Aleph

For being the guy’s running buddy and perhaps-best-friend-this-side-of-the-20th-century, It was easy to forget Steve Rogers was The Man Out of Time. One moment the dude’d be adding yet another tv series to his ever-growing Netflix queue, mentioning he’d been “meaning to get around to that”, and the next, dude was gawping, tripping over his own feet and face-planting into a damned light post all ‘cause he’s caught two queers kissing on a street corner.

Well. Make that hard to remember. It was hard to remember life had been different, back in the day. That alphas roamed the streets unchecked, that forcible heat-knotting wasn’t considered rape, that an alpha in rut wasn’t responsible for their actions, that an omega was held accountable (still blamed, to this day, if not on heat-suppressants) for their own biology, while alphas were “at the mercy of nature”. That omegas only got the vote around the time Steve Rogers had been born. That Steve went under the ice more that twenty years before Stonewall, before Selma, before the Alabama Bus Boycott, before the massive Omega Lib movement of the 60's and 70's that made hormonal heat-blockers and abortion (supposedly) accessible to all. Anti-miscegenation was still the standard in his time, that whites and blacks—any people of color—were forbidden to interbreed. That two men, two women, two alphas, two omegas, even two betas couldn’t be seen together in public, that queerness—of whatever gender—was both a death sentence and social suicide.

No. They hadn’t had hormonal heat-suppressants in the 1920’s. Castration, sure, but that was reserved solely for criminals, the mentally ill, for blacks, for Irish, for alphas “too inferior” to spread their seed for fear of contaminated stock, for omegas deemed “too sickly to bear”.

“People forget because they want to,” Cap had sighed when Sam’d had the shit-for-brains idea of taking him to the Holocaust Museum. “That Hitler’s eugenics and eugendering began here at home.”

…and any other methods? Yeah. Sam’d looked it up. Comstock laws had made it a crime.

“Ma was a suffragette,” Cap had shrugged when the sensitive issue of suppression, contraception, and abortion turned up. For all SHIELD's briefing, they'd done a shit job actually preparing Steve Rogers for the 21st Century. “She marched for omega rights, went to jail for omega rights, and she’d be damned if she didn’t help every alpha lookin’ for scent-blockers or omega lookin’ for heat-masking on our street. Tampons soaked in alcohol, you know. Dry up the nose, kill the nerve endings, stop a rut. Tampons soaked in vinegar up the the uh, well. You know,” Steve flushed. “The vagina or anus. Dry up secretions and scent glands. And she’d, well. It was an Irish and Italian street. Omegas always pregnant, more in their brood than they could look after, and ma, she’d help out. If someone wanted. A lot of nurses would, back in those days. Termination might be illegal, might be a sin, but it was just practical, you know? And ma, she’d never ask. Never make ‘em say. Knew a few Sisters who’d do it, too, the church mid-wives an’ all, but you’d have to swear up an’ down it wasn’t your alpha an’ even then they’d make you go to confessional after. But ma? Ma knew how to do it, do it proper. Could smell it on ‘em. How far along. If a tea would work or if it’d have to be some stronger herbs, have to be a scraping. Don’t know how many ‘megas she saved, stopped ‘em from throwin’ themselves down the stairs when no one else’d help ‘em.”

“And here I thought your ma was Catholic,” Sam said, once he’d popped his dislocated jaw back in place. Seriously, though. That feeling you got when you smile or yawn too wide, too much? Yeah. His whole face was on fucking fire.

“She was.”

“Okay, right. So here I thought you were Catholic,” Sam frowned.

“I am,” Steve said. "But my best gal's a queer, Sam. What makes you think abortion or suppression would be any different?" Peggy Carter, doubly damned for her not-so-secret relationship with Angela Martinelli and her interracial marriage to Gabe Jones. Margaret Elizabeth "Big Brass Ones" Carter was a white alpha female married to a black alpha male with their mixed race children and her Italian Omega female lover living in unashamed polyamorous harmony back in the 1960's. Needless to say, it'd been a hard thing for the American and British people to stomach. But unlike Sally Ride, Carter hadn't held back a thing, let her legacy be crawling with controversy and didn't give a damn. (It was, after all, she'd said glibly in a 1991 interview when the Iron Curtain had fallen, "quite a great thing for an actress' career to sustain some sort of scandal. As I was the bread-winner I was only happy to provide!")

There was no arguing with that. But still. It cut across everything Sam'd been told (by USO, SSR, US and SHIELD propaganda, no doubt) about Cap's sainted childhood. Dude may have well've been Jesus for all the government was concerned, never sinned, born to a virgin, taught at the temple as a twelve year-old or something.“‘Sarah Rogers: Catholic Saint and Secret Abortionist’,” Sam tried it out. “I thought the two were mutually exclusive?”

“‘I will greatly increase your pain in childbirth, but your desire shall be for your alpha, and they shall rule over you.” Cap quipped, easy-as-you-please.

Papa was a preacher, or had been, until some damned White Alpha Rights Activist shot him. Sam was damned well sure something had short-circuited in his brain. “Dude…you…did you just quote the Bible?”

Steve shrugged.

“No, did Steve Rogers—did Captain fucking America—just quote the Bible to justify abortion—?” Sam said faintly. “Think I’m dreaming. I must be dreaming. Hell, even the Pope—you know, this one, our one not like, your one…” Sam trailed off his Beta Baptist babbling. “Shit.”

“We were Irish,” Steve argued. “We were always free thinkers. Weren’t exactly known for doin’ as we’re told. And it wasn’t just ma. Couldn’t keep a job as a newsie, got sick too much, even with Buck coverin’ my shifts…so on good days Ma’d have me be lookout, even a runner. Delivered more satchels of Queen Ann’s Lace an’ tansy tea an in my time than OmegasontheOcean.”

“Okay. Okay, wow. Just…wow, man. Mind officially blown. Your ma was a secret abortionist and you’re okay with that.”

Steve sighed. “Can’t say I’m okay with that, Sam, not really. I’d rather a world where no omega was forced to carry a child or endure a heat against their will, where no pregnancy ever occurred when unwanted, where there was no sexual assault, rather have a societal structure where no family of any means had to make that choice because all children were valued and taken care of. But idealism without action is dangerously willful naivety, Sam,” And he sounded tired, more tired that Sam had ever heard. “Sure, ma was an abortionist. But she also went to prison for omega rights and protest. An’ that’s how I make my peace with that,” Cap sighed. “She did what she could. She did everything that she could.”

And somewhere, somehow in a parallel universe and/or time travel, six year-old Samuel Thomas Wilson kicked the shins and shit out of whatever school yard bully told him he could never be a Howling Commando ‘cause Captain America didn't have time for the son some poor, black, Baptist omega rights activist. You heard it here first, folks, Sam grinned at the thought. Always meet your heroes.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Sam finally said, and handed the dude an ice cold beer. “Steve Rogers, all-around American hero and socialist.”

“Yep,” Cap flipped the top effortlessly, saluting him. “That’s me.”