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It begins like this.The summer of 1932 is the hottest in a decade. Steve can barely spend a minute outside before breaking into sweats and getting dizzy from dehydration; any longer and he’s red with heatstroke. The weather hadn’t been so unbearable the previous year, an inconvenience sure, but ultimately inconsequential to the daily happenings of his life. At 14 years old Steve Rogers has a job wiping down counters at the diner down the street and picking up tables whenever Mary Prescott can’t make. The pay is not much but it’s not something he can miss lightly with his mother struggling to pay the bills in the current economy. It’s the consequences of no money, the little food left over if he doesn’t work, that makes Steve determined to endure. The heat worsens his asthma, something he hadn’t thought possible, and on the days he’s late getting out from school he’s close to passing out on sidewalk. The work is grueling, straining his joints, knees, wrists, and back, and the cleaning solution peels the skin off his palms. Most annoying are the wandering hands of the alphas whose tables he serves. Steve still hasn’t presented but it doesn’t stop some of the older men. On a good day they’re degrading, on a bad day they’re practically predators. Bucky offers to help them out constantly.“I’m telling ya, Stevie, it won’t be a problem. I can pick up an extra shift at the dock’s or the deli down the street or at the shop on fifth. Let me help.”And Steven Grant Rogers is a lot of things, desperate for a reprieve, but a charity case is not one of them, not yet at least, and he’ll be damned if he has to ask Bucky for one penny. “It’s fine, Buck. Things aren’t too bad.” Steve bows his head at Bucky’s unyielding gaze and adds the foreboding yet in his mind. Maybe if things were different he’d accept. As it is now, Winifred Barnes hates Steve with a burning passion. Like most alphas and traditional folk she assumes his future presentation on the basis of his stature and sickliness. Proper Omegas are weak, non threatening, and easy on the eyes, Steve appears to be at least two of the three and that’s enough for Winifred. She’s determined to keep his gold digging paws off of her son, convinced Steve has always wanted one thing. Steve doesn’t care if Bucky has money, would marry and bond James Buchanan Barnes even if he didn’t have a single penny to his name or if the law forbade it on the basis of their presentations. Besides, Winifred hadn’t always cared that Steve and his Ma didn’t have a single penny. She and Sarah had grown up in houses right next to each other and to this day still lived as neighbors, still snuck out late at night to gaze at the sky. The difference was in the marriage. Sarah Rogers wed a simple man of low income and stayed in a brownstone she could only afford by the graciousness of her father’s will and husband’smilitary pension. Winifred Barnes wed a man of a modest stature and stayed in the brownstone she grew up in out of sheer hard work and respectability. Both women were friends, but over the years a chill had fallen and worsened only by their sons’ close friendship and the implication of their future.Steve and Bucky had known each other since the crib. Bucky a boy of two years old and Steve ten months when they’d both grinned at the other for the first time. It hadn’t taken long to form a connection, built on drool covered fingers and cries of “Ma, he’s so small”. In a matter of months where one went, the other crawled. And as it were, Bucky walked Steve home everyday at five o clock sharp. His bigger stature at 16 already convincing many of his future designation as an alpha. Steve had thought it would be safe. They don’t mean for it to happen. They dodge the wandering hands and eyes, Bucky shielding Steve from the worst of it. But this summer is different, this day has changed. Chemically, fundamentally, they lie in wait for something. This summer, the hottest in a decade, weather is bound to trigger nature, force it along. Bucky’s on edge the entire walk home for reasons that don’t involve other alphas. Woozy and trembly. Steve lets him into his apartment, his ma still in the hospital pulling extra nursing shifts and the Barnes not due back for a couple more hours. This is a mistake. A big, big mistake. Locked in a room, separated by only a few inches, the air is charged. The smell around them turns sickly sweet and Steve is frightened its him but then it’s not and their world falls apart.It’s Bucky. His mind can’t compute for a few seconds, freezes in the clear shock at the fact that Bucky is an omega. Steve rushes to lock Bucky in his room. Urging his hands off of the tight grip he tries to trap Steve in. “Steve.” Bucky gasps, unnervingly close to a whine. And Steve, Steve almost gives in but he can’t so closes all the windows and waits on the doorstep outside even as Bucky pounds on the door and begs. A heat, he realizes belatedly. A heat. Steve’s terrified and horrified and so confused because Bucky was supposed to be his alpha. The Barnes arrive and Steve stutters to explain why he smells like omega. Bucky’s dad turns purple with shock. Chokes a little. Winifred covers her mouth and nearly faints, only Rebecca looks genuinely worried. Steve wants to reassure them, tell them it doesn’t matter but George Barnes looks disgusted and Winifred seems mortified. He regrets not saying anything. Hates himself for it because Steve sees Bucky for the last in a very long time the day after the heat is over. Bucky’s dad wrenching open the door as soon as the heat was done and slamming it shut. The Barnes don’t say goodbye. Steve can’t force himself to find them as they drive away under the canopy of the stars. He can imagine reaching out, the bright spots leading him towards BuckyYears later Steve will hate himself, will stare at the sky and wonder why he hadn’t followed the shooting stars. for not stopping anything because George Barnes had always wanted an alpha son and no such thing as nature would stop him. •*•*•Steve presents as an alpha at age 18. It’s three years late and a shock to everyone and somewhat depressing because he still thinks of Bucky. He wonders what it would be like if it were still the two of them, if that