[center][img]https://th.bing.com/th/id/Rdbfc0efd20d633a366727bdfd2f69435?rik=DmIcbvHTD8qd5g&riu=http%3a%2f%2fwww.firstcomicsnews.com%2fwp-content%2fuploads%2f2016%2f09%2fCaptain-America-Logo-600x253.png&ehk=WrwiqdIpJ5461H1brIvsQKW3w5v9qles56yKksUkH0E%3d&risl=&pid=ImgRaw[/img][/center] [center][img]https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Captain-America-Winter-Soldier-Social-Media-Image.jpg[/img][/center] [h3]San Francisco, California 9:48 PM, December 31st 1967 [/h3][hr] [i]Timely. I always tried to be timely. The military drilled that in to me, but even before all of that it was something that mattered to me. I learned early on you couldn't control it, there were too many variables, all you could do was try to be prepared when things shifted. I wasn't ready when pneumonia took my mother. I disappeared into comics, decided I would be an artist. I wasn't ready when the war came to America. God I was so skinny then. I had no idea what I was getting in to. None of us did. We couldn't have. I was timely though. My recruiter, when I got rejected for being underage and so damn skinny, he had a motivational poster taped up in that cheap little cubicle on the white turning yellow walls. I can almost see it now. A nature scene, for some reason. I never got that. I did get the message. It put things into words better than I could. It said that Luck was the Intersection of Preparation and Opportunity. I like to think I've been prepared. I like to think I've been timely. You probably wouldn't believe how timely. Or how lucky. [/i] "So then," the grizzled old man across the bar locked eyes with me and interrupted me from my reverie, "You gonna just keep staring at that mug or are you going to tell me about your day?" I was distracted, lost in more ways than one, looking back into a once familiar face. Jesus Christ. "It helps you know," Duggan said as he poured some good whiskey in an old mug and slid it over to me, "We don't talk." "Irishmen?" I replied over my mug. "Oh absolutely lad. Especially us Irish. But any of us really. You know how long it took me to get some of these fuckers to talk? That shit it don't come natural, after what we've seen, what we've done. You don't want to remember, you don't want to put that on your brothers. Don't want their sympathy, don't want their pity. None of us do, but you said you'd talk Rogers. It's New Years, it's what we do." "I was never much for talking about the past. About memories. You know, all those years, it was action. All movement, all action, just one thing after another. Go, go, go." "Yeah," my suddenly old buddy Dum Dum Duggan replied, with a loud unhealthy sounding exhale "I remember that, remember it better than most. Maybe more than anyone left, but for some of us memories is all we got left. Memories, this shit little bar, and now you Steve. A long lost friend come back. You owe it to us. That day, your day, our day." "It's a hell of a thing." Old Dum Dum looked back at me, 23 years older than when I had last seen him. He had been a tank of a man, where had it all gone. Years on years, and it had all been just a few weeks ago. For me. It was a hell of a thing. How one day can change your world. [h3]One Day[/h3][hr] It was hard to breathe. You couldn't catch the air. Not here. I was somewhere around 38,000 feet, moving at nearly 400 miles an hour, I was 26 years old, I was a soldier, I was Captain America, and I was scared to death. It was April 14, 1945. In Italy the US Fifth Army was launching it's final offensive in Italy, moving into the Po Valley. High over the North Atlantic my pilot and I were dying and we knew it. It was happening again. My pilot was 23 years old, from Irvine California, he was allergic to grapes and engaged to the daughter of an architect. Her name was Maggie McMurray, his name was Adam Koslik. We called him Tight Pants because he showed up on Day One in pants that had shrunk in the wash. His pants were tight. He was Jewish, she was an atheist. She was pregnant with a son, Michael after his Uncle. They wanted to keep it quiet until after the wedding to avoid the shame. They wanted a sister for Michael, Evangeline for her grandmother. Probably would have been invited to the bar-mitzvah and bat-mitzvah. He was shot once in the left lung and once through the right shoulder. The plane was smoking, jittering. We were at 27,000 feet now and still coming in right about 400 miles an hour. Still hard to breathe. Hard to catch the air when you're going that fast. Hard to breathe when every breath hurts. Hard to control the yoke with a bullet in