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Secret Bit of Right From Wrong	By : ChrisCross Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 9417 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Captain America or The Avengers. I make no money, and live on reveiws alone

Chapter List
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The following days fell into an easy routine. He would wake, shower, shave and dress before going into the kitchen to make coffee. He would sit at the dining table with a breakfast of orange juice, eggs, bacon or sausage, and a bagel with cream cheese. The bagel was always a special, gluten free kind. Apparently, he was mildly intolerant of gluten, not enough to cause an allergic reaction, but his system rejected it and he gained no caloric value from it. It was one reason he had had a hard time putting on weight. After he was done, he put the dishes in the dish-washing machine, which he would turn on when it was full. He would have felt better doing the dishes by hand after each meal, but he was always careful to heed Pepper’s advice on the neatness of his environment. He then unpacked boxes until he got tired, when he would nap.
He had started taking short naps when the doctors who were treating his ongoing issues told him he needed to. Normally he was not one for sloth, but they said he was catching up on all the sleep he had missed as a Super-Soldier. He would have thought seventy years would mean something, but his frozen stasis had shut him down past the ability to dream. It was the REM type sleep he needed, according to the doctors. The more time he spent dreaming, the faster he would recover his pre-enhancement stamina. Not that it had been all that great, but it was better than what he had now.
After the expected rest and a quick lunch of fruit and cheese, he alternated reading with sketching. Initially, he had to work on smaller pads of paper than the canvasses he planned to paint on, standing wore him out. When he started feeling better, he would walk around the spacious front half of the apartment after his reading grew tedious, or he ran dry of artistic ideas. The gentle exercise strengthened him gradually, and within two weeks of starting the habit he could walk about all the time. This allowed him to start mapping the rough draft of his paintings on canvas with pencil. Part of the safety of being here was the cover of being an artist, so he needed to do his part. The Roger Grant cover identity had been in the wheelchair because of an old injury being aggravated by a more recent infection. It was expected that he would slowly recover. At the instruction of his doctors, he took a number of medicines at various times every day. There was an odd, bittersweet comfort to the prescription of an inhaler for the chest tightness that was called asthma. His mother had been right all those decades ago, it was an illness of the lungs, not the mind.
At night, after the sun had gone down enough that the natural light was no longer flooding the room; he would cook another meal, eat it at the table and put the dishes in the machine. Then he would go back to the bedroom change into pajamas, take another round of pills, and sleep. The pattern would repeat the next day. In a way, the repetitiveness was relaxing. He had no responsibility to anyone but himself, no need to save the day, no silent pressure to be a role model. He stayed on that schedule only because it was easy. He ignored calendars and clocks, didn’t keep track of the day of the week or the time beyond recognizing that if he could not contact the work spaces in the building it was probably Sunday and when the sun hit a certain point it was after business hours. He played his music for company and could go for incredibly long periods without ever speaking. A few times Pepper called him and they would chat, carefully keeping off of topics that could identify either of them. Once he was called in to try out a solution to his de-powered state, but other than that he never went out. It was dull, but he was used to boredom. Most of war was waiting around until the time for a short burst of furious action. He had been in a more active group than most, but wartime was still long periods of boredom punctuated by short jolts of intense fear. It really shouldn’t have surprised him that when things got interesting they got interesting quickly.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It started with an intruder. He was in bed, but not sleeping well when he heard the hall light buzz. Even without the serum to speed his reflexes, waking up to danger had the effect of triggering his soldier’s instinctual fluidity of reaction. He rolled out of bed to the side away from the door, and grabbed a metal ballpoint pen from beside the phone on his nightstand where he had left it and notepaper. He hadn’t ever thought of it as a weapon, but his mind was beyond thinking, in the place where all knowledge and stimuli integrated and became action, bypassing thought. He knew he might not have heard all the buzzes, so he couldn’t depend on the presumption of a single infiltrator. He heard soft sounds at his door, and knew that picking the lock would bring agents at a run. He also knew that Catherine McCann was out giving her monthly in-person SITREP, and the delay before help arrived might be great enough to allow a successful attack. This information integrated and propelled him into a counter maneuver, and without thinking he barreled at the door. He went through it, caught the intruder around the waist, and only barely pulled his strike with the pen as he saw a frightened, wide eyed girl in a white and blue shirtwaist-cut dress. Romanova aside, assassins don’t often wear skirts in the field. As he began to think again he realized he was straddled across her thighs. This was not a position Steve had ever thought he’d be in. A blush spread over his face with the speed and heat of a forest fire. The mind that had been so quick moments before screeched to a halt. A tear trickled out of her eye and back toward the thick dark hair splayed on the floor in a halo. The sight caused him great distress, and broke the paralysis of shock. He threw his body backward only to slam into the door that had swung shut behind him. The mystery woman scuttled back too, and for a long moment they sat on the floor looking at each other, speechless. “Miss, I am so very sorry. I never meant to attack an innocent da---woman, I wasn’t thinking, I am so sorry for frightening you, are you hurt?” Steve tended to ramble when nervous, and only stopped himself by asking her a question.
