therighttime | AU Milliways

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AU Milliways

The door opens from one pub to the next. A rosy-tinted, warm little English pub filled to the brim with uniformed soldiers and local girls, crowing and laughing and being alive, really feeling it for the first time in longer than any of them would like to admit.

The woman who is leaving that particular pub is tall - very tall, inches over six feet - shapely in her 1940s olive dress uniform. Her make-up is fresh, her tie in perfect order, her hair is even curled in classic victory rolls (it took three showgirls three hours to make it happen, but they're all used to it by now).

Stephanie Rogers is grinning, flush-faced and filled with joy as she waves to a dark-haired soldier at the bar and steps purposefully into -- another bar.

She recognizes a shift, a difference immediately, and keeps one hand on the knob even as she frowns thoughtfully at the room around her.

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There's a sudden flush, high in her cheekbones - until he changes his wording. You're me. I'm you.

She spins the charcoal stick between her fingers, slow, then sets it down. Slow and deliberate, fitting it carefully between two sheets of clean paper.

"That's what it sounds like. I just have the feeling I'd have noticed if there were two Captain America's running around."

The whole world would have noticed, no doubt. What a marketing scheme that would have been. The bonds business would have wept tears of joy to have two Captain Americas, and not only that but one as pretty and as sweet as Stephanie.

Captain Rogers.

Steve's eyes are resolutely on the table. He lifts his arms, sets his hands on the edge; drops his hands in his lap, fidgets, lays his arms on the table again. He pinches a pencil, the fingers of his left hand smeared with soft lead, the fingers of his right chipping at the wood until he works a splinter under his thumbnail.

"Yeah. None of the files I've read said anything about me getting replaced. I don't think that's a secret even Fury and his people could have kept." He frowns at the pencil like it's just bit him. "So, you — tell me about yourself."

Stephanie is watching him. The way he fiddles with the pencil, works the splinter free. She has her own bad habit of ruined nails from the same action and its odd to see it from this end.

"Fury?" she asks instead, a little relieved to hear something she doesn't recognize as her own.

Has he said too much already?

"Oh." He gestures obscurely, shrugging his shoulders. "He's... he's... actually, I'm not sure what to call him. He's the director of an agency I'm kind of a part of."

Kind of.

Director. Not commanding officer.

"A military ... espionage ... law-enforcement kind of — what year is it outside your door?"

Steph's shoulders drop, relieved enough by his answer to smile a little. So they are different, different enough. Steve works with someone called Fury, their paths diverged right away.

"1941," she replies, fingertips nudging at a pencil in front of her. "I don't-- I don't know how much of my life is like yours but... well, I don't know a Fury. The only agency I'm a part of is the US Army."

Edited 2012-10-31 01:39 (UTC)

He purses his lips, and aside from that doesn't react.

After a couple moments:

"Under the command of a Col. Chester Phillips?"

He lowers his voice a titch.

"At the behest of a Dr. Abraham Erskine?"

Her smile drops, eyes wide.

"Yes," Steph says, quiet but firm, and that relaxation is gone. Colonel Philips is no secret, but no one knew Dr. Erskine outside of the project. Absolutely no one.

"No," she says a moment later, then shakes her head, dropping her gaze to the table, jaw working. "I mean, yes, but... Col. Philips is my... he's my superior officer, Dr. Erskine is... he passed away."

A lie, he was murdered.

His mouth goes dry.

'No no, wait wait, what am I doing? No, you have procedure tomorrow. No fluids.'

A grim smile sits uneasily on his face.

"Yeah."

She mentioned the USO, so if she's still in '41 then she must be a few months past all of that. The lab, the shooting, the canned project ... a good man's death. Steve's good at putting the pieces together.

"Never did get to taste those Schnapps."

Edited 2012-11-05 02:51 (UTC)

Steph lets out a breath, shaky.

No, I don't have procedure tomorrow. Drink it after? Drink it now.

Emotion isn't an option she's been able to afford for a while. Steph doesn't cry but she bows her head for a moment, remembering the kind man who'd believed in her.

She lifts her head smoothly, expression sweet as she lifts a hand to get the attention of a passing waitrat. "Hi. Could I get two glasses of Schnapps, please?"

It squeaks and salutes her before trotting off.

Steve looks mildly blanched.

"You–you don't have to do that."

Straightening:

"I should have thought — I should have offered."

Steph blinks at him, surprised blue eyes and lifted eyebrows, but the smile that grows on her lips is slow and warm.

"If you're going to forget your manners around any woman, I guess it might as well be me. Besides, I just bought a whole round for the-- my-- well, some soldiers out the door. Two more drinks won't break me."