heat had happened later, if the world was a better place. The fact is, Bucky is the only one Steve loves, loved, will ever love. The one omega that calls to him with every painful breath. His presentation helps a little with his health, a cool balm on his chest whenever his asthma kicks up a storm but at his core he’s still a little sick boy. Steve doesn’t get a lot of offers to mate, most laughing in his face and deriding him for his weaknesses. He hates it, hates himself, falls into the dark of the night sky trying to feel something. A good six years go by before he sees Bucky again.It’s not on the street or in some random place. Steve signs up for the army nine times before he meets Erskine. And yes, he hates bullies, wants to make a change, but he also wants to prove himself. Wants to show the world that he was enough for them, for himself, for Bucky. This time they meet in a prison pretending to be what they’re not. And it’s cold and quiet and different but Steve remembers wanting to marry James Buchanan Barnes and holding him close for the rest of their lives. He tells him as much. Says “I wanted to marry you.” And then laughs when Bucky “You still could.”They get to know each other in the background of war. They explore themselves and love and love. They joke about weddings.One day they’re in France and there’s an abandoned courthouse with only a few employees still minding it and they think, why not? Steve and Bucky marry in the light of the moon, beneath a thousand stars. Their life is a fairytale doomed to collapse.It hurts when Bucky falls, on that train in the middle of nowhere. It hurts seeing the man let go, and miss his fingertips. It hurts as he ends it all. The only time it no longer hurts is when he crashes the Valkyrie, the dark of the water like the night sky above him. Twinkling like Bucky’s eyes which he hopes he’ll see soon, like every star he ever wished on and cried for. •*•*•It ends like this. The ambitious always reach for something, an unattainable falling star to trap in their hands. Hydra obtains a few vials of Steve’s blood and semen left over from Erskine’s final tests in the chambers and realize that the key to recreating the serum is not regeneration but procreation. Meteors crash to the earth all the time, self combusting in the atmosphere but leaving remnants of themselves behind. All that is needed is the right vessel, the right agent, the right time. It takes them decades to find one. Multiple surrogates dying at the strain of it all until one scientist conveniently remembers the asset’s designation and wonders if a super soldier sperm sample could successfully impregnate an enhances weapon. It can.The year is 1968. And they mock the Asset with images of the one he loved. Torture him, wave it in front of him until his heart aches even if he can’t remembers who the man with the bright hair is. Isn’t sure he knows him at all. He devolves into his own sanity, haunted by the image of a man he isn’t sure is real. The asset gives birth in an empty cell and for the first time in decades, he’s terrified of being alone. The nine months of pregnancy had been the kindest he could ever remember but he knows that it wasn’t for him. It was for what they hoped to take from him. He wants to scream, to die, to fly into the abyss of the dark sky. The birth of his child was supposed to be happy. Light and safe and sound in a way a bunker stashed underneath a small town could never be. He doesn’t remember who but he knows it was supposed to be with someone whose image and ghost still roams. The asset closes his eyes and he doesn’t imagine or dream or wish or remember. He knows. The contractions hit every six minutes, a reoccurring pain like the beating of his heart. Steve, the pulses seem to spell out. Steve. Except the asset is not quite sure who Steve is, can’t recall if its a name or a protocol and the image that pops into his mind is not the bulky blonde man they say fathered his baby.It’s a sickly boy, short and scrawny and too brave for his own good. This is Steve. His Steve. It is his image, framed in a golden halo of feelings with an overwhelming certainty that the asset will one day lose it, that empowers his determination. He pushes for hours and hours. A part of him tearing and bleeding and screaming. He imagines a hand gripping his, wiping the sweat off his brow. Steve. Steve. Holding him. Steve saving him. Pulling him up instead of disappearing in the distance. The asset cries. He cries at the memory of what he can not have, at what will become of him and the baby still safely inside. Drenched in blood, tears and sweat, he pushes and feels a rush between his legs, a release and an end to the pain. There’s a pause, a deafening silence before its broken with an equally deafening cry. The little girl with a shock of bright blond hair and what he swears are blue eyes snuggles against his chest, umbilical cord linking them together in a way he has never felt. He names her as she’s steadfast against his heart, Sarah Rebecca, not sure why those names but quite sure the man with the bright hair, Steven, would hate the name Stephanie. She’s perfect in a way he will never be, tabula rasa to his bleeding red ledger. The asset could stay like this forever, protected in this cell. He could weep for hours at her beauty. But he is a weapon and weapons must not cry and his daughter is a pawn that must be sacrificed.The soldiers enter with a frightening brutality, slamming the iron bars, kicking around the aluminum tray of food before approaching the new mother on the bed. The asset wants to fight or lash out. He begs and begs for them not to take her. But they do and they drag him back to the chair. They don’t freeze him. He will be necessary to the girl’s survival and sanity. Instead they hurt him, make it clear what could happen to her and what he must do. She is his creation and he will teach her how to kill. He will snuff out her light to bring about darkness. •*•*•Sarah Rebecca is given the codename Eve. They tell the asset that one day she will bring about the end. The eve to a new dawn, the last star to set. For now she sleeps against his chest, unknowing of what will happen next but the asset worries.One day Sarah will leave and she will scream and hurt just as he does. What would Steve say if he knew? The asset has his orders, but he also has Sarah. Steve would want her to be safe and she will always be most important, first and foremost his number one. He promises himself to remember this. To fight every memory wipe and treatment. He will remember her for as long as the stars shine. For as long as he looks at the sky.