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Chapter Text

November 12, 1942
Bellevue Hospital; New York City, New York

The Bellevue Hospital emergency room was an absolute dumpster fire, and amid the chaos stood charge nurse Virginia Rogers, navigating intensive patient after intensive patient as they came flooding in from the streets. Most of them were deep lacerations in various places, some were simply blunt force traumas (likely from fistfights), and even more were entirely unrelated to the riot that had broken out down the street. Along with the patients coming in droves, she also had to deal with the requests of the other nurses that were flitting around as she instructed them to.

“Ginny! I need more gauze over here!”

“Rogers, can you approve penicillin for this gentleman in bed 7?”

“Virginia, I need discharge papers, please!”

Every request was met with the same terse response, and every patient that came in was given a once over and sent to either the waiting area or straight to a bed and an awaiting nurse. During all of this, there was one constant thought running through Ginny’s mind: Where the hell is Doctor Ellis?!

The on-call doctor for the evening’s night shift had yet to grace the hospital with his presence, despite Ginny ordering a call for him over two hours prior. The more patients that entered the hospital, the less of herself Ginny had to hand out, and eventually she had to jump in and help the fellow nurses with patients rather than sorting through who went where. One man had to be restrained, which took six women alone, another was violently throwing up every other minute and coating nurses left and right in bile, and there was a child running around entirely naked and delirious from fever.

Hours flew by like seconds, and the first break in the chaos came at around two that morning. The peace lasted for about twenty minutes, just enough time for Ginny and the other nurses to clean up the beds and floor, before a gentleman burst through the door, hand clutching his left flank. Even from a distance Ginny could see the blood trail he was leaving in his wake.

She was on her feet before she could even think, and was yelling out, “Someone get me a gurney, now!”

The man flopped unceremoniously onto the provided bed, and Ginny pried his hand away from where he was clutching his side. As she did, a steady stream of blood began to flow from a wound in his side. It was difficult to tell what kind of wound it was with his clothing in the way and the amount of blood he had already lost, and he seemed to be losing lucidity by the second.

“Sir, my name is Virginia, we’re gonna help you. Can you tell me what happened?”

“I was…oh, God! I was cleaning my uh, ugh… shotgun, and it wasn’t emptied…” the man trailed off at the end of his sentence, and Ginny’s stomach dropped.

“Sir, can you tell me the caliber of your gun?” No response came from the man except a wail of pain. “Alright, how about your name, can you tell me your name?” The man mumbled something that sounded like “John”, but Ginny truly couldn’t tell. She removed her trauma shears from her uniform pocket and made quick work of the gentleman’s shirt, removing it to get a better look at the wound in his side.

“Jacqueline! I need gauze, alcohol, and Dakin’s over here! And hang me a bag of O-neg and saline!” As she yelled over her shoulder for her materials, Ginny ran to the nearest cabinet and snapped on a pair of gloves. By the time she had returned, the nurse that she had taken under her wing—Jacqueline—was at the gentleman’s beside hanging the bags and had set out the wound cleaning materials.

Ginny got straight to work, taking a strip of gauze and coating it in alcohol to clean the area around the wound. As the gore cleared, Ginny only grew more concerned—the wound in the man’s side was significantly larger than a common GSW, with messy lacerations spider-webbing out from the epicenter. At her best guess, Ginny assumed it was likely a twelve-gauge wound, which only meant bad news for the gentleman on the table. The only way it could get worse was if…

“Jacqueline, do you see an exit wound anywhere on him?” Ginny suddenly asked. The other nurse looked the man over and after a dreadful few seconds shook her head. Ginny cursed under her breath. “I need sterile tools, now! I have to cut him open and get the bullet out. If we leave it much longer he’ll bleed out either on this gurney or internally. We gotta make sure there’s no damage to his organs.”

“We can’t make that call! Dr. Ellis has to approve that,” Jacqueline said, her face pale.

“Do you see Dr. Ellis here at all? Because I sure as hell don’t. Get this man to a sterile room, now. I’m not going to ask again.” Ginny put as much authority into her voice as she could muster despite the mounting fear growing in her chest. Jacqueline cast her a long look but ultimately followed the order and wheeled the gentleman down the hall to the nearest operating theater.

In the meantime, Ginny made quick work of disposing her gloves and gathering her drapes, masks, and other materials from the nurses’ station in the center of the emergency room. A few nurses sat at the counter, charting from the chaos that occurred a few hours prior, and stopped to watch Ginny scramble around with a stone expression, despite being covered in blood.

There were a few nurses there that looked a bit green around the gills, and Ginny knew that the chaos of the night would likely haunt them for months to come. But her? Ginny thrived in chaos. It made her heart race, and her mind move a thousand miles a minute, but she loved it. She finally felt like she was doing something, something good.

She wondered if this was how her mother felt while she was alive and working in the tuberculosis ward.

"Focus, Rogers," Ginny muttered to herself. "You’ve got a man bleeding out in the operating theater; this isn’t the time to reminisce."

Pulling her thoughts away from her mother, she snatched up the last of the materials she could find and sprinted over to the theater Jacqueline had brought their patient into. As she entered, Ginny could see that she had already prepped the man with a drape around his wound. He lay still on the table.

“He passed out about thirty seconds ago. Heart rate is sitting at fifty beats per minute, blood pressure is at one hundred over sixty and dropping slowly. If you’re really going through with this, you’d better do it now, Virginia,” Jacqueline said, her voice stern as she listed the man’s vitals. She took a moment to assist Ginny in draping up and gestured to the surgical tools she had laid out beside the operating table. The wound had already been cleaned, so all Ginny had to do was start cutting.

Her hands were steady as she picked up a scalpel and took a deep breath, and with confidence began to slice through the man’s skin and open the wound. “No going back now,” Ginny muttered to herself. She looked at Jacqueline for a moment, who simply shook her head and continued to monitor the man’s pressure.

Some time went by as Ginny gave herself more room to search for the slug in the man’s abdomen. Cauterization throughout her search helped keep any excess blood loss to a minimum, and the further in she got, the more confident she became that she was getting close to finding the bullet. She made a few repairs to non-vital organs as she went, stitching some tears that were left in the bullet’s wake and checking in with Jacqueline periodically to ensure that the man’s pressure was sitting as stable as could be.

From what she could tell, the bullet had ripped through his large and small intestine in the lower left quadrant and traveled in a line towards his posterior organs. Ginny was finishing up some stitching in the small intestine and continued her way through when Jacqueline called out, “He’s going into v-tach!” and at the same time, the surgical field began to flood with blood.

Ginny cursed and shoved her index and middle finger into the wound, searching for the source of the bleed. “Push phenylephrine!” she ordered. Jacqueline paused.

“Push what?”

“It’s in the anesthesia cabinet behind you; it’ll constrict his vessels and lower his pressure enough for me to find the bleed!” Ginny explained.

There was the sound of rustling behind her as Jacqueline searched for the drug, and soon enough she returned with a small vial and began to insert it into the man’s IV. A few moments later, the bleeding began to slow, and Jacqueline let out a long breath. “His pressure is leveling out, but it’s low. Heart rate is still abnormal.”

“The bullet tore through his abdominal aorta, he’s bleeding out,” Ginny grumbled, pushing her hand even further. Jacqueline hung another bag of blood just as Ginny felt the tear she was searching for. She pinched as hard as she could and reached over for the suction tool with her free hand. After a minute or two, the field was cleared of blood, and Ginny found herself at a crossroad.

Jacqueline would refuse to operate on the man in fear of the consequences—Ginny knew that much. So, she was on her own when it came to finishing the surgery. But, she only had two hands, and if she removed her hand from the man’s aorta, he would certainly bleed out within the minute. She had yet to locate the slug, though she had the beginning of an idea of where she’d find it. To get to it though, she had to solve the problem of the bleed she was currently holding in place.

Think, Rogers! Get creative, Ginny thought to herself, not daring to look over at Jacqueline, whom she knew would have a look of “I told you so.” For a girl that was fairly new to the hospital, Ginny had to admit she had quite a moral backbone, even if it did mean that she vehemently disagreed with everything Ginny had done in the past thirty minutes.

In that silent moment, the door to the operating theater flew open, and Ginny craned her neck to get a glimpse of who had entered, panicking for a moment that it was Doctor Ellis finally coming to read her the Riot Act.

