bumped against the stack of bills he laid down when he walked in. The stack shifted and spread out like cards, but only one took out to him among the others. A cherry red stamped across the front, his friend's name typed out precisely and in full.

He picked it up tenderly, turning it over to open it from the back where a wax seal held it closed. His fingertips grew frigid, numb, and the envelope fell out of his hand. The ringing in his ears drowned out the noises of Rebecca and Bucky chatting, and all he could see was red. Roman red, majestic and noble with its fiery passion that toppled empires and kingdoms with every tremor of the Earth under heavy stomps. A vision of men on horses, shields branded up high near their eyes and a sword pointed straight for the throat of an enemy. 

The draft notice laid on the wood, and the Earth came shattering down around him.