•*•*•His stays in the chair are not as potent or as long as before, the scientists eager to send him in with Sarah and monitor her every move. They want to know how she interacts with others, how she feels, how she thinks, if she’s intelligent. They want to know her on a fundamental level, down to every element in her DNA. He wants to kill them all. He yearns to smash their heads in because they can not know her and they shouldn’t be able to know his daughter. Sarah is all of three and barely stringing sentences when they beat her in front of him. She toddles with an uncertainty, chubby legs ungraceful and unsuited for what they hope to do. They begin her training in everything. Combat, language, battle strategy. They are ruthless. They make her bleed and vomit and hurt. Sarah criescriescries. Tears glinting off her cheeks like the glowing planets.She hunches by the dark wall, golden halo bright until the asset can’t look at her without seeing some alleyway in Brooklyn(?). The blonde man cowering against him, searching for comfort against a cruel world. The asset thinks he protected the man then. Guarded him against the demons of the world. But Sarah has only ever known a cruel world and the occasional reprieve in his arms. If the asset was once a good man he no longer is but he tries for her. He does not have much to offer her, only stories he barely recalls in some vain attempt to ensure her light stays bright and she never loses herself like him.Sarah even at three, raised on stories of love and heroism whispered in the dark, learns to be defiant, to bite, kick and scream no matter the price. She’s all Steve and little of him. Full of a boundless energy and a eternal love for everything. She’s Sarah and though he loves her, though he wants to steal her from the world and keep her at his side no matter the cost she can not stay at his side. He will kill her if she stays. He will kill all he has of Steve. The asset, Bucky he begins to call himself after so long free from the chamber, can not fathom this. Bucky plots carefully; he has one shot. He will get her out, and ensure they focus on him only.It’s simpler than he thinks. He waits until most of the top personnel are off at important meetings about someone called Ford and then strikes, more intent on escape than safety. The asset runs with all he has, across oceans and fields. In the dark of the night and light of day. He drops his daughter off in the middle of some no name American town. Hits her hard in the back of the head, not enough to injure but to make her woozy. He cuts off her hair, bathes her, changes her clothes before carrying her to the tiny, decrepit orphanage. He does not stay long enough to see her found or alright.He assures himself she has to be, will be better without the stain of him or Hydra. She will be Sarah Rebecca, and though she may never remember the mother that birthed her and raised her for seven years, she will be strong. And then he finds himself a little girl with bright blonde hair and splatters her blood and brain all over himself. He destroys every last sample of Steve and his daughter, makes sure they have nothing left and then he pays the price. Miles and miles away, as the asset is tortured and endures a deeper descent into madness and emptiness, his daughter is taken in by some nice family. Their own daughter dead in a tragic accident not too long ago, and looking for absolution. They rename her Carol Jane Danvers and they’re not horrible but they expect her to be docile and sweet and everything James Barnes never was. She spends her first months afraid and yelled at to “Hush up!” Her new family derides everything she says and believes. Of course there are no facilities or cells where people grow up. The sun doesn’t hurt that much. Everything is safe now and there’s no reason to cry. They tell her to stop telling lies, to stop yelling for Mama because she has no Mama, never did.She grows up with a mother who doesn’t love her, a father who wishes she were better and a brother that leaves her.She is a girl doomed to hate her present, know little of her past, and look towards the future in the dawn of her childhood. But she will always remember the darkness and the comforting arms that held her. Stories of Steve and the color blue and the stars lead her steps. It will be the stars that define her. She will join the air force when she can. She will picture the emblem of Steve’s suit as she does. She will remember the feeling of her father’s hands around her as he drew it in the dust of their cell and looked at it with longing even if she won’t remember his name or his face. Sarah Rebecca turned Carol Jane will defy the odds of everyone. Omega or not, woman or not, she flies the best she can. And it will take some time, years and years of fighting, but she will always be the light her mother wanted her to be. She will never forget him. She will stand in a room in her mind at the feet of an all powerful intelligence and though once upon a time it would have taken the shape of Lawson, this time she defies, she rebels, she remembers more than what she lost six years prior and it takes the place of him. She looks into his eyes, Mama, and she wants, but she can not have him.Sarah Barnes reaches for the stars and not once does Carol Danvers miss.