Thank God, it was only Ruth, one of the more seasoned nurses on the floor that night. “Ginny, there’s a man here for you,” she said, her eyes drifting to the scene in front of her. Her face went white, which was rare for Ruth. She had more experience than even Ginny did, and there was rarely a case that made the woman pause.

“Tell him to wait; I’m a bit preoccupied at the moment,” Ginny retorted, trying to keep her anxiety from slipping into her tone. Ruth had trained her when she first started working on the floor five years ago, and Ginny respected her the most out of any of the other nurses. Even better, Ruth respected her and often made little comment on Ginny’s innate instinct to subvert the rules. If anything, the older woman encouraged it.

“He’s with the Army. A colonel, I think. He’s insisting,” Ruth replied. Ginny sighed in exasperation and felt the last of her self-control fizzle away.

“Ruth, I am elbow deep in a man’s abdomen right now. I don’t give a shit who’s asking for me, he can damn well wait!” There was no response from the other woman except for the soft sound of the door swinging shut. Ginny hung her head, feeling her face warm as she realized she had yelled at one of the few nurses in the entire hospital that had her back. She stood there for a moment, still pinching the man’s artery, and said a silent prayer.

“Virginia?”

“Yeah, Jackie?”

“If we stop now, we can still report it as an internal bleed. Doctor Ellis would be take the fall for not being here to operate. You wouldn’t be…” the woman paused for a moment. “You wouldn’t be responsible for any of this.”

Ginny looked over at her trainee, whose face had lost all its pallor. Her hands were shaking as they held the man’s pulse point. She was terrified, and rightfully so. Ginny should have been, but what Jackie was suggesting…

“Not an option. I’m not letting this man die knowing I can do something to fix it,” Ginny replied, her tone grim.

“Can you, though?”

Ginny went silent again, running through the meager options she had at her disposal. After a minute or two, she looked back to Jackie and said, “I need you to do exactly as I tell you with zero questions. If anything happens, I will take the fall for it, not you. Do you understand?”

There was a tense moment where Ginny thought she might be entirely on her own, but soon enough, Jackie took a breath, steeled herself, and nodded confidently in affirmation.

“Good. Now listen very carefully,” Ginny began.

“Is he…”

“Alive?”

“Yeah.”

“I sure as hell hope so,” Ginny admitted, reaching for her patient’s pulse point. Jackie watched her, a mixed look of terror and fascination on her face. After a moment or two of searching, hoping, praying that any sign of life would show, Ginny felt the thready beat of blood moving along the man’s carotid artery. She breathed a massive sigh of relief and gave a thumbs up to Jackie, who nearly fell over into the chair beside the operating table.

“He’s alive. Weak, but he’ll make it. We’ll need to monitor him for a few days to make sure the graft holds, but I’m fairly confident in my suturing. He lost a lot of blood, so keep hanging O-neg until his pressure returns to normal. The phenylephrine should wear off in an hour or so,” Ginny said, finally stripping off her gloves and surgical gown, all of which had been drenched in blood and gore.

“How did you…know how to do all of that?” Jackie asked as Ginny began to clean up the area.

“I read a lot.”

“That can’t come just from reading. The phenylephrine, maybe, but that’s still experimental stuff. I’ve never even heard of someone performing a graft on an artery,” Jackie said in astonishment.

“I also have ideas for things. I write them down sometimes. Been working on this one for a few months, just never really had the opportunity to uh…do it, I guess,” Ginny admitted, turning away from Jackie so the woman couldn’t see the flush of embarrassment that flooded her cheeks.

The only other nurse that knew about Ginny’s fascination with experimental surgeries and treatments was Ruth, and that was only because she’d caught Ginny scribbling ideas down in her notebook one particularly slow night a few years ago. Up until that moment, most of Ginny’s ideas had simply been that: ideas. It’s not like there would ever be an opportunity for her to present them to any medical board, let alone get any type of funding for research. That was for doctors, not nurses, and especially not a young woman like herself. She’d learned that the hard way when she had first started at the hospital.

There had been a patient that had presented with a severe case of scarlet fever a few weeks after Ginny had started as a nurse, and the doctors on the floor were debating on how to handle treatment. The consensus was to isolate the patient and make him comfortable as he lived out his final days, but Ginny had recalled when her brother, Steve, had gotten scarlet fever a few months prior. She’d read something about a new drug that was in development called penicillin, and that it could be used to treat certain bacterial infections. Ginny had gone late one night into a medical research facility in Brooklyn she’d read about and stole one of the few doses they had of the experimental drug and given it to Steve. He’d recovered within a few weeks. Without thinking, Ginny had said, “What about penicillin?”

The collective response from the doctors was to laugh, and draw the curtain shut around the patient’s bed. After that, Ginny was rarely allowed to shadow any of the doctors on “interesting” cases. So, Ginny kept her ideas close to her chest and hardly let anyone in on what she was constantly writing down.

Why she had such a fascination with medicine, Ginny couldn’t be sure. Part of her knew it was her mother’s influence—before she’d died, she was a nurse herself in one of the TB wards. Ginny also knew that it was because of her brother. Steve had always been a sickly kid, and after their mom had died, it was up to Ginny to take care of him. She was constantly reading and researching medical articles and books for things that might help her brother, and sometimes (like with the penicillin) she got lucky. Other times, all she could do was make him comfortable as he rode out the sickness. Steve always recovered though, which was something Ginny was always grateful for. One time, during a particularly bad month for his allergies, he’d joked in between wheezes, “I can’t die, who else would keep you out of jail?” And he’d been right, partially. Ginny was more than willing to turn to light acts of criminal activity if it meant helping her twin brother.

Her thoughts of Steve and their parents were interrupted by the door to the theater swinging open again, and Ruth entering in. She eyed the man on the table and asked, “Are you done?”

“Yeah, he’s all good to go. He started to stir partway through so we gave him a bit of anesthesia—I don’t want to hear it, Ruth—and he should be coming to in about thirty minutes or so,” Ginny explained, throwing a hand up to stop the interruption she knew Ruth was about to give.

“What did you guys even do?”

“Jackie did nothing. I got some arterial tissue from one of the organ donors in the morgue and grafted it into his ruptured abdominal aorta to stop the bleed, sutured up the rest of the damage, and removed the slug from his right kidney. Which, I also had to remove,” Ginny said. Ruth just gave her a blank look.

“And what am I supposed to tell the patient when he wakes up? That a nurse went rogue and operated on him without any supervising doctor? Or that he just magically got a nephrectomy, a graft technique that I’ve never even heard of, and survived everything by the grace of God? Better yet, what do I tell Doctor Ellis?”

“Oh, you mean when he finally thinks it’s appropriate to show up for work? You can tell him anything you want, Ruth, because the only thing I’m going to be telling him is to bend over so I can watch the board of directors absolutely tear his-”

Ruth held up a hand to stop Ginny’s tirade. “Alright, I get the idea. Just clean this mess up, will you? Jackie, help me get this man to a proper bed, please,” she said. “And Ginny?”

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Will you please speak to the gentleman from the Army? He’s been waiting this whole time for you to finish up.”

“He’s still here?!” Ruth nodded as Jackie began to wheel the gentleman out of the theater. “Well, then yeah, send him in, I guess,” Ginny said as Ruth turned on her heel and followed Jackie down the hall. Ginny set to work on cleaning up the mess of gore that had been left behind in wake of the operation, and didn’t even turn around when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching the theater.

“Miss Virginia Rogers, I presume?” A voice asked, terse and quipped. Definitely military, Ginny thought to herself.

“You presume correct, Mister…”

“Colonel Chester Phillips, thank you. Do you have a moment, Miss Rogers?”

“As long as you don’t mind me multitasking, sure.”

“Excellent. May I sit?” The colonel asked. Ginny turned to see a taller man of middle age in full military dress standing stiff and gesturing to one of the chairs tucked alongside a supply cabinet. Ginny nodded and resumed wiping down the operating table with anti-septic wipes.

“Miss Rogers, are you aware of the goings-on overseas currently?”

“I think it’d be rather un-patriotic of me to say otherwise. Of course I am, Colonel. My father served in the Great War in the 107th.”