Steve still looks sheepish.

"If only you were the only woman I forgot my manners around," he says haplessly, rubbing the back of his neck. "I mean. Not as an insult, Captain. I just — I sometimes—"

He's just going to quit while he's ahead. Art supplies are much safer. "Thanks. Am I to assume, then, that your days of selling war bonds are over? The HYDRA facility...?"

"Not popular with the ladies, Captain?" There's gentle amusement in her voice, and a little surprise at that.

The next subject, as ever, USO show and the bonds, makes her smile waver, falter - then come back, full force and false. "Actually, yes. It took... a lot. But I'm a real captain now."

He blushes. It's embarrassing, yes, but there's another part of him that chaffs under the question. What does it even mean to be popular with the ladies? Sure, there are plenty of women who have flirted with him, especially after the movies and the serials. When Captain America became a household name. But what does that matter?

It's talking to them that raises problems. And there's really only one woman he's ever been afraid of saying the wrong thing around.

"No one thought you could do it." He recognizes that smile. How many times has he worn it himself? His voice is calm and wry. "Until you showed them they were wrong."

It's hard to keep it up when he talks to her like that. Steph was never made much for pretty lies, fooling people into believing she felt one way when she really felt another. She had to learn that for the show, lessons sudden and demanding, now now now. And given the slightest opportunity, she'll drop the facade without warning.

So the fake smile is replaced with another, smaller if far more genuine.

And not only because she's sorry for teasing him, if he blushed like that for it.

"There's a lot more showing to do yet, I'd wager. But you..." She pauses, weighing the question in her mind, how she wants to phrase it. Her fingers play idly with a roughly cut pencil, pushing it back and forth between two stacks of paper. "You're all right?"

You know? After all this time, and everything he's been through, no one has asked him that. You're all right, Cap, and it was an order, not a question. Steve knows how to take an order far better than he knows when to stop, when to think, when to let it all settle, and so his gut reaction is to say yeah, of course.

He frowns. The soft lead of the pencil he was playing with has broken off between his fingers, and he rubs it into granuals of black powder.

"Do ... do you know Agent Peggy Carter? And ... Sergeant Bucky Barnes? James. James Barnes."

Steph blinks at him. The pencil rolls, back and forth, back and forth.

Does she know Agent Carter, good Lord, who doesn't? And she can feel herself start to blush, swearing in her mind, warding it off, such a tell, such a foolish thing. They're friends is all, good friends and colleagues, and if Peggy walked into the bar outside that door wearing a red dress that dropped every jaw in the building, that only means she's a friend with good style - and Steph knew that already, too, thank you.

So she answers the easier question with a soft laugh and a smile.

"Think he'd glare me mute if I tried to call him James. Bucky. Yeah, of course I know Bucky."

It's enough. The laugh, the smile, the teasing tone of her voice. Those aren't for a friend presumed dead; MIA. And those aren't for a friend she saw plummet to his death. It's stupid, Steve. Letting that burst of hope blossom in your chest, just at the possibility of a Bucky in another time and place who still—

"Yeah," he says, forcing a chuckle, looking askance. "When was the last time he answered to James? I think it was freshman year. He decked me one good after school, when I started teasing him about Susie Baker."

He rubs his chin, eyes fond. K-I-S-S-I-N-G...

"You, uh. You serving together?"

"Oh," Steph says, eyes dancing even as her nose wrinkles, a juvenile expression of disgust. "You knew her, too? Gosh, he made a good fool of himself over her. Not that he took a swing at me, but he tossed my school bag up a tree."

First comes love, then comes Susie regaining her senses and dumping you on your butt...

She grins, sudden and bright, relaxing a little more. "We are. The colonel's letting me put together a team and Bucky was first on that list- oh," she adds, smile all the wider for the waitrat who arrives, two glasses balanced on a tray. Steph digs into a pocket of her uniform and pulls out some bills. "Will this do?"

When the rat chirps and takes them, Steph beams and takes both glasses, handing one across the table to Steve. "Thank you."

"Jeez, you too?" He's laughing, and it's chasing some of the nerves away. "Bucky always said I was the one with the temper, but he wasn't exactly a saint. Did he ever stick a bottle rocket in your back pocket?"

Steve couldn't sit for a week.

It's ... good. Talking like this. Seeing Steph smile, and relax, and share fond memories with him. Even as unnerving as it is having the same memories. It's been a while since Steve's had a reason to laugh. "Ah, thanks. Yeah, this smells like the stuff."