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Steve Rogers is all of sixteen years of age when he gives birth, alone, in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn because he and Bucky hadn’t been able to afford any better. It’s the middle of the harshest winter in seventeen years. They’ve barely rung in the new year, 1934 to be precise, and sometimes it’s hard to remember that it’s only been seven months since Bucky’s parents kicked him out of their apartment. Seven months since their lives changed and they gave up everything they had. Steve still carries the guilt of that. Somedays he can’t even look Bucky in the eye no matter what the other man says. Steve knows it is his own fault they’re stuck like this. The blame of this pregnancy falls solely on his own stupidity and gullibility. And now he’s ruined both of their lives. Children raising children in the middle of the worst financial crisis ever. How stupid could Steve get? If he hadn’t wandered out so close to his heat, if he hadn’t been caught by those alphas, if he hadn’t been so weak. They weren’t around for long, and Steve didn’t think—hoped at least—he hadn’t been completely naked Bucky had found him lying in the alleyway, heat still coursing through his veins and begging through tears of shame. Steve wanted comfort against the nightmare he’d endured and he had forced Bucky to give it to him. The day his heat broke, Steve nearly died from the shame and self disgust. Not even Bucky could truly want him as used as he was. Bucky swore it meant little to him. It was an honest mistake, he pleaded with Steve, something he shouldn’t let bother him, and they were both at fault for what happened after Bucky found him. The smaller boy shook his head and refused to see Bucky for five weeks.When the nausea began, Steve walked through the world in a sheen of self denial. He wasn’t—he couldn’t be—because if he was, then who was—? What if it wasn’t Bucky? What would he do then? Could he even…? The older Alpha found him hurling the contents of his stomach behind the corner store down the street, his blue eyes gazing at the blonde boy with a keen intensity. He didn’t ask Steve what was wrong. He simply rubbed his back and walked him home, laying on the floor next to his bed and holding his hand. “Stevie? This doesn’t matter. Not even a little. I’ll always love you, no matter why cause I’m with ya. T’il the end of the line.” Bucky promised like he always did. Steve never needed to say what was wrong and what he feared. Bucky had known with a single gaze. Held his hand as he whispered “I’m with ya,” again and again until it sounded like I love you. Most importantly, Bucky remembered the consequences of a single male omega giving birth in this day and age. He stayed by Steve despite not being able to know for months if the child was his. Bucky endured the yells of his parents, the beating from his father and then when they’d thrown him out with only the clothes he had on him, he walked over to Steve’s house. They’d eaten a pint of ice cream that day, spoons clacking together, and then Bucky promised to get a job for the both of them. Three months after that, they’d moved out of his Ma’s apartment when the stigma against his and Bucky’s relationship had begun to threaten her safety. Bucky’s job was safe only because of the distance it had from their neighborhood and the rumors that followed.For his own safety, before they’d even moved in to the new apartment, Steve took up the name Stephanie and wore dresses with his hair out to a questionable length. In this day and age pretending to be an unmarried female omega with an alpha was easier and less conspicuous than being a male omega. Certain doctors also agreed to consult him and promised to not say a word, but even they spoke under their breaths about his situation and charged him higher rates. The mounting bills meant Bucky was always at the docks, picking up as many shifts as he could loading and unloading cargo. “I—I didn’t think, I, I’m—“ Steve stuttered whenever they opened the letters with the red stamps of Important and Urgent Reply Needed. “It’s alright, Steve, I can handle it.” Bucky would always say. But then last month he resorted to getting a second job. And their situation only worsened. Now in the present he’s usually gone from the crack of dawn to the rise of the moon. Their tenuous balance threatened by the possibility of anyone finding out the truth of their relationship. Same sex pairs remained illegal in New York and most of the country. Steve’s endlessly remorseful. “I’m so sorry, Buck.” He whispers, usually when the other man sleeps. He’s ruined Bucky’s life and he thinks he’ll spend the rest of his days making up for it.Steve knows he shouldn’t but he stays awake for the man whenever the fatigue is manageable, determined to make himself useful. He heats up Bucky’s dinner and warms the water for a bath. When the alpha finally walks through the door Steve greets him with a sweet kiss that promises life will get better. He thinks if they believe it enough it will happen. Bucky has to get a promotion, either at the docks or the store he’s now started sweeping at. He deserves it for everything. He deserves a better wage and a better education. He deserves someone that is good enough for him and can guarantee him a child that’s his. Someone who would lie awake and count every star in the sky just for Bucky. •*•*•Their daughter is born four weeks too early in a cold, dirty house on a starless night.Steve begins the first contractions at down. He’s coherent enough to see and feel Bucky kissing his cheek and caressing his face. In those quiet moments, before the world can destroy every single light in his starlit world, Steve’s love for Bucky is infinite. He could admire the other man for as long as the sun shines, until even the universe comes crashing down to earth. He knows Bucky would prefer to know of his pain but in the haze of love, Steve assumes the pains are simply the strain of carrying so much weight on his small and young body. The baby’s kicks became less frequent as the sun rose. By the time Steve gets up from bed, he feels no movement and he would worry but he assumes the baby is simply sleeping. He does his daily tasks around the house, cleans and cooks, and then walks around the block. Exercise supposedly helps but instead his pain increases and he only realizes what’s happening when he sits down on his bed and a gush of liquid rushes out. “Oh shit. Oh no.” Steve presses his hand to the top of his belly just as his abdomen clenches and he feels the overwhelming need to throw up. He can’t get up like this, not by himself. But he has to. The baby is early, and Bucky isn’t here. Except getting up and walking is a big mistake. The pains increase with his awareness of the situation and when he tries to walk to the door, Steve falls hard on the stone floor. Thankfully he lands on his back and part of his leg, but the pain shoots up his spine and down his knee. Steve can’t get up. He’s on the floor and he’s terrified and in pain but he can’t get up and no one answers his calls for help. Eventually he maneuvers himself into position. Overcomes the pain in his leg to raise both of his knees. He tries to check if he can even begin to push but it’s too awkward to check. In the end he follows instinct. Steve endures for hours and hours, well into the dark of the night. It hurts, the pressure on his leg increases, blood rushes through his body and pounds in his ears. He tries to scream again but by then he’s too weak and he thinks something is tearing. He’s bleeding too much, the bed stained red but he can’t get up and he still can’t scream. Bucky finds him pale and on death’s doorstep.