“Good. So, you understand that the American government is willing to do whatever necessary to defeat the Axis powers that currently threaten our freedom?” Ginny nodded in response, disposing of the wipes and collecting a mop bucket from the corner.

“The President himself tasked me to head a specialized effort to combat a division of the Nazi forces over in Germany called HYDRA. This force that I command is known as the Strategic Scientific Reserve. About two years ago, we heard tell of a scientist that was being held by HYDRA who could change the outcome of the war and assist the SSR with our goals. We rescued him and brought him back here, and he’s been with us ever since. He has developed a serum that when injected into a live subject, could transform an average man into an exorbitantly stronger human. A super-soldier is what we’re calling it,” Phillips explained.

Ginny was silent for a moment, then asked, “What does all of this have to do with me?”

“I’m here to recruit you, Miss Rogers.”

At that, Ginny laughed. The colonel looked at her with confusion on his face.

“The Strategic Scientific Reserve is an Allied effort made up of the best minds of the free world. Our goal is to create the best army in history. But every army starts with one man. At the end of these upcoming months, we will choose that man. He will be the first in a new breed of super-soldier. And they will personally escort Adolf Hitler to the gates of hell. We need your expertise in determining that man and helping us prepare him for his transformation.” Phillips explained, his brow furrowed as Ginny turned away from him once more, heading over to one of the sinks and scrubbing her hands clean.

“You rehearse that in the mirror before you leave for the day, Colonel?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“All due respect, that’s an elevator pitch at best. I don’t know if you’re married or not, but let me tell you a little secret: a lady likes to feel wanted. Right now, I’m feeling a lot more like your second or third best girl here with that sorry excuse of a job offer. If you really want me on this big secret project, you’re gonna have to do a lot better than that.” Ginny dried her hands on one of the towels that was folded under the cabinet and tossed it into the linen bin beside her. The Colonel was dumbfounded, mouth slightly agape as he regarded her.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re the most unladylike lady in all of New York?” He asked.

“It’s a condition. I was a terror as a child.”

The Colonel rolled his eyes at that. “And besides, this is not an offer. There is no request being made here. This is an order, Miss Rogers.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel, I think you’re confusing me with one of your soldiers. The only man I currently take orders from is the attending doctor, who for some God-forsaken reason has deemed himself too good to show up to work tonight. So, as of right now, I’m a free agent. I didn’t enlist in the Nurse Corps for a reason, and this was one of them.”

The Colonel sighed in frustration. Sure, Ginny was going a little harder on him than she meant to, but the night had been long, and she was at her wit’s end. If he was going to force her to change her position, he was damn well going to earn it.

“Nurse Rogers,” he started. “Should you accept this position, you would be made a First Lieutenant, paygrade O2, with the SSR and would be the head of nursing for this project. The only man you would be answering to directly is Doctor Abraham Erskine, the gentleman whose idea is behind this entire deal. You would be given full leeway to choose your own team of nurses and specialists to assist you and Dr. Erskine, and you would be, for lack of a better term, the doctor’s protégé. He asked for you, specifically.” Ginny fell silent.

She had heard of Dr. Erskine, had read through most of his work. He was a leading mind in biological sciences; Ginny favored his writings more than any other she found. He asked for you, specifically. The Colonel cleared his throat. “Does this offer sound more appealing to you, Rogers?”

Ginny finally met the Colonel’s eyes for the first time since he had approached her. “I would have some contingencies, of course.” He gave her a wry smile.

“Of course.”

“First, I am not to be stationed anywhere except for Brooklyn and New York City. I have family to take care of and need to remain close in case of an emergency. Second, I would require a stipend to provide care for my family since I cannot be there all the time, as I’m assuming this position requires odd hours.”

“Odder than night shift?” Phillips interrupted.

“I’m not finished, Colonel. Lastly, I would request that should any of your MP boys catch a connection of multiple recruits with the name Steven Rogers, born July fourth of nineteen-eighteen, they ignore it and deny his enlistment form.”

Colonel Phillips cocked an eyebrow at her final request. “Care to explain that one further, Rogers?”

Ginny considered it, then shook her head. “No. No, I don’t.”

The Colonel sat there for a moment, silent and stone-faced, and Ginny felt a twinge of anxiousness as she realized how brusque she was to someone in such a high command position. It’s not like she meant to disrespect him; he’d simply caught her at a rough time and something about him rubbed against her like sandpaper, that was all. I’ll have to work on that, she thought to herself. That is, if he doesn’t court-martial me instead of hire me.

Colonel Phillips rose from his seat, buttoned the jacket of his uniform, and placed his cap on his head. He stood there for a moment, regarding Ginny with a look she couldn’t read all that well—exasperation was her first guess—and then extended his hand to her. Hesitantly, she took it.

“Glad to have you on the team, Lieutenant Rogers. Dr. Erskine is looking forward to finally working with you.” The ball of anxiety in the pit of Ginny’s stomach unraveled in an instant, and perhaps it was unconscious, but she felt herself standing up a bit taller as Colonel Phillips addressed her by her new rank. Phillips opened the door and began to walk towards the exit of the hospital, stopping when he realized that Ginny wasn’t following.

“You start now, Lieutenant. Come on. Report time is 0800, which is in approximately twenty minutes.” Under his breath, Ginny heard him grumble, “Can’t believe I woke up at two this morning for this shit.”

Ginny happily threw down her nurse’s cap on the way out.

Chapter Text

June 14, 1943
New York City, New York

Virginia Rogers was no stranger to a fistfight, though most people wouldn’t have guessed that much at first glance. It was something she liked to use to her advantage; no one would have ever thought a lady such as her—gentle, soft-spoken, a known caregiver—would have the gall to break a man’s nose in a back alley. So, when the times inevitably came that she needed to step in for her troublesome brother, she almost always tended to take the bigger guy by surprise when she swung first.

Granted, she didn’t want to fight this guy. But he was being a jerk before the movie started, and Steve had a bigger mouth on him than was scientifically sound for how short he was. And Ginny certainly wasn’t going to let Steve have all the fun.

There was a sick satisfaction that came when her fist collided with the guy’s nose, and she felt a slight crack. Not quite broken, at least not yet, Ginny thought to herself. The guy reared his fist back dramatically, giving Steve plenty of time to step in front of Ginny and raise a trash can lid in front of his face, allowing the metal to take the brunt of the returning punch. He still stumbled a little bit, though, and the guy took notice and sent another fist swinging into Steve at full force.

While Steve was down, Ginny came up with an uppercut to the guy’s jaw, which didn’t land as hard as she intended it to. Caught off her guard, the guy took the opportunity to snatch her wrist and bend it backwards. Maybe a sprain, she thought as she yelped in pain and braced herself for the kick that she knew was coming. It didn’t hurt any less despite the guy’s fighting tells being painfully obvious, and she struggled for a moment on the dirty pavement as she wheezed, the breath knocked clear out of her lungs. Beside her, Steve rose on shaky legs.

“You just don’t know when to give up, do ya’?” the guy asked.

Steve spit a bit of blood onto the pavement and raised his fists back up. “I can do this all day.”

Ginny rolled her eyes at her brother, ever the fighter despite weighing ninety pounds soaking wet. She was still gasping for air and knew she was no use to him, so she simply closed her eyes to avoid having to watch Steve get beaten up. Again.

“Hey! Pick on someone your own size!” A voice rang out from the other end of the alley, and Ginny heard the sound of punches hitting flesh and stumbling on pavement. “And didn’t your mother ever tell you not to hit a lady?!” Ginny opened her eyes to see one James Buchanan Barnes kicking the loudmouth in the ass on his way out of the alley. He turned around, extending his arm to Steve and hauling him off the pavement. Steve dusted himself off and turned to help Ginny off the ground as well. She’d just about regained her breath by then, though it felt like one of her ribs had been bruised.

“Sometimes I think you two like getting punched,” Barnes quipped.

“I had him on the ropes,” Steve replied.

“And I was moral support from the trash heap,” Ginny wheezed, prodding at her side to feel for any damage. There were a few areas that were tender to the touch, but no breaks from what she could tell. She then immediately turned to give Steve a once over, checking his face for scrapes or bruises and poking around at his abdomen and arms. He made a sound of protest and shook Ginny off, but she continued her evaluation until she was satisfied that he hadn’t broken anything. Barnes took the distraction as an opportunity to snatch the small paper out of Steve’s hand, who quickly noticed and began reaching for it to no avail.

