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Steve Rogers      Steve Rogers knows how to pick 'em.

     It's a quiet little bar in a sleepy little suburb. None of the hustle, the bustle, of New York City life. Easy to get there with a bus, a cap, a tee-shirt and jacket. Easy to slip into and sit down at the old wooden bar that's probably been there since the little town started, on the leather cushion stools that have gone a little bit hard, in front of the old-timey kitsch of a saloon back-wall stuffed with drinks of all kinds. It's easy to get lost in the empty little place - a little bit of quiet music playing on the jukebox (which Steve assuredly did not select - it's much too modern for him to know); a balding bartender who probably inherited the place from his father, and his father, and his father before him; glasses that glitter under pool-table lights advertising beer brands that have long since gone out of business.

     Steve Rogers is bent over one of the pool tables. The bartender leans to the side, arms crossed. "You're not gonna make that shot."

     "Watch," Steve says.

     Crack.

     The ball misses miserably. The bartender laughs. Steve laughs with him, pulls out his wallet, and slides a ten across the table. When he catches sight of Strawberry, he pats the bartender on the shoulder and walks over to sit down next to her.

     "Jacob's family's been here since I was a kid," he says, "I knew his father."

     "He rescued my father," Jacob corrects, "Under cover with the French resistance. HYDRA caught him. Captain Rogers got him out." He doesn't say *Captain America*. He says *Captain Rogers*. It's subtle, but the tone speaks worlds.

     "Any friend of Steve Rogers is a friend of mine." He holds out a hand. "What can I get for you, little lady?"
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry was not exaggerating when she says she doesn't know how to dress out of costume. She looks like she rolled out of bed after three hours of sleep, tied her hair up with a scrunchy, slipped on a hoodie, and strolled out the door. The posture, the hair, the way she walks- it's all a completely different person. But you can see it if you squint. The way her eyes are just a little unfocused. The way her hands are "sunburned" from holding something radioactive. The way that scar from her cheekbone to across her temple would be hidden by the visor she isn't wearing.

     She takes a deep breath in before getting off the bus. There's that tightness, the coarse ache between collarbone and chin. They say it's not the smoking but they don't know what it is. Some times it's worse than others. Staring at that door, right now, it's pretty bad.

     It melts away as Steve and Jacob assail her with camaraderie, though. A rattling exhalation leaves her over a chuckle as she shakes his hand. "It's so nice to meet you," she says to both of them, smiling as best her ebbing anxiety allows. "Glad I don't have to find a pseudonym for Steve. I'm- I'm Strawberry, if he didn't say."

     The request for an order catches her a little off-guard. She sets her heavy black duffel bag down next to her seat with a thunk and gives Steve a pleading look. "What's good here? I just, uh. I usually just get what's on sale at the ABC store."
Steve Rogers      "Nice to meet you, Strawberry. Everything's good here," Jacob says with an easy grin, "But I'll get you a first-timer's. And an American Flag for the Captain."

     Steve groans good-naturedly and turns to look at her. "It's a strawberry-blueberry vanilla shake," he says.

     "Grandpa made it back in World War I! Served it till he was called off to war. Dad served it till he died!" Jacob says as he starts mixing her drink. Steve shrugs.

     He's not staring at her. He's not staring at the scar, at the scruffled hair, at the sunburned hands. He's just looking her in the eyes. His are blue - perfect blue, save for a hint of green every tinpot dictator is obsessed with pointing out. His hair is short and blonde. He's huge - naturally muscled to the point where it's clear it's not just natural, a super-soldier in name and in fact. His jacket doesn't hide it very well - but just like her, probably, if he puts on a hat and a sweater and pretends, nobody'd know the difference.

     "Glad you made it out," Steve says once the drinks are on the bar in front of them. Jacob wanders away to go clean, leaving the two of them alone. Steve takes a sip of the shake.

     "That looks like it was pretty nasty. So how'd you get it?" He taps his own face where the scar is. "You feel like telling me, or you wanna talk about something else?"
Strawberry Princess      "World War I. My great-grandpa was..." She laughs, but trails off. No stories there. None she remembers, that survived being passed down. Catastrophe has a way of amputating generational memories. "That's clever. Blueberries." Her eyes meet his, for a moment or two. Brown verging on black, 'til it's hard to tell where iris ends and pupil starts in the bar's cozy lighting. Then Jacob hands her her drink- a whiskey sour with probably too much sugar.