“Stevie, Steve!” He yells, kneeling by him on the floor. It’s midnight, the moon high in the sky and pouring through the window. Bucky’s eyes are wide, hands shaking as he cradles Steve’s face. “Buck, I don’t know if—I don’t want to, Bucky please.” Steve sobs, gripping to the sides of Bucky’s face and pushing with all his might. Something releases, a rubber band snaps and then Steve can’t see anything, blackness engulfs everything and the only thing he’s sure of is he didn’t hear a cry. He didn’t hear a cry. She didn’t cry.•*•*• It’s a miracle Steve survives and his womb is scarred, another child unlikely, another heat impossible but in the end mother and daughter live.In the seconds after her mother heard silence a little girl enters the world screaming. She’s an ugly, pink thing as she lands in her father’s hands before he has half a mind to place her on her mother’s chest and run over to whatever neighbor or officer he can find.Covered in blood, Bucky Barnes shocks many a housewife, but his desperate pleas work and the ambulance comes rushing to their apartment after being hailed by someone with a phone. The paramedics load Steve, ask a bunch of questions Bucky doesn’t know because he wasn’t there. “I don’t know.” He repeats. “I don’t know. Please let me go with him.” Face ashen and lifeless eyes, Bucky can’t hold his own daughter. In the hospital, they refuse to let him see Steve one last time. The doctors and nurses rush off with him and talk about placental abruption and high blood pressure. Bucky can only watch.Absentmindedly, he hears a nurse ask about his daughter. “She’s healthy, sir. Seven pounds and a good crier and likely to live. The situation isn’t ideal but she needs a name.” They’ve brought the girl out, now clean, the nurse holds her to place her in his arms and Bucky belatedly realizes that the little girl smells just like him and though she has her mother’s hair those are his eyes and his nose and lips and everything. He doesn’t want to hold her. A part of him hates it, hates her, would almost prefer if she weren’t his and responsible for the death of the man he loved. Bucky wishes any of the other alphas he’s rescued Steve from had sired her. If only so he could drop her off to one of them and mourn Stevie in peace. But he can’t. This is his daughter. She is as much of him as she is of Steve. To leave her behind is to reject the love he has for Steve, to pretend the stars are merely imagination. Steve’s daughter deserves something. “Name her Stephanie, Stephanie Carol Rogers.” And then he walks away to gaze out the window and wait for news. Stephanie for Steve, and Carol for Bucky’s own grandmother Charlotte. •*•*•Steve doesn’t wake up for three weeks. The doctors say the toll on his body was too much. Already he’d caught an infection and it had been touch and go for a while. They tell him the prognosis isn’t good. The head nurse even calls in a priest to do last rites when Bucky finally can’t miss a day of work and expect to pay all the hospital bills. Stephanie is also kept for a little longer, just to monitor her lungs. But she is strong, free of the ailments of her mother as if her very existence had sucked the life out of Steve Rogers. She leaves a week before her mother does and Rebecca kindly looks after her whenever Bucky can’t.The little girl is hard to hold. She’s stubborn and wild. Limbs flailing around with a determination that is all Steve. Bucky wants Steve back. Needs him so much. Instead he’s stuck with a daughter he’s not sure he can love and who he’ll likely spends his days chasing after. Rebecca tries to make him talk, but he only escapes from his self imposed apathy when on one of his visits, Steve wakes up. He smiles at Bucky, the grin as bright as night sky, the little moronic shit, even as his eyes burn under the light and his face hurts. “I’m with ya pal, til the end of the line.” And Bucky smiles then, believes everything will be okay. It’ll always be him, Steve, and Steph. That day he goes home and hugs his daughter for the first time not out of obligation but love.•*•*•Stephanie Carol Rogers grows up loved in the middle of the worst financial crisis ever. She spends the days in bed with her mother, talking and learning all he has to teach her, and eating spam out of cans with a spoon. Her mother never gets to finish high school or go to art school, always too weak or sickly for that, but Steve Rogers draws his daughter masterpieces.And when her father gets home from work, she toddles and talks and watches as her parents dance around the kitchen of their small apartment. She sees one of the greatest love stories of all time endure and endure regardless of the stigma and oppression and the circumstances of poverty. Bucky takes her to see all he knows, shows her the world on his shoulders, and they laugh and laugh, and chase after Steve when he angers someone else and acts like an idiot. They attend her grandmother’s funeral in 1936 and while they mourn, they keep their heads held high and live. And they don’t have much money, and her dresses are threadbare and hand sewn to disguise all tears but one day she’ll look back on this as some of the happiest years of her life. Filled with cheers and laughs and watching her mother ride the Cyclone on Coney Island.