“How many times is this?” Barnes asked.

“Five, I’m pretty sure,” Ginny replied.

“Oh, you’re from Paramus, now? You know it’s illegal to lie on the enlistment form. And seriously, Jersey?”

“I said the same thing, James.”

“For the last time, it’s Bucky.”

“For the last time, I don’t care,” Ginny said, snatching Steve’s enlistment form from Barnes’ fingers and handing it back to her brother. He took it graciously, folding it up in little squares and avoiding eye contact. It was at that moment that both Rogers siblings realized what Barnes was wearing.

Army Greens.

There was an awkward silence as Steve continued fiddling with his enlistment form before shoving it into his jacket pocket. Ginny’s gaze flitted between the two men, one standing proud before his friends and the other most certainly nursing a knot of jealousy in his stomach. Ginny cringed inwardly for Steve; he’d wanted nothing more than to be able to fight in the war since it started, and here Barnes came traipsing around in his uniform without a care in the world.

If she hadn’t just gotten the crap beat out of her, she would’ve socked him in the jaw.

“You get your orders?” Steve asked, like he was trying to forget about his own handicaps. Ginny doubted that Barnes took notice of the way Steve’s face fell the longer he looked at his friend.

“The 107th. Sergeant James Barnes, shipping out for England first thing tomorrow.” Ginny’s stomach fell to her knees. 107th. Pa’s regiment. She cast a sideways glance at Steve, but his eyes were on his shoes.

“I should be going,” he muttered. Ginny let out the slightest sigh of exasperation but said nothing. Both Steve and Barnes ignored it, as they usually did when she expressed any type of concern for Steve.

Her brother had been friends with Barnes since they were all children; how Barnes never once seemed to worry about Steve and the trouble he got into or his litany of medical problems, Ginny would likely never know. She tried not to let her distaste for Barnes’ happy-go-lucky attitude around Steve show, but even she could admit that her acting skills were subpar at best. There had been times when Steve had reprimanded her for how she acted around Barnes, but how was she supposed to feel when she was the only one who ever seemed to care about Steve’s health?

Despite her own thoughts about Barnes and his flippancy regarding Steve's ailments, she couldn't help extending him the same concern she often focused on Steve. In that moment, it manifested as a quick adjustment to Barnes's uniform cap, which he was wearing slightly askew. He protested at her fussing, but after a moment she was able to fix it back into place. Barnes flashed her a quick glare that she pointedly ignored.

Ginny pretended not to notice him mussing his cap up again as he pulled Steve in for a one-armed hug. The three of them headed for the front of the alley. “Come on, man. My last night! I gotta get you cleaned up,” He said, looking down at Steve's now slightly-dirtied suit.

“Why? Where are we going?” Steve asked, at the same time Ginny remarked, “Cleaned up for what, exactly?”

“The future, Mister and Miss Rogers. Take a look,” Barnes responded, shoving a folded-up newspaper into Steve’s chest. The page Barnes was referring to read: WORLD EXHIBITION OF TOMORROW in fancy lettering, plastered atop an image of a giant globe and what appeared to be an upside-down rail car made in some sort of futuristic design.

Ginny rolled her eyes. How could I forget Stark’s crown jewel? It’s only the sole thing he’s been talking about for weeks, now, she thought to herself. Steve turned around, newspaper in hand, and Ginny put on a blank expression.

She had yet to tell Steve she had joined the SSR, let alone the fact that she regularly worked with Stark—though it’s not like she could really tell him much, anyhow. Colonel Phillips had made it quite clear on her first day that the things she was working on were top secret. She recalled the Colonel’s exact words being, “You tell anyone about anything you do down here, and you may not have a tongue to speak with by the time the federal government is done with you.”

Steve gestured to the paper. “You comin’ with us, Evie?”

Ginny couldn’t help but smile at the hopeful look on her brother’s face. He hardly ever looked like that, these days. “I can’t, as much as I would love to. I’ve gotta go in to work for a bit, but I’ll be back home tonight, I promise.”

“Geez, this new doctor has got you workin’ the strangest shifts, doesn’t he?” Barnes commented.

“Yes, but I only complain about it a little bit. It’s good money, and I’m doing good work,” Ginny replied. Steve nodded, though the bright twinkle in his eye had dimmed a bit at Ginny’s rejection to join them. She gave him a solid pat on the back, then turned to regard Barnes.

It was strange, knowing that this was the last time she’d see him for a while. Maybe ever. She figured now would be as good a time as any to thank him for his friendship with Steve over the years, or maybe even hug him for being there when their mom died. There were a lot of things Ginny could have said or done as a decent enough goodbye, but the only thing that came to her head was to give Barnes a nod and say, “Best of luck out there, Sarge. If you run into Hitler, kick him in the balls for me.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Barnes replied, giving her a half-hearted salute. Ginny paused for a second, thinking about adding something to her remark, but thought better of it. Instead, she simply turned on her heel and left the two men to their own devices.

The walk from the cinema to work was short and uneventful, as it always was, but Ginny still kept a sharp eye out for anyone that might have been following her. To anyone passing her by on the street, she probably appeared to be just any other nurse headed to her shift, which is why she always felt so strange entering an antique shop in the middle of Brooklyn. Of course, it wasn’t really an antique shop. It was simply a front for what lay beneath the streets.

It was a damn good front, though.

The old bell tinkled as Ginny stepped into the dimly lit storefront. Knick knacks in various states of disrepair sat idle on shelves, and the afternoon sun creeping in the windows illuminated the dust particles floating in the air like mites. As the door clicked shut, an older woman stepped out from behind a velvet curtain that rested along the back wall behind the till. Ginny smiled warmly to the woman.

“If you’re looking for windchimes, we’re fresh out. I’m so sorry,” the woman said, returning the smile Ginny had given her.

“Not to worry, I make my own at home,” Ginny replied. The woman nodded slightly and reached under the counter for a moment, then gestured for Ginny to advance towards the back of the store. She squeezed the woman’s upper arm as she passed. “I love your hair like that, Miss Hattie,” she said. The woman—Hattie—smiled back amid a slight flush.

“Thank you, dear. Don’t work too hard, now.”

Ginny had been told by Colonel Phillips many times before that she wasn’t to engage in conversation with Hattie outside of the weekly codes, but Ginny couldn’t help herself. Hattie was a sweetheart, and she was one of the first people at the SSR to genuinely smile at Ginny when she first arrived.

There were two entrances to the facility behind the curtain. Ginny usually opted for the less common one, which was hidden behind a shelf of cleaning supplies. The other entrance that most everyone else used was hidden behind a dusty front of bookshelves. As she approached the cleaning shelf, she heard a buzzing sound, and then the shelf slid into the wall to reveal a set of metal elevator doors that opened for Ginny.

When the doors closed, Ginny eyed her distorted reflection in the steel doors. It was hard to see the defining features of her face, but it gave Ginny enough to be able to adjust her mostly straight—albeit frizzy—blonde hair that had gotten mussed up during the fight in the alley. There was a dark spot on her side from where the guy had kicked her, and she did her best to brush the dirt off. Leaning in as close as she could, she checked to see if her face was still presentable enough, or if she’d need to cover anything with powder when she got to a proper mirror.

There was a small bruise above her left eye, but nothing too noticeable. A few moments before the doors opened, she reclipped her mother’s barrette into her hair on the right side of her head, holding most of her hair back on that side. There were a few pieces that managed to eventually find their way into her face, as usual, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t work around.

When the elevator doors opened into the dreary hallway, Ginny held her head up with confidence and stalked past the MPs. No reason for them to care about her appearance, after all. Not that she didn’t still worry about people here judging her for showing up to work looking like a street rat that just got beat up for her lunch money. She tried not to think about how close she actually was to that description.

Two of the MPs standing at the end of the hallway opened the awaiting doors for her that led to a small hallway off to the side of the main workspace of the facility. Ginny could see a few of the nurses she had hired when she first started, who all looked over to her and nodded. She also caught a few men in sharp suits discussing something with Colonel Phillips in the corner of the room. In the middle was the half-constructed pod that was supposedly going to be the crown jewel of Project Rebirth.