     She chugs it in exactly the way you're really not supposed to, and then effusively tells him it was great.

     "No, no, it's okay. It's- it's not as cool as France," she says, taking just a moment to collect her jumbled thoughts. "I, um. That was my last hunt. Eight of us- me, Blueberry Princess, the Magi, and the Sparkle squad- the original one," she corrects, even though he wouldn't know that there'd been two.

     "They were... they all did amazing. It was the Boston Terminarch, like a big angry thing all... all made of tinsel, or barbed wire. I'd been noticing some problems, but I still thought I had time. And then I just... burned out. When everybody was leaning on me. The Sparkles died. Magi pulled out, following orders. Blueberry- she tried to help me. Got hurt real bad. I don't... still don't know if she made it. They said she retired, but they say that whenever they can get away with it. And, uh." She coughs, quietly.

     "I just ran into it. Stabbed it in the heart with the end of my wand. A lot of times. I didn't think it'd do anything. I thought I was already dead." She stops there, looking at the empty glass in front of her. The muscles in her face are competing with each other to make a coherent expression, but none of them succeed. "Only I wasn't," she finishes quietly. "And that's how it works sometimes."
Steve Rogers      Steve waves his hand at the 'as cool as France' part. "He left out," Steve says quietly, because he doesn't want Jacob to hear, "The HYDRA tanks rolling through the streets, and the civilians pinned to walls - the people I couldn't save." The look in his eyes doesn't say 'cool memory.' It says 'that was the good war story I told him because he won't understand the real one.'

     "The Terminarchs are the monsters, right?" Steve probably read the report. He seems like the kind of guy. He sips the American Flag shake as he watches her, his eyes on hers. He doens't interrupt, save to make sure he knew what he was imagining. He doesn't grimace. He doesn't wince. He just listens, his face still, his eyes sympathetic. When she finishes, he says, "That's how it works sometimes."

     He looks off into the middle distance, over her shoulder. "So you just kept going, huh."

     "Were they all like that? Every mission? Every fight?"
Strawberry Princess      "They're the big monsters. Like when an Endling shows up already stronger than it ought to be," she clarifies. That look in his eyes- she catches it, too. The competing muscles relax into a feeble smile. "Good stories are just the bad stories with some parts left out. Yeah. You're... you're being strong. For letting him know the nice parts. Giving him something good to remember, instead of just... spilling it."

     "But, no. Not every fight. It's- maybe three percent fatality. But that adds up. You do dozens and dozens. And you only remember the bad ones. Because that's how memory works, right? It's all you... all that's left. At the end." She pauses for a moment. Asks for another whiskey sour, since evidently those are good, and because her throat's hurting again.

     After a moment, she manages to say: "Yours. The one on your face. Can you talk about that one? I'd... I'd like to hear it. If that's okay."
Steve Rogers      "It can't all be bad," Steve says. He hops over the bar to pour her a whiskey sour and leaves the money on the counter. Jacob probably wouldn't even ask them to pay, but Steve's just that kind of guy. Steve leans forward, elbows on the wood, to look at her. "That can't be the only thing that's left. You did a good job, didn't you? You helped people."

     It's the tone of somebody who's been in one of those meetings a few too many times and heard people try and convince each other of that very thing, because trying to remember the good times helps deal with the bad. It never goes away. But it can at least get a little better. "You saved people."

     She asks him how he got the scar on his face. He looks embarassed. "Shaving this morning," he says awkwardly, "My body doesn't scar anymore. I don't have any of those old war wounds to ache. I don't have any of those battle-marks. This one was just this morning." He rubs his cheek, and Strawberry can tell - it's already almost healed. "I don't regenerate or anything like that. I'm not *that* super a soldier. My body just heals flesh wounds a lot faster than other people."

     "It's one of those little things, you know." He looks her in the eyes again. "Where it reminds you, when you look at your friends in the nursing homes, and see all their scars, all the missions you remember - the cut from the Stuttgart operation, the bomb from the Mussomeli airbase, the burns from a HYDRA laser in Poitiers...you sit there and you think, I should have those, too. They shouldn't have to look at me and see me young and clean like I just stepped out of the propaganda reels."

     "God, the propaganda reels." Steve puts his head in his hands. "You wanna talk about scars, that's where the scars come from. They gave me fake felt tights, a shield, and a fake machine gun, put me in front of a rolling background with a bunch of actors playing soldiers. Every minute I spent dancing like an idiot was a minute somebody else couldn't get back."