•*•*•Her life is shattered in 1941. The Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and the US fully enters the war and her father is sent away to fight in London with the 107th Infantry Regiment. Stephanie clings to her mother’s skirts as they wave goodbye and her father drives away on an old bus. She is seven when she lasts sees her father. Over the course of many months Steve and Stephanie endure. They lose contact with Bucky, the letters which were once constant become few and far between before stopping. Money runs low, and Stephanie’s stomach hurts more often than not. Her mother cries and cries at the state of their apartment, and the empty cabinets and the cold water and the notes on the door that they find on the days Steve tries to find someone to hire him. No one does when they see a male omega with a little girl. There is no hope. They can’t survive like this. One day her mother tells Stephanie to go wait in their room. Mama leaves for hours and hours. Stephanie tries to sleep but she worries and when the door finally opens, Mama’s clothes are torn and his eyes are glassy and he cries in their bed. He does not get up for an entire day. Stephanie uses the money in his hands to run down the street, not too far, only as far as her daddy ever took her to buy some food. This continues for weeks, until one day Stephanie’s in her room as usual and Mama comes back only before she can see him he screams and Stephanie wants to run out but Mama told her not to ever leave until he came into the room. Stephanie hides under the raggedy bed and covers her ears as Mama screams and screams. She quiets her sobs until she can hear the door slam shut and then she runs out to Mama, ignoring their rule and finds him bleeding and unconscious and naked. Stephanie runs out of their apartment and begs for help. The police officer comes, chases the little girl in the tattered dress and he takes one look at Mama and asks Stephanie if she has anywhere else to go. She says she does, her Aunt Becky, but what about Mama? Stephanie Rogers is nine when she last sees her mother. Mama drops her off with her Aunt and then writes her as many letters as possible before they stop as well. Mama tells her of a nice man named Erskine who helped when when he was sick and about how he’ll now go find Daddy. Mama promises to come back with Daddy when all this is over and the world is safe for Stephanie. He promises to take her to the Grand Canyon and have her see all the stars in the entire galaxy like the book she read with Aunt Becky promises.Only—Only—One day Stephanie comes home from school and Aunt Becky is crying. Stephanie is eleven when she knows her parents are gone and the nice lady, Agent Carter (Auntie Peggy, she insists) and Mr. Stark (Call me Howie) take her away from Aunt Becky. They tell her she can be Stephanie Carol Rogers no longer. That for her own safety Stephanie Carol Rogers must die. (Later, much later, practically an adult by then, she will read the files on the death of Stephanie Barnes not Rogers, daughter of Rebecca, victim of TB circa 1945 and born a Barnes in 1934.) Her life will be gone, a complete and utter lie. Far away from the home of her childhood, Carol B. Grant grows up in an orphanage run by the nice Mrs. Philipps, a General’s wife, in the outskirts of DC. She knows who she is now and who she must never be again. Agent Carter (never Peggy) drills it into her head at age 11 that if anyone found out the truth she would never be safe. Carol asks why, Hydra is gone, her mother and father dead to ensure it, but the older woman remains silent and her eyes echo a promise and a secret. At fourteen, she’s adopted by an older lady desperate for help around her house. Carol presents as an omega, like her daddy always said she would. (Strong, like your mother he had said before he left.) But there’s a bitterness in her presentation. Carol Grant is a girl abandoned by everyone she loves. A girl who watched her father leave, even if not by his own choice, and saw her mother fall apart when left with nothing. She does not want to be that helpless ever again. She does not want to be alone and cry herself to sleep under the cover of stars. She does not want to remember that night, when her mother screamed and screamed. Carol rebels against any authority in her life because she knows what her station is and it’s not what she wants. Carol B. Grant searches for Peggy Carter and begs for a chance. She needs a purpose in her life because for the past five years she’s felt like nothing. At 16, Carol Grant, omega, joins the air force under a false name, designation and age. She works under some top secret project, but there’s an accident, an explosion with the Tesseract as Mr. Stark called it. The artifact lashes out and searches for her as if it knew who she was and who she would be. Carol Grant disappears in 1955 as if she never existed. In some nice little residential hospital in nowhere Montana, Charlotte Proctor sleeps for 30 years. Not once does she age. No one calls for her, no one checks up on her, no one questions who she is. Anyone who leaves knows better than to open their mouths and if they do, their deaths by tragic accidents follow. Every week, Peggy Carter opens a report and closes it with a sigh, acknowledging that she may have finally failed Steve. And then the year is 1985. Lottie Proctor dies peacefully in her sleep and the little hospice in Montana shuts down.18 year old Carol Danvers enlists in the military and by complete luck, lacking in all connections and in the only job available to women, much less omega women, she works under Dr. Lawson alongside Maria Rambeau. Beneath her skin is a ticking time bomb. All it takes is the right burst, the necessary chemical reaction. She forgets who she is to find what she was. She endures betrayal and heartache, but she finds friendship and family. Carol Danvers never speaks to Peggy Carter, ignores any mention of the woman, finds her too suspicious and all knowing. Instead she allies with Nick Fury. By 27 she’s a hero twice over and leaves the planet of her home with a promise of protection. Once her mother protected America, now she stands as the Lone Avenger. She is the beginning, the first star in the night sky doomed to count every single one that follows.Light years and light years away from the prison of her father and the sleep of her mother, Captain Marvel fights against bullies and remembers a time when she flew planes in the air force and then much earlier when she was Stephanie Rogers. She returns with a call from Nick Fury. SHIELD is compromised. And in the hideout of the spy who knows everything she reads the files of Captain America and the Winter Soldier. Her heart mends, her parents neither as dead as she had once thought.
