[center][img]https://www.scifibloggers.com/wp-content/uploads/Nick-Fury.jpg[/img][/center] [h3]Classified (IP Logged - Contact Administrator) [/h3][hr] Two voices on the line, two different sides of the country. "He just left with the box, met a few of my guys and he seems ok, he's trying [*buzzing noise*]. He's definitely trying." [color=0072bc]"What does he know?"[/color] "Doesn't seem like he knows much, been in the ice and all, but one thing, we have to look in to one thing. And I mean right now. We talked a little, about coming back. The ship that picked him up out of the drink, it was the Ishii. They had him [*buzzing noise*]." [color=0072bc]"Fuck."[/color] "Yeah." [color=0072bc]"Did he know the significance?"[/color] "No, didn't seem like he did. But-" [color=0072bc]"Yeah. I know."[/color] "He's not ready for this shit [*buzzing noise*]. It's a different world, it's so goddamned different from what we knew and he-" [color=0072bc]"Don't tell him shit."[/color] "I don't like it. I don't like keeping secrets from him. He deserves better than that." [color=0072bc]"Deserve doesn't have shit to do with it."[/color] "He's going to start asking questions. [*buzzing noise*] isn't the type to just go along, you know that, and I can't lie to him. Not to him." [color=0072bc]"We will deal with that when we come to it."[/color] "Listen, I can't lie to him. I can decide not to tell him things, to protect him I can do that, but I can't lie to him." The line went silent for a moment. [color=0072bc]"[*buzzing noise*] is an idealist in a less than ideal world. We don't deal with the world as we would like it to be, we deal with what we have. What we have right now is a big shit sandwich and we're all going to have to take a bite. You tell him there is work to be done. A soldier's work. There's a place here for him still, but if he starts digging too fast."[/color] "What? What if he does?" [color=0072bc]"We will deal with that when we come to it, if we come to it. For now we manage him. Surface answers. Let him figure things out organically, slowly. We control the pace."[/color] [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://i.pinimg.com/originals/f3/18/dd/f318dd2c46ff3cb8b6d89f633309e66a.jpg[/img][/center] [h3]San Francisco, California January 1st 1968 [/h3][hr] I walked back to my apartment a little over an hour into the year. It had been good for me. We shared some stories, shared a beer. I wore my Captain America Smile. It's always strange to me to hear how similar but how different our experiences were. Stranger still to hear how people perceived me, mostly still do. Those feelings, the way people imagine Captain America to be, have only grown stronger in these last decades. It's like I died 20 years ago, yet some version of me became immortal. There was Captain America and there was Steven Rogers. Captain America was a propaganda poster, a figment, a smiling face, and Steven Rogers was a young man in the 1940s who dreamed of being a cartoonist and ended up a soldier. Both of them were dead but I was still around. Twenty Five years old in 1968. Built like a brick shit house, pardon my French, walking through the streets of San Francisco on New Years Eve feeling sorry for myself and feeling guilty for feeling sorry for myself when so many of my brothers were dead. I ran through a list of names as I walked. Not knowing where to go or what to do. That list grows so long. I knew it was longer than I realized. Common sense told me it had grown considerably longer while I was a popsicle. I felt tears running down my cheeks, but slowly and sparsely, stubborn. I fought them back but it was a losing fight. I was a mess. Survivor's guilt, maybe, but naming it didn't change anything. Dum Dum helped, I knew I wasn't alone. I knew I had a purpose, or at least there was a purpose Dum Dum envisioned for me, but I felt this great pressure pushing down on me. Dum Dum he wanted me out there, wanted me building a new life, leading the future. All I wanted was to sleep. I knew it then but would never admit it, I wanted to return to the ice. To where Bucky was smiling that goofy smile, Peggy was shooting me those eyes of hers, Dum Dum was right there at my side backing my every play. All my other brothers, we were young and we were doing the right thing. The life of Steve Rogers instead of whoever [b]the fuck[/b] I was now. I kept walking, I made it back home, and I climbed in to bed. I'd won the war tonight. I was still kicking. Tomorrow would be another battle. At least I had my shield back.