Steph laughs at the thought, fingers curled around her glass, lifted but not sipped yet. "No," she admits, still grinning, "but probably only because I didn't have back pockets. Skirts and dresses," she adds, to explain.

He hasn't answered her question, hasn't said if he's all right or not. He asked about Peggy and he asked about Bucky and they both latched onto memories. Steph knows why she did, of course, she's still practically thrumming with relief. Freeing Bucky from that terrible place and the moment he was cleared for duty, healthy and fit - and crashing and burning, trying to cozy up to Agent Carter.

That's his business, Steve's, if he doesn't want to answer her. She's not going to press just yet.

"He did put a roman candle in my shoe once. I mean, I wasn't wearing it, but they were the only pair I had and boom!" She makes a motion with her hands of a shoe leaping into the air and doing a little spin. "Up it goes, right over the trees in Prospect."

When he laughs the bridge of his nose crinkles, and his eyes narrow until they almost disappear. He covers his mouth with a loose fist until the guffaws subside, shaking his head and rubbing the back of his neck. "Right, right. Some things would have to be different, wouldn't they?"

He doesn't think about it much, the chasm between men and women. Some people would say he's purposely oblivious, growing up as the only male child in his household. The truth is, sometimes thinking about it makes him so angry he could march into the oval office and deck the president himself. No one should ever be told they can't do the same things as the privileged, for something as dumb as physicality.

"He always was a wiseguy. Liked to grandstand every chance he got." He lifts his glass, but pauses. "Agent Carter — she, uh. How is she? You wouldn't mind telling me about her, would you?"

Edited 2012-11-07 05:40 (UTC)

Steph laughs with him, just as hard. An observer would see the similarities in a second, the shape of her mouth in a wide smile, the crinkle of her nose, eyes narrowed until she can barely see. Her hand comes up almost the moment his does, a loose cup to cover her mouth in a slightly more ladylike gesture. Giggles subside with her lips pressed together, fingertips against her chin as she nods. Some things would have to be different. Bucky hasn't punched her since they were little, little kids, when she was really asking for it and their parents weren't around to tell them to act like a gentleman and a lady.

Steph's punched him a few times since, but a gentleman he remained. To Steph, it's insulting more than anything, the way even her best friend refused to see them as equal.

"Oh, he still is," Steph replies about Bucky and his wiseguy status, grinning as she lifts her glass to his. There's a pause, a flicker in her eyes as she focuses on him again. Always was. Liked to. Past tense. Steph opens her mouth to question that.

Before all her attention goes to reacting carefully, controlled regarding Agent Carter.

"...of course not," she assures him after a moment, smiling. "I'm... not sure what to tell you, though. If you've got her and she's an agent, that's... well, she makes an impression, doesn't she?"

But what sort, for a captain named Steve?

He's quiet. Not so much shy, as he was before. Not embarrassed. Not nervous. Well, maybe a little nervous. He's passing a no. 4 lead pencil between thumb and middle finger in quick motions, the wood making soft sounds as it rolls across the table. His eyes are on what he's doing, and the shot, almost forgotten, is casually tipped down his gullet. It's good. He wonders if it's as good as Dr. Erskine's was. He wonders if it matters.

He almost shrugs and then changes his mind, glances at Steph and then back down again, his smile so threadbare it could be hard to translate if he were talking to anyone else. But it is so unsubtly Steve. Steve in love, or the closest he's ever got to it.

"Yeah, she does. One hell of an impression." He rubs the back of his neck, taps his empty shot glass twice on the table, just a tic. "But it's been a long time since I've seen her. We got separated on a mission and I, uh. I got reassigned." His smile is a tight pursing of the lips. "I guess if we're living almost the same lives you know about as much as I do, but it still feels like, I don't know. Seeing about an old friend."

Steph watches him, close. The quiet, unsure air about him. The way he hesitates and fiddles with the pencil, tips back the shot like it's nothing. Which reminds Steph that she has one of her own.

So unsubtly in love.

She shoots the schnapps back herself, swallowing it down with ease and reaching for a stick of charcoal, laid out on fresh paper. He hadn't protested when she'd touched his things earlier, Steph won't mind a smack to her hand if she's overstepping her bounds right now.

The first strike across the paper is stark and roughly textured.

"Couldn't have been that similar, surely," she says, quiet. And if she's not shy or embarrassed, there are most certainly nerves there. Unsubtly Steph, on the defense. "Our lives are awfully similar in a lot of different ways, but they don't seem to be identical. And Agent Carter and I, we- there hasn't been a lot of time to chat or anything. We've been pretty busy on our own."

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