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Stephanie doesn’t know how the man found her. It’s 1951 and she’s eleven years old, and they had promised her she would be safe, protected, unthreatened. Agent Carter and Mr. Stark, and the Colonel, they had all promised. “You’ve endured so much, Steph.” Miss Peggy had said, with a heavy tone and odd, sparkly eyes. “We promised your parents we’d keep you happy. You won’t ever lose anyone again.” And she meant it, with Mr. Stark nodding along, as serious as she was as a toddler counting the stars. Then they had changed her name and her hair and Aunty Becca had become Mrs. Rebeca Proctor and Stephanie wondered what would happen when she saw Mama and Papa again, if they’d recognize her with her darker hair. It took a while for Stephanie to accept the reality. Weeks and weeks of hearing the cheers on the streets and the laughter of children tossed into the air by their Papas. She slept for nights and nights by the door wondering when they’d be back. But they never came. Eventually Stephanie had to accept that Mama and Papa were dead. Aunt Becky waited patiently for her, and when the day came that she was ready, Steph was taken to their grave in a little black car when she and Miss Peggy were all sure no one could see. Steph remembers placing the flowers on cold marble stones and wondering why she couldn’t be with them. She remembers staying there for hours until she had counted all the stars she could see in the sky and they faded into the day.Things became easier after her realization, easier to allow Stephanie Barnes to disappear and in her place Sarah Jane Proctor emerge. Sarah Jane hated mornings and Stephanie loved them. Sarah Jane excelled in math, Stephanie loved all kinds of art. Sarah Jane went to school and studied hard. She ate all her vegetables and listened to her aunt, and she wasn’t happy but she was safe and healthy if not whole. The little girl spoke to everyone but rarely said anything back. She kept a wall up and hid behind it because it was the only thing that kept her safe. But now the man had come and Aunt Becky is dead. A single bullet through the chest. A little gasp, and she toppled over into the glass table, eyes wide right in front of Sarah. Little shards of glass flew everywhere, embedded into Sarah’s cheeks like the kisses her mother once pressed. “Aunt Becky?” But the woman didn’t move. Heat rose in Sarah’s cheeks, blood pumping so fast all she could hear was the beat of her heart. Someone was coming. And then a hand slammed over her mouth, a cold, metal appendage that flipped her body around until she was facing a tall man with goggles and a mask. If she could, she would have let out a little shriek. Something stopped her from struggling. The man was familiar for all that his features were obfuscated. There was something about the way he held himself, the positioning of his body, the color of his hair in the sunlight streaming from the broken window, that reminded her of…“Papa?” But the man either can’t hear or ignores her and she’s sure it can’t be him because Papa would never ignore her and he’s dead.The man carries her away in the dead of the night and he takes her to another man named Arnim Zola. •*•*•Mr. Zola is not a nice person. He calls Sarah Jane Stephanie like he knows all her secrets and laughs when he hears her muttering about her Mama and Papa. Mr. Zola says they are dead and if they were alive, they’d leave her there with him.He says Stephanie is a bad person. Says he got Becky killed, and then shows her pictures of the bleeding body.•*•*•Some days Mr. Zola walks into her room just to watch her. He stares at her like a predator watches its prey, beady eyes bright and haunting. If she notices and stares too long, he smiles, shark teeth on display, before waving and walking out. Some days he doesn’t leave. He presses a hand on her cheek and caresses what little is left of her hair. He cut it all off as soon as he realized the brown was a dye.Now its blonde and hangs at her chin. Mr. Zola tells her she’s too pretty to be a just any weapon. She’s delicate and sweet. She can’t be a hammer. She’s a knife in the dark, and that part terrifies Stephanie. She’s nothing special. She’s short and underweight and sickly. Her asthma’s as bad as her Mama’s and Mr Zola smacks her when she can’t breathe and demands she control it. Those are the bad days. When he rages at the world. At Hitler and Schmidt, at Peggy Carter and Howard Stark, at Mama. He cuts her hair and beats her like she is Mama.“Steve, Steve, Steve.” He accentuates every blow. “Mama, Mama, Mama.” Stephanie chants. It only makes him angrier. Sometimes he grabs a knife and carves into her pretty skin. Writes things like “Whore”, “Brat”, and “Worthless.”Sometimes he leaves her without food or water. He watches from his lab how her stomach shrinks and her lips run dry. Her skin is pale and her bones poke through. She hates him.But sometimes he enters the room and sets her on his lap. Mr. Zola reads her stories. They are of random characters and persons. People she will never meet but always long for. The scientist feeds her and bathes her. He throws her to the sky and spins her round and round. They play games on metal floors, trip over toys and hug each other when they hurt. They sing songs and dance. His hands still feel weird and Stephanie knows who he is and how he gets bad days but he soothes her and reminds her of her parents. On the good days, she can close her eyes and almost love him. The bad days get worse when her body begins rejecting treatment. Mr. Zola says he wants to help her get better. The scientist says she is sick and will not love long. No matter how much they hurt, make her writhe, and her blood boil she needs them. When she refuses and runs, he brings in the Soldier. He tells her to call it Winter on the bad days, and the Asset on the worst ones. Mr. Zola has Winter teach her to fight and hide and speak a dozen different languages. It doesn’t matter if she chokes on her blood, bile, and mucus from her last treatment, or if her hands tremble. The Asset does not care, if anything he is more brutal. He yells and yells. If she fails, the Asset beats her bloody. His metal hand wrenches her hair and bashes it into walls. Stephanie screams. He forces her to look at him as blood seeps down her faces, and Mr. Zola makes him take off her goggles and mask. Her heart stops because she knows the man that hurts her.