Right now, it looked less like a crown jewel and more like a broken-down alien spaceship. Circling the eyesore was its creator, Howard Stark, whose brow was furrowed as he chewed on the end of a pencil. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, his dark hair was mussed up atop his head, and Ginny could spot the sweat stains on his back from her spot in the hallway opening. Ever the busy bee, she thought to herself as she rounded the corner. The clack of her shoes on the tile floor alerted Colonel Phillips to her arrival, and she saluted him—begrudgingly—when she reached the group of men that were situated at the base of the stairwell that descended from the main entrance two stories above.

“Lieutenant. Good to see you,” the colonel greeted, then eyed her dirtied white uniform. “Would it kill you to wash your clothes before you report for duty?” One of the men he had been talking to chuckled quietly, only to stop short when Ginny flashed him a glare.

“I apologize for my appearance, Colonel. Ran into a bit of trouble on the way here, but nothing I couldn’t handle.” The gentlemen in the suits cast some curious glances her way, but she mostly ignored them. Colonel Phillips gave her the slightest nod of respect, then turned to the gentlemen behind him.

“Senator Brandt, meet Lieutenant Virginia Rogers. She’s been assisting Dr. Erskine with his final touches to the Project and has been heading the nursing division within the SSR since November. A valuable addition to the team, if I do say so myself,” Phillips said to the man that had laughed at Ginny just a few moments prior. The senator quickly composed himself and extended his hand, his previous attitude stripped away in moments. Ginny didn’t miss the rare compliment that the Colonel had given her.

“Pleasure to meet you, Senator,” Ginny said, shaking the man’s hand with a firm grip and giving him a deadlock stare.

“You as well, Lieutenant. It seems you’re all doing great work here. I’m looking forward to seeing the product of your time and efforts.” If he faltered under her stare, Ginny couldn’t see it on his face.

“You and me both, sir. We’re not far off from it, thankfully.” She released her grip on the senator’s hand and turned back to Colonel Phillips. “Well, sir, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get out of this old getup and into something a bit more comfortable.”

“As you were, Lieutenant. I’ll catch up with you and Erskine in a bit.”

“Thank you, sir.” With that, Ginny abandoned the group of men and headed to the women’s room to change into her actual uniform, which she kept in the facility to hold up the appearance of still being a standard nurse, at least for Steve. There were lockers that the few other women on the team kept some belongings in, but Ginny had really never seen anyone else in there since she had started.

It only took her a few moments to change into her proper dress, which consisted of her own set of Army Greens, though she often abandoned the cap halfway through the workday as it tended to get in the way of things. As she finished with the last button on her jacket, the door to the locker room swung open. Agent Carter strode in a few steps before realizing that Ginny was in there.

“Oh, there you are, Lieutenant.”

“Here I am. Were you looking for me?”

“Yes, I wasn’t sure when you were getting in today. Doctor Erskine wanted me to tell you that today is the last day he’s going to be searching for recruits for the Project. He’s just left for one of the stations now; he said that you were free to do whatever you needed to finish before we start training tomorrow,” Agent Carter said in her annoyingly perfect posh accent. Every time the agent opened her mouth, Ginny felt more and more inferior for some reason. Not that it was necessarily the woman’s fault, though.

“He couldn’t wait five minutes for me to change? Normally he wants me with him when we go to the recruitment stations.”

“I guess not. He seemed to be in his head a bit, likely just nerves as we get closer to the big day. You know how he gets,” the woman explained with some sympathy to her tone. And oh, did Ginny know what she was talking about.

Dr. Erskine was a brilliant man, no doubt, but when it came to the serum development he was particularly neurotic. If one molecule or calculation was out of line, he would frantically spend hours poring over his work—usually with Ginny at his side—until the problem was fixed. He was obsessive over every minute detail, which was understandable considering what they were trying to accomplish, but even Ginny knew that something as simple as a microliter difference in volume of a dose wouldn’t do much to affect the subject upon injection. Dr. Erskine disagreed, usually with an increased attitude in his normally tranquil tone.

He had once even snapped at Agent Carter when she picked up a beaker of reagent one late night, then implemented a rule that no one - save for himself, Ginny, or a member of their medical team - were to touch anything on his workstation.

“Well, we had pretty much wrapped everything up, at least for right now. The rest of the work comes when we have our official subject; we have to perform a physical evaluation and create precautions for any possible allergies, maybe tweak some final measurements according to their body weight and overall health and…” Ginny trailed off as she noted the glassy look that had fallen over Agent Carter’s face. “I’m rambling again, aren’t I?”

“Only a bit. It’s no worry, I really don’t mind. I just don’t understand half of what you and Erskine are doing. My expertise comes into play starting tomorrow,” the woman said with a slight smirk on her face. It was a welcome difference from the typical cold expression she wore. Ginny could understand why though; Agent Carter was one of the few women working on the Project with any authority, and even then that authority tended to be undermined. Ginny had figured that out fairly quick, but had yet to master the cold look that Peggy often gave to their male counterparts. “If there’s not much for you to do today, then, perhaps you’d like to join me while I assist Stark with a few things?”

“Sure thing. I don’t know how much use I’ll be, but I can hold a wrench well enough.”

“Excellent. Shall we?” She held the door to the washroom open and allowed Ginny to exit first back into the central work area where Stark was currently hitting a hunk of metal with a different hunk of metal. Ginny flinched at the loud noise and covered her ears until Stark finally noticed her and Agent Carter’s presence on the floor.

“Oh, hi ladies. Sorry for the racket, I was trying to see if this would fix the problem,” Stark said, setting the piece of metal in his hands down and picking up the one he had been abusing from the ground.

“Did it?” Peggy asked.

“Not one bit,” Stark replied, tossing the second piece of metal behind him. It clattered to the ground behind him, startling one of Ginny’s nurses who was only a few feet away from where it landed. Ginny threw Stark a glare, but he had already shifted his focus to another item on his workbench.

“Is this for the pod-thing?” Ginny asked, looking over the various pieces of machinery that were laid out before them.

“Pod-thing? That’s the best you’ve got?” Stark asked as he donned a welding mask.

“What? I don’t know what to call it! This isn’t my field, you know that.”

“Don’t I ever. It’s not a pod-thing, it’s a…uh…” Stark trailed off for a moment. “I don’t know what to call it yet, but definitely not ‘pod-thing’. Thanks for your contribution, though, Rogers.”

“What is this for, then, Mister Stark?” Agent Carter asked, a slight tone to her voice. Her arms were crossed over her chest as she examined the bits of machinery.

“Just trying to put some finishing touches on one of my presentations for my exhibition tonight.”

“Right, how could I forget?” Carter responded, rolling her eyes.

“And the Colonel is okay with you working on personal projects when you’re supposed to be working on the pod?” Ginny asked.

“I’m not, for the record! But I can’t really stop him,” Colonel Phillips piped up from the corner of the lab, his back turned to the three of them.

Ginny felt a small smile creeping onto her face – the colonel had been growing on her since she was first recruited. Despite his typical grumbling and the off-putting attitude he had, Ginny thought he might’ve warmed up to her, too. The three younger members of the SSR—herself, Stark, and Agent Carter—were the ones that worked closest with the Colonel, and he gave them much more leeway than they probably should have been allowed. Stark’s personal projects making it to the lab work area were only one of many passes he had been given.

Ginny counted the circumstances of her recruitment as one large pass, along with some smaller ones usually in the realm of operating outside of typical military protocol. Her salute to him when she first arrived was mostly for his sake, because she had figured that ignoring him in front of the senators probably wouldn’t have gone over well. Agent Carter was the one that usually stuck to proper decorum, but even she had her moments.

“Agent Carter, can I speak to you?” Phillips called, gesturing for the woman to join him with the senator. As Peggy diverted to speak to the men, Ginny turned back to Stark’s mess of a workstation. A lot of it was a cluster of stuff that Ginny could hardly make heads or tails of, but she did catch something that looked vaguely like a metal-encased tire.

“You makin’ a car or something here, Stark?” Ginny asked, picking up the tire. It was surprisingly light, and from what she could tell it seemed to be made mostly of metal.

“You’re the first person to guess that!”

“What’s so special about a car? I thought this was for your presentation.”

“It’s not just a car, Rogers. It’s the future.”