“I, uh, I’m not hurt, I don’t think. I tucked my head when we fell, so it didn’t get hit. And you kept from stabbing me… Why did you attack me? I know my sister rents the place out, but surely she told you that there might be someone else moving in?”
“Oh, um, I was having a bad dream when I heard you at the door, I just reacted without thinking.” It was true enough; he could see the loss of his power as a bad dream that just happened to be real. And he had been reacting without thought. “I guess it never occurred to me that there would be a second tenant moved in without Ms. McCann warning me, or that it would happen in the night.”
“Oh, yeah, I suppose that was my fault. I wound up in town suddenly, and just came on up when my call went to Catie’s voicemail. I already had a key from my last visit. I’m glad that you have a lock on the bedroom door, though. I hate to think what might have happened if I woke you up by walking into your room. It’s not good to shock a person awake when they’re in a nightmare, like why you don’t wake a sleepwalker.”
“I’m a bit overcautious about security, for personal reasons. I rent this room because of the lock. But I think it takes a different key than the other bedroom. Mine doesn’t open the second bedroom.” He realized suddenly that if she had tried the wrong key on his door, that there might be a flood of S.H.E.I.L.D. agents any moment. How should he deal with that? The influx of men with guns would give up this apartment as a safe house. “I think I have a number for your sister that might get through. Wait here a moment, please.” He stood up and retrieved the room key from the chain that once held his dog tags. Soon he was back by the phone dialing the code for after-hours contact. It went to her government-issue cellular phone when she wasn’t under-cover. She picked up on the first ring.
“What’s the situation?” Her voice was tense, like she expected the answer to be a list of ransom demands.
“There might have been a false alarm on my bedroom door. I’m fairly sure it’s nothing, unless you don’t have a sister, in which case the alarm was definitely not false. What do I do?”
“Describe the girl. It shouldn’t be my sister, Karen lives with our parents.”
“She said that she arrived in town suddenly, and had a key from a previous visit. She’s short, a bit shorter than I am now, pale skin, tons of dark hair, black I think; eyes are a light brown. Her body type is more of a Rubens than a Van Gogh. She was wearing a shirtwaist, it’s a dress that hasn’t been popular since the war, I don’t think.”
“Crap on a…. Yeah that’s Karen. Even if someone sent a spy, they would have gone for a more inconspicuous clothing choice. Only my sister wears something like that to travel. I’ll get changed, and come give her the key to the second bedroom. It’s not ideal, but I can’t send her to a hotel the first night without raising too many questions. Just stay in character, keep quiet if you can’t, and avoid her as best you can.”
“Got it, thanks.” Steve hung up and sat down hard on the bed. The after effects of an adrenalin rush, and way more activity than he should have done, were hitting him. Now he just had to make it through until the attractive girl left. Avoiding her shouldn't be hard; looking like he did now, no pretty dame would want to spend time with him.
Outside his door, a similar thought went through the mind of Karen McCann:
*Once I got over the fear and shock part, he really was quite handsome, wasn't he? And nice, other than the knocking me down, but that wasn't his fault, after all, I once hit Cate with a pillow so hard she fell over after I was suddenly woken up. Not that it matters how nice or good looking he is. I just don't date; I'm too much a contradiction to fit with anyone. I refuse to kiss a man on the third date, but I speak my mind and have unsettling questions too often for the fundamentalist crowd. I hang out with the out-there theater folks, but I don’t drink or do drugs. I dress in a mix of vintage and modern, which isn’t a great way to make me look slim, but heavy isn’t as important as healthy to me. I don’t belong in any crowd, really. I didn’t grow up normal, and I’m not normal now. Not a man on earth finds this much weird in one woman attractive, as Brad said. *
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Secret Bit of Right From Wrong