“Papa. Papa. Papa.” And her hands reach to the soldier in supplication because before she was just a little delusional girl. She thought, he walks just like Papa, speaks just like him too whenever he talks to her in English. When he beats her, his hands curl around her like Papa. But she had always repeated he can’t be Papa, Papa is dead. Now the face in front of her looks like him and it isn’t dead but she kind of wishes it was because then it means he didn’t have any means to save her.Mr. Zola mocks her cries. He delights in having the soldier in the room, particularly when he stands immobile. He laughs and laughs until his cheeks are red and his bellyaches. He says something intelligible. Another language she does not know. If the soldier ever hesitates in her cries, the commands turn him rigid once more. Mr. Zola makes Stephanie watch as he straps the Asset into the chair. Late at night, in her cell, she can still hear his screams. Stephanie imagines the stars of her childhood, and counts them all. She does not beg for Papa anymore. That man is not papa, and if he was, she couldn’t save him.Instead, she begs, Mama. Mama. Mama. Somedays Papa remembers. On those days, Mr. Zola leaves them alone with a sinister “Have fun with her.”The first time it happened, Stephanie had run. Her legs shook and her chest burned but she ran and ran until he inevitably caught her. He beat her bloody. He almost killed her and he would have but she had grabbed his hand and said, “I’m with you, Papa, til the end of the line.” His eyes had cleared then, and he had looked at her for the first time. His hands fell limp at his sides and his mouth moved but no sound came out. Mr. Zola leaves them alone for ten days. Stephanie starves but the Asset is gone by day five and somewhere in Winter’s eyes, it’s Papa brushing her hair, Papa who cries and cries when he sees her mangled body. It ends when Mr. Zola comes back. He barks a command or drags Winter to the chair. On those nights she waits by the cell doors and when he comes to do his rounds, she begs; it makes no difference, his eyes are blank. Slowly he remembers her, and he tries to help her escape. He doesn’t know her name or who she is, but he fights every time they take him to the chair, and refuses to touch her even as he makes her laugh in the darkness of a dirty lab. Winter almost kills Mr. Zola and tells her, “Run, Steph. Please. Run.”I love you, his eyes say, even if he can’t. Til the end of the line. The Hydra operatives catch them. He forgets her but Mr. Zola remembers and Stephanie never sees her father again. Her last image is of him thrashing in the chair looking right at her. Mama is nowhere to be seen. In the end, Stephanie learns to save herself. •*•*•Mr. Zola has had her for three years. Stephanie is 14 and she’s sent on her first mission to kill a man and extract information.She kills him. A single bullet. And he gasps and glass shards fly, and blood presses into her skin like her Mama’s kisses and her Papa’s fists. His body is cold on the ground like her Aunt Becky’s.Stephanie does not want to kill, but no one can keep her safe. Not Agent Carter, not Mr. Stark, not Papa and the man that sometimes wears his face.She takes the gun and the information they wanted her to steal, and she places the bullet in her head and follows them into the ocean. Stephanie Barnes wants to die. She can not stay when she knows Mama is dead and Papa is gone. She falls into the ocean and counts the stars until she can see no more.Except, Arnim Zola always wanted his perfect weapon and weapons never die. They rust and break but they can always be fixed.•*•*•She wakes up in 1982. Her body has been submerged underwater for thirty years and she does not have the super soldier serum but Arnim Zola had done enough to make her freakish enough to survive this. She finds nee clothes, steals a bike, looks up what she can. Aunt Becky is alive. Ironically she married a guy named Arthur Proctor and they have three kids. Stephanie would like to see her again but she is scarred and dangerous. No one can keep her safe.Mr. Stark is also alive but he has his own son to deal with and Stephanie never knew him well enough to approach him now. Margaret Carter is still alive. She is the one who made the promise years ago. She is the one that had loved Mama. Stephanie finds her and the woman doesn’t ask. She knows who Stephanie is. Margaret Carter cries and cries and rambles about broken promises. It fixes nothing.No one can save Stephanie Barnes. But she died in 1954 and Carol Danvers is officially born in 1968. She joins the air force in 1986. She meets Maria Rambeau and makes some friends and she works under Dr. Lawson.Its not perfect, but Carol Danvers is safe for as long as she can be. •*•*•When the time comes, when everything she knows is lost, when the Supreme Intelligence takes the form of the one person who let her down the most. Carol Danvers stares down at the face of Steve Rogers, her Mama, the one who left when he should have stayed, the one who abandoned Papa so he became nameless and faceless. She knows it isn’t him, she knows that once she had begged him to save her but he never came, not in all the lonely nights, when Becky died, when the man with Papa’s face beat her. He never saved her and maybe that isn’t his fault, maybe he had to make some tough decisions. But Stephanie Barnes was alone. And Carol Danvers had to learn how to save herself. •*•*•She lets him go. {She wants to save Papa, but they say Arnim Zola is dead and Stephanie can only assume the mad man killed Papa.She has saved herself and now she must save others. Carol Danvers says goodbye to Nick Fury and she is 27 but looks 18 and she promises to come back when earth needs her to be the hero she needed most.}