“Right. Are metal tires the feature, then? Reduce the weight of the car, make it safer? What’s your play?” Ginny asked.

“Not quite. These aren’t tires, not really. They’re gravity reversers, at least that’s what I’ve been calling them so far. It’s part of a whole new line I’m going to develop called Stark Gravitic Reversion Technology. I’m making a hovercar, Rogers. It’s gonna be the next big thing, you watch. In just a few years, the streets of all major cities are going to be clean and safe for pedestrians because all the automobiles will be above the streets,” Stark explained, taking the “gravity reverser” from Ginny’s hands and setting it back down on the table in front of him.

“A hovercar?”

“Yeah! Something I’ve been working on for a bit now.”

Ginny did her best to hide her impression. Stark flipped the welding mask down and raised the arc welder to the piece of metal. Ginny turned away to avoid being blinded and turned back a few seconds later after the sound of the welder stopped.

"You comin' to the exhibition tonight? I'd make sure you get the full VIP treatment," Stark asked from behind a welding mask. Without being able to see his face, Ginny had a hard time figuring out whether he was attempting to flirt with her or not. It never was all that easy to begin with, though.

"As much as I would love to see this hovercar idea of yours fail miserably, Stark, I can't. Some of us have jobs, you know,” Ginny quipped with a smirk.

"Hey, this is my job!"

"Being grandiose or building things that don't work?"

"Oh, c'mon, that was a cheap shot. You haven’t even seen it in action yet,” the man said, lifting the welding mask up to reveal a look of indignation on his face.

"But you know I'm right! I'd bet you five dollars your hovercar shits itself on stage tonight,” Ginny replied, unable to stop the smile that was spreading across her face.

"I'll take that bet, you vulgar lady." Stark held out his hand and Ginny shook it as if she had the five dollars to spare. Even if she didn’t, she doubted Stark would hold her up for it considering he wasn’t exactly hurting for cash.

"Are you two done with your bickering, or shall I come back later?" Agent Carter asked, turning back from her conversation with the colonel.

"Don't worry, Agent Carter, this is all in good fun. Right, Rogers?"

"Seventy-five percent, at least."

“See? Hey, wait a damn—” Stark shot a confused look to Ginny as Colonel Phillips turned from the gaggle of senators in the corner and cleared his throat, stopping whatever comment Stark had on his tongue. Ginny felt a smug satisfaction at getting the last word in before the eccentric genius.

“Alright, everyone, listen up. We’ve got approximately five hours to get our necessities out of this laboratory so they can be packed and sent to Camp Lehigh by tomorrow. Let’s get to moving, people!” Phillips said, his voice echoing throughout the lab. Ginny paused for a moment.

“Where’s Camp Lehigh?” She asked, leaning over to Stark as he began to pack up his various projects.

“New Jersey, I think,” Stark replied before turning to a few soldiers that had begun to assist him in packing his things. Ginny turned to see Colonel Phillips ordering a few other people back and forth to certain places in the lab and stalked over to him while trying to keep the rising panic out of her expression.

"Phillips, we had a deal. I stay in the city; I don't get shipped anywhere else."

"It's just Jersey, Lieutenant. You really can't swing Jersey?"

"The only thing I wanna swing into Jersey is a grenade,” Ginny remarked, her distaste bleeding into her tone. The colonel rolled his eyes at her comment.

"Hey, Rogers. If it's that big an issue for you, I can have my driver Jarvis bring you back and forth from the base to your apartment. It's no trouble at all, as long as you're okay with me possibly joining you sometimes," Stark piped up from his workbench.

“Perfect! Thank you, Stark, for your genius contribution. I’m afraid you no longer have a choice, Lieutenant. Now, I’d get to packing yours and Erskine’s things, because he’s probably not coming back for another few hours.” Colonel Phillips gave Ginny a pat on the shoulder before turning to another group that was heading up the stairs towards the main hall. At a loss for words, Ginny turned and set off for her and Erskine’s lab down the hall to start packing.

It was about ten o’clock that evening when Dr. Erskine finally arrived back at the facility. Most everyone had finished packing their necessities—Stark had left only twenty minutes after Colonel Phillips gave the order to get things moving, claiming that “The future is calling!” and leaving the rest of his odds and ends to be collected by a few of the soldiers that remained.

Agent Carter had left with Colonel Phillips not long after, though she had offered to stay and help Ginny for a bit, but Ginny denied it. She preferred some moments of being alone in the lab, whether it be working on something or packing. Dr. Erskine had brought in a gramophone from his home one day and they frequently had music playing while they worked. Ginny had put on a few records over the course of the past few hours and was quietly humming to herself when she heard footsteps approaching from down the hall.

“Virginia! I did it! I found him!” Dr. Erskine burst in through the swinging double doors and swept Ginny up in an excited embrace, twirling her around the lab for a moment before bringing them both to a stop.

“Found who, exactly?”

“The perfect man!”

“I didn’t know you swung that way, Abe,” Ginny said with a smirk. Erskine gave her a momentary unamused glance.

“You know what I am referring to, I hope. I found him! He was at the recruitment station outside of Mister Stark’s exhibition.”

“How do you know he’s the one? We have some very promising options to choose from, you know,” Ginny remarked, resuming her packing. Most of the important things had already been carried out by the few remaining soldiers in the building—Ginny figured she and Erskine could handle the last few boxes themselves.

“He has the best heart out of all of them, Virginia. Just wait until you meet him, I’m sure you’ll be quite impressed. Remember what I said about the serum…”

“'Good becomes great and bad becomes worse', yes, Abe. I’m fully aware of your warnings. I just think that calling it this early isn’t the best idea. We don’t want to enter what could be the experiment of the century already being biased, do we?” Ginny said, recalling the story that Erskine had first relayed to her when she began working with him: the story of Johann Schmidt, the brilliant HYDRA scientist turned madman that attempted to take Erskine’s serum himself before it was completely ready and ended up becoming something even worse than what Nazi Germany had to offer.

“You are right, of course. And I will do my best to keep my biases out of our decision making. I’m just quite hopeful about this young man,” Erskine conceded, handing Ginny a few stoppered tubes. She wrapped them in some spare paper and placed them carefully in the hay-filled box in front of her. “You will be joining me in New Jersey, won’t you?”

“Of course I will. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I just wish I had known sooner so I could’ve made arrangements with my brother, but Stark offered a solution.”

“He’s a smart man, that Stark. A true asset for our work.”

“Your work, you mean.”

“No, I don’t. You have put your heart and soul into this project ever since you arrived here, Virginia. You have been more helpful to me than I could have ever imagined. Half of Project Rebirth is your mind; you refined the major idea that I brought. You know more about this serum than anyone else here besides me. Do not discredit your brilliance, schatzi,” Erskine said, placing a gentle hand on Ginny’s arm as she placed the lid on top of the box. The gramophone crackled in the quiet that sat between the two of them, and Ginny couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t know much about Erskine’s home life, but he wore no wedding band and never talked of any children or family. For all Ginny knew, he had none.

Steve and Ginny had never known their father. He’d died two months before they were born, so all they ever knew of him was stories their mother told and old photographs and sketches hung around the house. For what it was worth, their mom did an excellent job of describing their father, but nothing could compare to having the actual man there.

Ginny had realized far too late that Erskine did a better job at filling that void than the stories. The thought made her feel guilty, like she was betraying her real father—but how could she betray a man whom she had never known? For a man that spoke little of family and children, Erskine sure knew how to teach the way a father should. Ginny could only hope that she listened to him in the way a daughter should, or at least in the best way she knew how.

“Thank you, Abe. That means a lot,” Ginny said, her voice quiet. He nodded to her and turned to finish packing up the last of their materials. Ginny moved to help him, but he waved her off.

“Go home, Virginia. You’ve done almost all of this on your own today. I can manage a few boxes.”

“Are you sure? It’s really no trouble.”

“Go. I insist. Sit with your brother, maybe tell him what you can. He deserves to know something, at least,” Erskine suggested, giving Ginny a knowing look. She had told him a bit about Steve—not much except for his medical issues and the responsibility she felt she had for him—but it was enough that Erskine could see how much lying to her brother troubled her.

“All right, then. Thank you, I guess. You have a ride to Camp Lehigh?”