     He looks up and smiles. "But in the end, it worked out. If I hadn't been a dancing monkey, I wouldn't've been sent to the 101st to perform. If I hadn't been sent there, I wouldn't've found out about half the platoon getting captured. And then Bucky-"

     He stops.

     He looks down at his drink. "And then Bucky would've died there instead of falling off that train in Alps."

     He lifts his milkshake and downs it in one go, setting the glass back on the table.
Strawberry Princess      "Yeah. We saved people," Strawberry says, putting a spin on that 'we' that frames it as between the two of them. The feeling in her throat lets up a notch. "Thank you, Steve. For reminding me. It's too easy to forget that. But it's the most important thing." It lets up another notch when she laughs at the shaving accident, and stays when he mentions the nursing homes, even as her expression clouds sympathetically again. She slaps the table with her open palm giggling at the propaganda shows, looking- for just a moment- sunny and cheerful.

     And then it creeps back around her neck, settling in like a deep cold as Steve empties his drink. "Bucky," she repeats quietly. "He was important to you." It's a statement, not a question. "It's... still fresh to you. But the world doesn't remember him. Not like you do." Her voice stays even in tone, but it's more ragged now than it was when she was talking about her own memories.

     "I haven't... made friends, yet. Because friendship is what made it hurt. And every animal part of me wants to avoid that hurt again. Do you... have friends here, yet? Real ones? Or are you still re-learning, too?" She hasn't touched her second drink yet. Her eyes are watering, but searching.
Steve Rogers      "The world remembers him in a museum exhibit about Captain America," Steve says quietly, "They don't remember the man he was. Just that he was Captain America's best friend. They don't remember..."

     He shakes his head. "Yeah. You're right."

     She asks if he has friends. He smiles at her. "Yeah, I do. Tony's my friend. His father was my friend, too. I'm lucky enough to call both generations of Starks some of my closest friends, and Howard and Tony are enough alike that I can tell Tony's as good a man as his father was. Besides that, I've got Bruce, Natasha, Clint, Thor - the god of thunder, apparently, although the only God I know has better fashion sense - ...I have friends."

     "I just don't talk to them about this stuff. Because they're all from this era. The wars they know are alien wars and crime wars. Natasha and Clint have seen real action, but they're not soldiers, they're...operatives. They go in and get out and go all over the world. Their scars aren't the same as ours."

     "They don't get stuck down in the trenches."

     He watches her. "And I'd like to be able to say that you're my friend, so that you can say I'm your friend, too." He offers her a hand. "Captain Steven Rogers, United States Armed Forces." he reintroduces himself with a broad smile. It's a little bit cheesy, a little 1940s sensibilities, a little Greatest Generation Innocent Times Turned Bad In The War.

     "Not so bad, right?" His smile turns into a grin. "Now you can say you made a friend already." His grin fades. "And you can trust me. I promise. I've never lied to anyone and I'm not about to start now. I might hide the bad stuff, but I've never spoken a word that wasn't true, and I don't plan to start now."
Strawberry Princess      Strawberry tries and fails to smile in response. What her face does isn't exactly a smile. Her mouth opens like she's about to say words, but they don't come out. Her cheeks rise like she's grinning, but they squeeze her eyes to overflow their watering into tears. They dribble down the side of her face as she lets out a shaking exhalation that hitches somewhere in her chest and might almost be a laugh. She blinks once or twice to see clearly; tilts her head back to contain it, so the tears brim on her lashes instead.

     "Hi, Steve," she manages after a few seconds, shaking in a way that might be giggling. "I'm... I'm Strawberry Princess, MSoB, Reignition Project. I-" Her voice cracks, and she takes the chance to wipe her face on her hoodie sleeve.

     "I'm not sure if I can do this yet, Steve," she says, still quivering with silent laughter at his goofy smile. "I'm- I'm trying. I'm trying really hard. But it's still scary. I'm not where you are yet. And- thank you so, so much. But I don't know if I'm- ready."
Steve Rogers      Steve leans forward. "The first step is taking the first step."

     He looks down at the bar and grins. "I know, I know. That's the worst advice of all time. But it's true. You have to be willing to take the risk or you never will. You'll just...keep sitting there, waiting, wondering, wishing. And wishing only seems to hurt people. Especially around here."

