Chapter Text
A/N: This story was inspired by this wonderful art by Kerr Avonsen, who was an amazing artist and collaborator and provided much helpful feedback and brainstorming.
Special thanks also to Monicawoe and Seapigeon for beta-reading and cheerleading. This story absolutely would not have been the same without any of you. ✨
Steve stared at the passport, shiny and bright blue against the grey blanket on his bed (too new, like everything else.). He didn’t dare to touch it. “What is this, Natasha?”
Natasha Romanov leaned against the doorway of his bedroom and folded her arms. “It’s a passport. Yours, actually. I finagled it from SHIELD.”
Steve hadn’t even heard her come in; he’d been unpacking, trying to decide if it was even worth uncovering his art supplies (also supplied by SHIELD and a good many of them utterly useless for the kinds of art he drew–or used to draw) when he hadn’t drawn hardly a damn thing since before Bucky’s death. Which had been seventy years—or a few months— ago. He sighed suddenly, tired to the marrow of his bones of trying to figure where he fit, if he fit anywhere in this sharp-edged world.
“And why would you do that?” Steve asked, trying to make sense of her presence in his apartment, the passport that SHIELD had said he wouldn’t need because they “would take care of him.”
“Maybe I think you should get out more, see the world,” she said lightly and Steve almost rolled his eyes. That had been Nick Fury’s exact line in a darkened gym and just a few minutes later, he’d been recruiting Steve for the Avengers Initiative.
“SHIELD wants me to sign up with them,” Steve began, “so I don’t think—”
“We should get coffee,” she said abruptly and Steve—who had grown up sickly and bullied and poor, and had learned to pay close attention to nuances of tone and gesture (when he could hear it, that was)—was warned by the calculated smoothness of her words.
“Sure,” Steve answered, as if he hadn’t told her multiple times that the coffee he’d had so far was overpriced and too weak.
***
She led him, not to an overpriced chain coffee shop that seemed to be on every block (and what mermaids had to do with coffee, he didn’t know and wasn’t sure he wanted to find out) but to a little joint that really wouldn’t have been out of place in Steve’s day. “This place is so hipster, it ought to suit you,” she told him with a gleam in her eye and against all odds, he laughed.
“I understood that reference,” Steve said. “So what’s this about?”
After they ordered (cafe americano for him, some sugary confection for her, with a giant cinnamon roll that they ended up needing to split) she slid a small device onto their table. “Just for safety,” Natasha explained, and Steve could hear the conversation around them become muted as if he was still half deaf. “I don’t know if you’re being trailed but it seems logical.”
“Trailed? By SHIELD?” he asked, but of course, it would be SHIELD. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I thought I saw a couple of agents yesterday on my morning run.” He smiled, aware that it was not a little wolfish. “They couldn’t keep up.”
Natasha raised her coffee cup in a mock salute. “Just so. SHIELD hasn’t released your identity to the media, so I doubt it’s anyone else,” she said. “Okay, so, you’ve been approached by SHIELD to come to DC. They’ve made you a job offer, set you up in an apartment, to see how it would fit, yes? Training with Alpha STRIKE, sparring, getting a feel for the organization?”
“You know I have,” Steve answered. Of course she knew.
“And how do you feel about all of that?” Her hand reached out to touch his own briefly. “I’m not asking as a SHIELD agent. I’m asking as someone who cares about where you are right now. And who will deny this conversation ever took place if I’m asked.”
“Why?” Steve couldn’t help but ask. “Natasha, I—” He wanted to say Nobody has asked me how I felt about any of this who wasn’t also reporting to Nick Fury or Nobody cares about Steve Rogers . Instead he said simply, “You’re the first who’s asked.”
“So tell me,” she urged.
The words rose, a clenching in his chest and all of a sudden, it didn’t matter if she was going to report every word back to Nick Fury in triplicate. “I don’t want to join SHIELD.”
“Good,” she said. “Why?”
He studied his folded hands for a moment. “I know what SHIELD says it is, what Peggy and Howard and Colonel Phillips wanted it to be. But if it ever was that, it’s not that way now. I don’t trust SHIELD and I can’t– I won’t– work for them.”