“Yes, I’m fine, Virginia. Thank you for your concern, but I promise that I can handle myself.”

Ginny wasn’t going to argue with the man. Instead, she nodded to him, gave him a quick hug, and promptly saw herself out of the building. Now all that she had to worry about for the evening was how she was going to break the news to Steve.

The front door to her and Steve’s apartment was unlocked when Ginny got home. Warily, she opened the door and stepped inside to see a few of the lights on.

"Steve? You home?" She called out, reaching in her purse for the small handgun she had started keeping in there for emergencies.

"Yeah, in the kitchen,” Steve replied. Ginny let out a breath and removed her hand from her bag, setting it down on the small stool they used as an entrance table. She removed her coat, which left her in her dress shirt underneath and her uniform skirt. She had figured maybe arriving home in her proper uniform would make it a little easier to tell Steve all that she had been keeping from him.

“How was the exhibition?” She asked as she removed her shoes.

“It was great! That Stark guy is a real genius. Bucky said to give you his love, by the way.”

“Did he really?”

“No, but I figured that would be better than saying that he was more focused on the two girls we had with us than anything else,” Steve admitted. Ginny laughed quietly, then braced herself as she rounded the corner into their tiny excuse for a kitchen.

"Hey," She began, but paused, taken aback by the sight of Steve packing a bag. "What're you doing?"

"We need to talk, Evie," he said, not looking up from what he was doing.

"About what?"

"I joined the Army," he said, finally looking up at Ginny. She noted the slight confusion on his face as he saw what she was wearing, but she couldn’t find it in her to care or explain.

"You what?!"

"I've been selected for a specialized program. I'm shipping out to Camp Lehigh first thing. Not my favorite option for a base, but I don't really have a choice. What are you wearing?”

Ginny’s brain short-circuited. "Wait, hold on. Camp Lehigh? Who recruited you? Who in their right mind even approved your medical exam?" She asked, her voice rising in pitch with each question that came flying out of her mouth.

"His name is Doctor Erskine. He said I had potential. I don't know why, but I think I gave the right answer when he asked if I wanted to kill Nazis. Now, seriously, Evie, answer my question—"

"You've gotta be shittin’ me." It was the only response Ginny could think of.

"What?" Steve asked, seemingly affronted at her language as if he had never heard her swear before. He was the one that had taught her half the vulgar things she knew, for Christs’ sake.

"You know the job I got back in November with that new doctor?"

"Yeah."

"Doctor Erskine. I've been working with him and the SSR on Project Rebirth. God, I'm gonna kill Abe when I see him,” Ginny muttered, rubbing at her left temple as she began to pace around the tiny apartment.

"You joined the Army and didn't tell me?! Is that why you’re in greens?!" Steve asked, his voice rising in volume.

"Yes, it is, and of course I didn't tell you, Steve! What kind of sister would I be if I accepted a position and rank in the Army and rubbed it in your face, knowing how much you want to go and fight?"

"An honest one, at the very least!"

Ginny whirled back on him with indignation at that. "Oh, so now you're lecturing me about honesty?! Where was that honesty when you applied five different times in five different cities, huh?!"

"That is entirely different, and you know it—"

"No, it's not! You wanna act like the high and mighty brother then by all means, do it, but don't start giving me shit for lying to you when all I was trying to do was protect you!" Ginny was yelling and pointing her finger at her brother and doing a terrible job at containing her anger.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Evie, I don't need protection!" Steve cried.

"Yes, you do! You think you're gonna last one day in basic, Steve? They're gonna tear you apart and eat you for breakfast, and you know it." Steve went silent, his face falling. Ginny's hand flew to her mouth as she realized her words far too late. "Steve, I'm so sorry—"

"Don't.” Steve held a hand up, hung his head. “Just don't." He was quiet for a long moment, staring at his half-packed bag. "You know the first thing I thought when I saw that 1A on my paper?"

"What?" Ginny asked quietly.

"That maybe with this, I could finally be the brother—the man—that I was always supposed to be. That I could finally protect you, instead of the other way around. That I could make you proud."

"You've always made me proud," Ginny said, her voice quiet as she advanced toward her brother.

Steve held a hand up to stop her. "Please don't lie to me. Not again."

Ginny watched as he finished packing a few more of his belongings, mostly his notebooks and pencils, and a few extra pairs of clothes. She caught a few of the books he had been given by her and their mother. One of them was The Machinery of War. She remembered finding it a few years ago at the small bookstore down the street. She’d been able to negotiate the price down to a dollar because she’d offered to help the bookstore owner with the chronic cough he had going on and had given it to Steve for his birthday. The cover was worn from having been handled and read so many times.

The next day, for Ginny’s birthday, Steve had given her a copy of The Great Gatsby. She’d seen it in the bookstore when she had bought his book, but didn’t have enough money to get both. It was one of her fondest memories from recent years, but now when she looked at the book in Steve’s bag, she felt sick to her stomach.

Steve shouldered his bag and didn’t meet Ginny’s eyes.

"You could ride over there with me, if you wanted. I'm getting picked up in a few hours," she offered, trying to extend some type of olive branch.

"Thanks, but I got it." Steve’s response was curt and cold. Ginny had never been on the receiving end of that tone.

There was a quiet moment between the two of them, like neither really knew what to say to make things better. A car horn sounded outside, and Steve perked up. Ginny walked with him to the front door of the apartment silently, trying to think of something clever to say to break the tension, but the only thing that came to mind was an apology that Steve had already made clear he wouldn't listen to. He turned around and gave Ginny a pat on the shoulder.

"I'll see you in Jersey, Evie. Make sure you lock the door on your way out." With that, Steve shut the door behind him, leaving Ginny to stare at the notched wood grain.

When she turned around, she caught sight of Steve’s inhaler sitting alone on the small kitchen table. Numbly, she walked over and held it in her hand. Steve had used this for years for his asthma. If he ever left the house without it, Ginny would chase him down and force him to carry it—“Just in case,” she’d say. He’d usually protest it for a moment, but always ended up shoving it in his pocket nonetheless because he knew it made Ginny calm down.

Ginny didn’t even realize that she was crying until she saw the teardrops fall onto the surface of the table. She wasn’t sure how long she sat there for, letting her tears silently fall as she clutched the inhaler like it was the only thing grounding her to the earth. It could have been a few minutes or a few hours, but a knock at the door pulled her from it. Without even thinking, she rose and opened the door to see Stark and another gentleman standing on the other side.

"You ready to head out, Rogers? Jersey is callin'," Stark said in a chipper tone. His face fell when he saw the tear streaks on Ginny’s face. He froze, and then awkwardly patted Ginny on the shoulder while the other gentleman reached into his suit pocket and produced a silk handkerchief. Ginny took it gratefully and wiped her eyes while Stark said, "I'm sorry, crying women scare me. I never know what to do."

"Might I suggest never getting married, then?" Ginny joked and turned inside. "Sorry, I got a bit sidetracked. My brother and I had a bit of a tiff before he left. We hardly ever fight.” When she saw Stark and the other man standing at the threshold of her door awkwardly, she gestured for them to enter. “Please, come in, I'm so sorry. I just need to throw a bag together real quick and then we can get going. I don't believe we've met before; I’m Ginny. Rogers,” she added, extending her hand to the unfamiliar gentleman.

“Edwin Jarvis. Pleased to meet you, madam,” The gentleman replied in a posh accent. Ginny was taken aback only for a moment but shook Mister Jarvis’s hand all the same. She then turned to grab a large bag from the small coat closet and began stuffing random pieces of clothing that were strewn about the small area her and Steve called home.

There was only one bedroom that Steve had insisted on Ginny sleeping in, and it was about the size of a postage stamp, so it didn’t take her long to clear it of most of her belongings that were packed away. As she scrambled about, she noted Stark and his wandering eyes running themselves along every inch of the ramshackle apartment.

"Probably a lot smaller than what you're used to, huh, Stark?" Ginny couldn’t help herself with the comment.

"No, actually. I was just thinking that it reminds me of growing up."

"What?"

"My dad had a fruit stand down in lower Manhattan, and my mom made shirtwaists. Our place was quite similar to this,” Howard said, patting a hand on the yellowed wallpaper.

"I wouldn't have taken you for a boot-straps fellow. No offense," Ginny admitted.