     He makes a motion with his fingers. "Wishing's very...boat ghosts."

     He doesn't explain the term, but the context is clear - very weird stuff that doesn't make any sense. "Everybody I've heard talk about wishes does it in this terrified voice. And I'm starting to realize that while they really mean 'the kind of magic wishes that come true,' I think they're right in general. Wishing is just standing still hoping for something good to happen."

     "But."

     He straightens. He's...taller, when he's standing up straight. Broader, too. "When you're ready to call me your friend, I'll be here, ready to take your hand again and help you on to the next step."

     "So take all the time you need, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise."

     He smiles and pours himself a drink. Steve looks down at the foam and sighs as he puts some more money on the counter. "You know I have an open bar tab in a bar in London?" Steve says, "My friends - my team - drank there after every mission. The tab's still open. Soldiers are still drinking on it. I know, because I called and asked about 'the Rogers tab.' The guy who runs the place said it was something he never expected to get back, but if I was a soldier, I could come down and drink any time."

     Steve stares down into the beer. "And I never bought a single one. I wasn't like them. I didn't get to lose myself for a night. I just put on an awkward smile and excused myself after the right amount of time."

     Steve flashes another awkward smile at her. "You, uh, you wouldn't know it to look at me, but I'm actually pretty bad at talking to regular people. Just soldiers and superheroes, I guess."
Strawberry Princess      "I'm done waiting around to die, Steve," Strawberry says softly, putting herself together with slightly puffier eyes and a more settled smile. "I'm done with... drinking alone, and living in the past, and trying to give myself cancer." She pauses for a moment, then gives a sniffly, stuffed-up laugh. "Now the cancer's incidental. But... yeah. You're right. And I do need to hear it, even if... if I know it already."

     She slumps forward a little more, resting on her elbows, and takes her first sip of her second drink. "You have to be somebody," she says. "You have to be 'Captain America'. And 'Captain America'... isn't someone who gets to struggle. Isn't somebody who gets to drink, and relax, and be imperfect. Isn't somebody who's allowed to have scars."

     She looks up at him by turning her head to the side. "That isn't fair. That you're stuck in... a costume, that you can't take off. I don't know what that's like. But it must be hard. I think you're a brave person, Steve. I think you're strong, for... for having friends again. For being willing to. Even though someday some of them are gonna hurt you too."

     "Thank you. For all of this. And, for... not expecting me to be there yet. I get to take the costume off. I get to drink, and cry, and sometimes not get up in the morning. I still need to, sometimes. For just a little while longer."
Steve Rogers      Steve looks at her carefully. "You could get that treated here, you know. Tony knows a lot of doctors. If you wanted to."

     It's the last line that's probably the most sympathetic. He's talked to enough old people to know, enough of the friends he had waiting to die of the cancer in their beds, enough of them content to let it end as peacefully as possible. It's that sound, that sound that carries those thoughts, that carries the same people he was talking about earlier - hooked up to machines, wheezing and coughing, looking on a man who hasn't aged a day as they lived their lives. They were glad to see him one more time, and that just made it harder. They were sympathetic, and that just made it worse. That they could look at him and see what she saw - the perfect man who had to be perfect - and not Steve Rogers, a man who had his life stolen from him, who never had the chance to live, just made it all the worse.

     That's all loaded into his voice - that mixture of sympathy and frustration, of a man who's watched his friends die of gunshots and old age, of combat and cancer, and who knows that many of them would willingly choose the latter because it was better than the former.

     She calls him brave, and he waves his hand. "It's not bravery. It's just the only thing I was ever good for. Ninety-pound athsmatic, remember? Girls weren't clamoring to dance with a guy who'd be wheezing before the first note ended. Art school was fine but it wasn't what I wanted."

     "I wanted this. I didn't want *this*, but I wanted to serve. I wanted to be a soldier." Steve looks her in the eye. "I got offered this power so I could help people. And if all it takes is me smiling and pretending and pushing through the day then I'm gonna do it. I chose it. I'm gonna keep choosing it every day. Not just because I have to but because I want to."

     "And even if you didn't choose it - even if you didn't want it - I think you came back to it because you wanted to help, and because you were willing to choose it again rather than sit back and do nothing when you had the power to do something."

     "It's a burden, but it's a burden every soldier chooses to bear when they enlist, and I get that you probably didn't choose it, that you probably got forced into it, that you got out of it. But you're back here now."