your shoulder and blood filling your lungs but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. We were both young men, we were both about to die, and there was nothing anyone was going to be able to do to save us. I was losing another friend, another brother. Bucky had been lost over the English Channel only a few months ago. I had never really processed that and now Tight Pants, and me with him. It was happening again. We said the Lord's Prayer together through shuddering breaths as the instrument panel lit up and screeched meaningless warnings to us, I placed my hand on his shoulder, and a moment later the shaking intensified as the plane began to fall apart and we were lost to the skies and the frigid seas. When I look back now those few minutes with Tight Pants took longer than the next 23 years. I could tell you all kinds of things about the cockpit of that fighter in those few minutes. Tight Pant's shampoo smelled like apples. His deodorant smelled like that terrible chemically standard issue deodorant because that is exactly what it was. I had a rock in my boot. I still had a blown out blood vessel in my left arm from working out on base. That photo of his wife and him in San Francisco had come untaped and got sucked out the window. A piece of bread launched up from the floor as Tight Pants fought valiantly to save us. Muttering to pull through the pain and it would have had to hurt something fierce with that hole in his shoulder. Tight Pants had been eating in here. Wasn't supposed to. Probably wanted to eat with Maggie. I would have to reprimand him some other time. All I could tell you about my experiences the last twenty years is that it was cold. Probably. I woke up on a Japanese ship, the Ishii. I was under enemy control, they had put some serious research into what freezing conditions do to a human body. How to bring them back. It had been 23 years. They weren't the enemy anymore. They did their best for us. Their best wasn't enough to save Adam Koslik. That might have been because he had been hit twice by bullets that had somehow missed me. It might have been because of what Operation Rebirth had done to me. We had been dead for 23 years. We had been dead as long as Tight Pants had been alive and he still was. Adam was still dead. Bucky was still dead. Not me, not old Blondie. I was reborn. Again. Tight Pants and I, we had been found, but I would come to find I was still very much lost. [h3]San Francisco, California 10:18 PM, December 31st 1967 [/h3][hr] "You said Adam Kauslic?" "Yeah," I replied pressing my fingertips into my temples. Dum Dum pulled out a notebook and started scribbling. "You said..." "Adam Koslik, K-O-S-L-I-K, Tight Pants from Irvine. He was 23 years old. Engaged to Maggie McMurray, son on the way, Michael." I took another drink. I needed it, and as I turned to Dum Dum to ask about all this I found him already pouring more into my mug and he started speaking. "This woman, her husband is missing in action in Vietnam. Commander Hoff. We're doing a thing. Well she's doing it and I'm aiming to help. Take a look at that mug." It had a small black and white flag. Said POW MIA in a banner above a bowed head. "That's going to be big for the family. What about the body?" I told him the body had been sent back with me. Tight Pants and I had taken one last flight together. He was back in America, should be on the way home by now. He told me how much this was going to help. How it would bring closure. I downed the mug. "Survivor's guilt." He said, pouring into my mug once more but not quite so full. "It's different. I'm different." "No," he replied surprisingly forcefully, "No you aren't Steve. Not in this." "Sure I am. You were one of the few who could keep up with me Dum Dum. They-" "I know what they did Steven. That doesn't have shit to do with this." I tried to respond again. It was different. Luck. Timeliness. Preferential treatment. I was Captain America. When I tried to protest more he interrupted me. "That's survivor's guilt Rogers. That is what. it. is. Everyone has got reasons they think it's different for them. We all got something we feel guilty for. Someone we feel guilty about. We're survivors. Survivor's guilt." I looked around. Got about half nods and half folks hiding their faces. I turned back. "No Steve, take a good hard look." I did. I was younger than most of them. I was in much better shape than most of them. I was intact. I was alive. Unscarred. "We're The Leftovers Rogers," he said while I looked. "You're a Leftover too." he said. Then he told me how he became a Leftover.