WS AU - 4

Cont...

Someone was talking animatedly far away.

He wasn't cold or stiff.

James peeled his eyes open and was welcomed with a white ceiling.

The uniform was gone and he was clad within SSR issue clothing. He was laying on a bed, not a hard cold metal floor.

He was warm as sunlight streamed in. He was alive.

Where was he? James focused on the talking, it was a radio playing the Phillies versus Dodgers May 25, 1941 baseball game. Memories flooded back.


"This is the stupidest thing you have ever thought of Steve." Bucky hissed as they ducked into the stadium.

"Oh come on Buck, live a little. When do we ever get a chance to both get off for a big Dodgers game?" Steve retorted ducking into some empty seats.

Bucky grumbled sitting next to him. "You're gonna get us arrested Punk."

"Shut up they're up to bat," Steve grumbled back.

They did, in fact, get caught and somehow Steve talked the guard not only out of arresting them but to let them stay to watch the rest of the game. It had been a good day cheering on the home team.


Steve.

James’ chest tightened he would not be there. Life would go on. He'd been prepared back before the war when Steve was a runt to live without him but after the serum, he'd allowed himself to hope that one day they would get to come home from the war and live their lives. To not be alone.

James finally sat up and looked around at the room. It was plain but something was off. James just couldn't put his finger on it.

The door opened and a young woman stepped in. Warning bells burst all over James' head. She was dressed completely wrong, man's tie, too high heels, and no makeup. Not to even mention that her undergarments were ill-fitting in a way no woman would be caught dead in.
"Good morning Sergeant Barnes. Or I suppose I should say afternoon." The woman said softly.
James' eyes narrowed at her, her hair was wrong in so many ways and her tie was loose. She wasn't a nurse and she spoke with no European accents. Her watch was too bold and big. Everything was just WRONG.
It would be Peggy if he had survived, waking him up, not whoever this was.

"Where am I?" James bit out.

"A New York recovery room." The women responded.

That was a lie the windows showing outside didn't match that and he could hear no other patients.
"Where am I really?" James asked again, worry and panic rising.

The women frowned in confusion, "I'm sorry?"

James rose, "The game, May 1941, I was there. Where am I?"

The woman stepped back subconsciously and mumbled a response that James completely missed when two huge me stepped in both clad in black.

Hydra. Panic slammed into James' chest, it was Hydra they had gotten him. Memories of men in black dragging him half dead around fueled he attack throwing both men through a wall which instantly collapsed.

 It was an elaborate trick, a mind game like it always was with Hydra. James bolted out of the fake recovery room and burst through the double doors.
He faintly heard the woman call out to him to stop but there was no way in the world he was staying there if he had an out he was taking it.

He burst into a hall that was all wrong, too bright, too clean, too sleek. The people he passed seemed confused as he was even as the woman's voice ordered someone to stop him no one could react fast enough.
It all had to be a setup, a ruse he had to get out and find the Commandos, Carter. They would know what to do, they would look for him.

He flew out of the building and found everything was wrong. James blocked it all out in an effort to not get overwhelmed but it still seeped in, sleek cars, towering buildings, and colors that were simply too bright.

It was just a trick, just a trick.
James repeated in his head as he ran down the road. He finally came to a stop in a huge public area with more extras that Hydra could ever get surrounded by huge moving posters the shone bright light.
This was real. James realized as people gave him odd looks.

Suddenly black cars pulled up and more men in black stepped out. James stiffened even if this was real Hydra was still after him.

"Stand down soldier." A black man ordered firmly coming forward. He only had one eye the other was covered in an eyepatch. His frame was shrouded by a large black trench coat. He was in charge that much radiated off him.

"Where am I?" James growled out.

"You've been asleep Sergeant, for almost seventy years." The man explained.

The truth smacked James hard. It was too ludicrous to be a lie. It explained everything that was wrong, it was new. Seventy years made this, he caught the date on one of the moving posters, 2014.
"No," James breathed.

Nonononon he was supposed to be with Steve!
He was supposed to be dead!
He was supposed to be free of the cold pain that flowed through his veins. Not trapped in a different time!

"I'm sorry for the charade we were hoping to tell you quietly." The one-eyed man's voice floated through James' jumbled thoughts.
James shook his head still reeling from that revelation.

"Will you be alright?" The man sounded genuinely worried.

James finally looked at the man, "I don't know."


That was how he learned that history had romanticized the war, that Howard had searched for years for him, that Peggy Carter had kept her promises, that Captain America was a fairy tale that had grown beyond what was true to pure fiction.

That everyone from his generation, his friends, family, were dead. That he was a man out of time.

Then New York happened and for a moment it felt good to bear the shield again and fight. Then that ended and James was stuck trying to rediscover the world.

 He gave up trying to find an apartment in Brooklyn and moved to D.C. and began working with SHIELD which was the successor of SSR. That was where life found him two years later.

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