“All right,” Natasha said. “You’re not without options, you know.”
“Oh?” Steve asked.
“That was the carrot they held, right?” Natasha asked. “You agree to work with them, they set you up with an ID, an apartment, training, and…” She trailed off delicately but Steve didn’t need her to finish her sentence.
Steve pulled a face and stared at his coffee like it had insulted him. “Yeah. I’m done being anybody’s dancing monkey, thanks.”
“After you were..found alive,” she told him lightly, as she slid an envelope of heavy, embossed paper across the table, “various European governments reached out to SHIELD, offering to house you on a permanent or semi-permanent basis.”
Steve stared at her in utter shock. “Why…”
“Why would they do that?” Natasha retorted. “Or why weren’t you told? The World Security Council ordered Nick Fury to reject every offer. As far as why you weren’t told, that’s on Nick.” She breathed out. “If you’ve been feeling isolated by SHIELD, there’s a reason for it. Symbols are powerful weapons and there’s a lot of people who would follow where you lead.”
When he opened his mouth to object, she went on. “Steve. You took five people who should never have been able to work together and you made us a team. You think that didn’t scare the WSC? Or, frankly, SHIELD? They knew what to expect from us, but not you. They never counted on you.”
It was honestly something that hadn’t occurred to him before. “I…okay, but why would these nations want to take me in?”
“They never forgot what you did to defeat the Nazis, that your sacrifice prevented global destruction,” she said quietly. “Look at the envelope.”
Steve opened it up. There was a letter, dated a year before, from Her Majesty the Queen of England, authorizing that any and all aid should be granted to one Captain Steven Grant Rogers, “in memory of our friendship during the war and his great sacrifice.” He blinked and there was the memory, a teenaged princess (though he hadn’t known that then– Bucky had accused him later of being oblivious) working as a mechanic in the ATS. He hadn’t known who she was, but had thought her charming and admired the quick intelligence of the young Elizabeth.
While his mind was absorbing all of that (and the remaining paragraph of the Queen’s letter, in which she referred to her appreciation of his “gentlemanly demeanour”) he saw the second, subsequent letter sent only the week before in which the prior offer was reiterated, with the notation that all arrangements had been vetted and signed off on “at the highest of government levels” should he wish to come to England.
“Steve,” Natasha said as he replaced the letters back in their envelope, “you have the freedom to choose what you want to do. A vacation would do you some good.”
“I don’t even think I’d know what to do,” Steve replied. “I’ve never not had a day where there wasn’t something I had to do.”
“Even when you were sick?” she prodded gently.
“Bu-” Steve paused, swallowed, and began again. “My friend would have wanted me to stay in bed and rest, but he had enough to do keeping a roof over our heads. So I’d make dinner, that kind of thing,” he explained. “I don’t know what I would do with free time.”
“See some museums, relax, maybe see what you fought for?” Natasha suggested. “You used to draw, didn’t you?”
Steve startled at that. He still wasn’t used to people knowing so much about him without actually knowing him . It had been common knowledge once that he drew (and he recalled the Howlies hoarding paper once his supplies ran low) though he guessed pretty much nobody knew his full portfolio also included a fair amount of Tijuana bibles. “I did,” he admitted, somewhat grudgingly. He’d fought beside Natasha and respected her, but he wasn’t sure if he could call anyone a friend in this century.
“Steve,” Natasha said, breaking into his thoughts. “You deserve the time. Tell Nick Fury you’re going to take an actual vacation first—not that bike ride that SHIELD made you cut short—and you’ll let him know about his job offer when you return.”
“That easy?” he returned, the Brooklyn creeping out from the smoothly moderated tones of his Army days.
“It’s that easy,” she said. “SHIELD doesn’t own you, Steve. Don’t act like they do.”