     He stands up straight. "That means something."

     Another corny 1940s grin. "Even if it just means we're both really, really stupid."

     He hops back over the bar and sits down next to her. "The imperfect thing is just..." He shakes his head. "I don't even know when that started. Johann Schmidtt - the Red Skull, the leader of HYDRA who tried to destroy the world - said I had a bit of green in my perfect blue eyes. I don't know when he started that but since then every two-bit tinpot tyrant has made the same observation, like it's deep that I'm just a man."

     "Being a symbol first is pretty rough for you too, huh? Tell me about the action figures."
Strawberry Princess      "I'm sorry, I- I'm joking," she says, apologetically. "Not about the... the first thing. But about the cancer now. We've got folks like Jade Glitter- healers. The Reignition Project takes good care of me. It's..." Strawberry takes another sip and purses her lips, trying to pick her way through a verbal minefield. "I'm not going to die, now. Or I'm going to... try my best, you know, not to. Because I'm who I ought to be again. I have a reason. So please don't worry."

     You don't put the words to it, how you'd feel if you didn't have a reason. That's not something magical girls do. It's not a feeling they're supposed to have.

     She straightens up proper, maybe for the first time since entering the bar, and doesn't have to raise her eyes to meet his. "That's not why you're brave," she says, sounding firm in that odd way she sometimes does. "I know what it's like, to only be good for one thing. And I know it isn't bravery. You're brave because your friends have died and you still make new ones. You're brave because being kind hurts and you do it anyway. There's a lizard-brain part of you that's screaming at you not to do it, to just scar over and be cold and not care, and every day you're telling that voice to shut up. That's brave."

     And then the action figures. She relaxes, laughing. "The action figures... they're not so bad. Except for that time I put on weight. And then nobody'd shut up about how the figurines were skinnier. You have toys too, right?"
Steve Rogers      Steve laughs, awkwardly. "Oh," he says, and drops the whole cancer thing. He looks embarassed at the subject.

     "And you're not, huh."

     Steve looks at her carefully as she describes the lizard-brain fear, the desire to stop caring. "I don't believe you can."

     "I mean, I don't think anyone can really stop caring, but I especially don't you can. You don't say things like 'I'm who I ought to be again' if you don't care. You disappear into the woods in a tiny little shack and you live off the land and off the grid if you don't want to be found." He's not speaking from personal experience but he is probably speaking from knowledge of a friend. "And you've always got that option. There's always the choice to just vanish, to go away. I think you still care. You're just scared to."

     "But..." He shrugs. "Hey. When you're ready."

     She asks him about the action figures. He laughs. "Unfortunately. Trading cards. Comics. Toys. All collector's items, now. The stupid drawings I did of myself as a dancing monkey after one real memorable show got sold for millions. Tony bought the rights to everything from the Senator's estate. Gave it to me."

     He looks down at the drink. "So I OK'd production again. Not for me - I haven't touched a penny of that stuff. All goes to the VA. But I figured that it'd be nice if people had that symbol to believe in again. In a real dark world you need something like that."

     His phone rings. Steve glances at it, then up at Strawberry. "Sorry. I have to go. They just found an ULTIMATUM warehouse and I need to be in Detroit asap."

     "It was great talking to you, Strawberry. Let's do this again sometime."

     Steve grabs his coat off the rack and heads out the door. He probably has his shield waiting for him somewhere nearby.
Strawberry Princess      "I do care," Strawberry replies, finishing off the last of her second drink. "I try my best to. Every single day. It's- like I said. A process of thawing out. Increasing my tolerance. I do it as much as I can bear to, and that's always a tiny bit more than it was the day before." She slides off of the stool, picks up that heavy-looking black duffel bag, and smiles an uneasy smile. "I ended up hard and cold. Sometimes you have to, just to survive, when it's more than you can bear. But I'm getting better."

     "I could use a little bit of that light, I think. It's good to have. But- before you go." She rummages around in her backpack and produces a figurine, breaking into a wry grin. "I'd be happy to talk to you again anytime, Steve. Keep this as a reminder of that." The figurine's of her in costume- pastel pinks and yellows, long blonde hair, a severe hemispherical visor, a reactor wand with glowing blue paint.

     She stays just a minute longer than he does, to leave a twenty on the counter. Then she's trudging out, something glowing a dull blue through the fabric of her bag.