***
A day later, Steve was on a plane, bound for London and then to a fully furnished flat in Greenwich. Steve had to give Natasha plenty of credit: she’d managed his itinerary and his travel plans as if she did this sort of thing every day. (Which, maybe she had– he knew so little of her life from before they’d met.) He’d flown first class, been met by a driver who slipped him a short list of phone numbers and a passphrase to use if he needed assistance, and then–mercifully– been left well alone.
He closed the door behind him, placed his luggage and the cymbal case containing his shield near the door, and became aware suddenly that he was starving. His appetite had been intermittent at best since his awakening, and SHIELD was still trying to calculate the amount of calories he needed per day. Inside the well-stocked refrigerator was a platter of sandwiches, and after he finished with them, Steve dug into his pocket and pulled out the cellphone (a “burner phone” Natasha had called it, explaining that it wasn’t tracked by SHIELD and that no one would be monitoring their calls) and sent a single text message.
MICKEY [03:42AM] Made it in. Going to bed soon.
MINNIE [10:43PM] Get some sleep. Text me in a few days. I’ll keep the gang off your trail.
MICKEY [03:45AM] Will do. Night, Minnie. And…thank you.
***
On his third day in Greenwich, Steve discovered curry. He’d spend much of the last few days doing what he supposed were the usual touristy things—the Royal Observatory had been a real pleasure, remembering how badly the entire area had been bombed during his war. He’d taken long series of walks in Greenwich Park, enjoying the rare sunshine and feeling, for the first time, like he had room to breathe without everyone noticing him or his every move.
Steve wasn’t sure who to thank for this new anonymity– SHIELD, who’d insisted his identity be kept a secret? Natasha, who’d supplied his wardrobe for this trip with clothes that were slightly larger on his frame, giving him the look of a smaller man? Or was it just that here, nobody particularly cared who Captain America was or who the Avengers were?
He was mulling all of this over in his head when he smelled the distinctive scents of curry powder, of yogurt and garam masala and tomato paste, and his stomach gave an ominous growl. Bruce had made curry a few times, on one of their rare team dinners. He’d made enough for all of them plus three or four other people and it was then that Steve learned that Bruce was a skilled cook. The curry and samosas and paneer and naan had been foods completely unfamiliar to him but he’d loved the mix of spices and textures and it was only after he’d finished that Steve realized it was the first food that had tasted good to him in months.
With his sketchbook under one arm and his cymbal case on his back, Steve followed the scent of the curry until he came to a little hole in the wall place, wedged between fancier restaurants and the pub Steve had had lunch at the day before. It was an easy place to miss- Steve thought he’d missed it himself until the firing of their cooking ovens at exactly the right moment hit his nose.
A few minutes later, with his lunch neatly bagged up, Steve headed for a large oak tree he’d discovered the day before. It was the perfect place for drawing, something he hadn’t been doing much of in the last year, but Natasha had pulled God knew how many strings to make sure he could be here, and he didn’t want to waste one minute of his time.
***
It was later in the afternoon when Steve looked up from his sketch of the ancient oak arching near him. He’d lost time when drawing, something that hadn’t happened since...well, he couldn’t remember when. Bucky had used to tease him, back when– I could have had the Rockettes come to visit and you wouldn’t have noticed! He swallowed around the lump in his throat and blinked rapidly. He could lose it back at his apartment, could grieve in private; he could not lose it here , in public.
SHIELD had offered him therapists, which he’d immediately mistrusted if only because of that farce of the hospital room had proven they could and would deceive him “for his own good.” But even if SHIELD had been above-board and as honest and ethical as they wanted him to think they were, his grief for Bucky, for all he’d lost just months before, wasn’t something he was ready to discuss. He’d do his grieving in private and surely, eventually, he would heal and find a way to live with the loss.
There was a shimmer, a rapid blur of motion and a soccer ball– a football, as they called it here–flew past him at high speed then disappeared. Steve blinked, and as soon as it had disappeared, the ball reappeared and settled to his feet. Gravity..isn’t supposed to do that, he mused, utterly confused. He placed his sketchbook back inside his cymbal case and tied up the remains of his lunch, then returned to pick up the ball. It seemed an ordinary ball, surely someone was wondering—
And….
Time….
Fell…
Inward..