"None taken. Most don't. I've mastered the art of being so arrogant and big-headed that people can't help but assume I was born into money."

"I wouldn't go that far. Arrogance comes with the territory of being a genius in your field. You can't necessarily help that,” Ginny said as she grabbed a few books from the teetering stack in the corner of the living room.

"Speaking from experience, huh?"

Ginny whirled around to face Stark. "What do you mean?"

"You. You have that same arrogance. I've seen you working with Erskine, you're a genius on your own. People just tend to underestimate you because, well..." Stark trailed awkwardly, scratching the back of his neck.

"Because I'm a woman."

"That, definitely, and because you pull your punches, for lack of a better phrase. You undersell what you can really do. For the life of me, I can't figure out why, but you do." Ginny recalled what Doctor Erskine had said to her only a few hours prior. Do not discredit your brilliance, schatzi.

"Huh. That opinion seems to be going around today. If I do, it's not on purpose,” Ginny replied.

"It usually isn't."

Ginny nodded, and there was a small moment of quiet as she shuffled around the apartment, making sure that Steve’s favorite candle was extinguished and all the windows were shut. When she was satisfied with her sweep, she zipped up her bag and slung it over her shoulder, turning to the two men that were waiting for her. Mister Jarvis immediately reached to remove the bag from her shoulder, and Ginny startled for a moment, taking a step back.

"Miss Rogers?" The man asked, perplexed.

"I'm sorry. Just not used to uh..."

"I'm happy to take it down to the car, or if you'd be more comfortable carrying it yourself, that's fine as well,” he said, his hand hovering near the bag.

"No, please, don't let me stop you. Thank you, Mister Jarvis,” Ginny conceded, handing him the bag and watching him exit the apartment and down the steps towards the incredibly expensive car that waited in the street. "So strange," Ginny muttered to herself.

"You get used to it after a while. Jarvis is incredible. I truly don't know what I would do without him,” Stark said, suddenly materializing at Ginny’s shoulder as they watched Mister Jarvis step into the vehicle.

"He seems like a good man,” Ginny noted.

"One of the best."

With that, Ginny swung her uniform coat over her shoulders and reached for her purse and keys on the front table. There was a long moment in which she contemplated grabbing Steve’s inhaler off the table. Just in case. Then she remembered the look on Steve’s face when she said that the other recruits would tear him apart.

"Rogers? Everything alright?"

Ginny peeled her gaze away from the inhaler to look at Stark. "Just peachy. And I think you can call me Ginny, now. You've seen me cry, after all."

"Fine, but only if you call me by my nickname," Stark said, following her out and waiting for her as she locked the front door.

"And what would that be?" She asked, starting down the stairs to the street.

"His Royal Highness Alfonso Gilbert."

"I think I'll stick to Howard."

"Yeah, that rolls off the tongue a bit better, I think."

"Alfonso does have a nice regality to it, though, I have to admit,” Ginny said, laughing as Mister Jarvis opened the back door of the car for her. He did the same on the other side for Stark—Howard—and he sat down beside her.

“I’d like to think so. Also, I almost forgot.” He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a crumpled up five-dollar bill, and handed it to Ginny.

“What’s this for?”

“Don’t make me say it,” Howard said, cringing. Then, Ginny remembered their deal from earlier that day and smiled to herself as she stashed the money in her purse.

Chapter Text

June 15, 1943
Camp Lehigh; Wheaton, New Jersey

The sharp notes of a trumpet woke Ginny up the next morning, reminding her that she had been forced into New Jersey of all places to begin the process of selecting the first man to become a super-soldier for the Allied forces. If she didn’t know any better, she’d have thought she’d died and gone to Hell.

Ginny Rogers had never been a morning person, and joining the SSR hadn’t changed that fact. She grabbed the pillow from underneath her head and shoved it over the top of her face, covering her ears with it as she groaned. A few moments later, someone was prodding at her side, and she instinctively fought back with the pillow in her hands. It was quickly snatched from her grip, and she opened her eyes to see Agent Carter standing above her with a scowl on her face and her auburn hair mussed up atop her head. If Ginny had been a bit more awake, she might’ve laughed at the difference from Carter’s usual prim and proper appearance.

“Wake up, Lieutenant. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us,” the other woman said, throwing Ginny’s pillow back down on her bed. Ginny immediately grabbed it and shoved it over her ears again as the trumpet call continued to ring out over the camp.

“The sun’s not even up yet, Peggy! I don’t function before the sun does,” Ginny whined. Carter’s response was to whack Ginny with her own pillow and drag her by the ankle out of bed, letting Ginny slam unceremoniously onto the cement floor of their barracks. “You’re mean in the morning,” Ginny grumbled, but rose all the same and reached for her toiletry bag in the chest at the foot of her bed.

“You’re lucky I’m not training you today, Rogers. You’d be in for it,” Peggy remarked, grabbing her own bag of toiletries and heading for the women’s washroom. Most of the other women in their barracks—which were a dismal five others—had begun to wake up at that point, and Ginny ran to catch up with Peggy to grab the only other shower that had been built into their building.

“I’m not jealous of those boys, that’s for sure. Aren’t you worried they’re not gonna listen to you at all?”

“I stopped worrying about that long ago, Virginia. You should do the same if you’re going to continue working with the SSR,” Peggy said as she slid the shower curtain shut. Ginny was left to contemplate that remark as she got ready for the day.

As discussed the day before, Ginny met up with Doctor Erskine in their laboratory-infirmary hybrid building at 0800. Erskine was sporting his usual brown pinstriped suit and hat, which was something Ginny always found peculiar. Sure, the man had no rank in the US military, but everyone else here was either in a standard issue military uniform like herself, or in the specialized SSR uniform like Agent Carter typically wore. Why Erskine either refused or was denied such a uniform, Ginny had never asked.

“Good morning, Virginia. Are you ready to begin the Project?”

“I thought we already had.” Ginny did her best to hide her resentment towards Erskine. She didn’t want to taint their relationship, even though she had wanted to throttle him the moment she found out he’d recruited Steve the night before. Thinking back to his comment to her about finding the “perfect man” after he got back from the Stark exhibition made her stomach churn.

“Well, sure, but this is where…how do you all say it here? ‘Shit gets real’?”

Hearing Erskine curse made Ginny burst out into a fit of laughter unexpectedly. She’d wanted to go about the day treating him with a mild attitude, but as usual, he had a way of breaking through her anger in a moment. “I guess you’re right,” she admitted. Ginny collected herself, then decided she wasn’t going to nurse a grudge with Erskine. “I feel like you deserve to know something, Abe.”

“And what is that, schatzi?”

“The man you recruited last night, the one you were telling me that you thought was the one. He’s my brother.”

“Steven?” Ginny nodded. “Oh, wow. I mean, I thought about it because of the last names, sure, but I know Rogers is fairly common in America. I didn’t even realize that, Virginia. Is this going to be a problem?” Erskine suddenly seemed quite concerned; his face had fallen into a shadow as he likely began to consider the biases and issues that Ginny could face having her brother be one of the possible recruits.

“No, it shouldn’t be. And if it becomes one, I’ll let you know. But Steve made his choice. I’m sure you caught on to all his attempts,” Ginny said. Erskine nodded in confirmation. “Exactly. He wanted to be a soldier and a soldier he became. I’m not going to treat him any differently than I would any of the other recruits. That wouldn’t be fair to him or to our science.”

“Good answer. That being said, I hope you don’t avoid picking him because you are worried about him.”

“I’ll do my best to be careful of that,” Ginny said, though she couldn’t deny the thought had already crossed her mind. Erskine nodded and handed her a box of clipboards.

“We’ll need to hand these out to each individual that is going to be evaluating the recruits, and we’ll confer over them at the end of each day to see how everyone is doing. Now come along, Virginia. We’re to pick up Colonel Phillips and then meet with Agent Carter to get our first look at the boys,” Erskine explained, gesturing for Ginny to follow him to the front of the building where one of the Jeeps awaited them.

There was already a soldier waiting in the driver’s seat, so Ginny hopped in over the back tire and allowed Erskine to take the passenger side. A short ride later, and they were collecting Colonel Phillips from his sleeping quarters, and then headed over to the main training field where Ginny could already see the line of twelve recruits standing at attention. It wasn’t difficult to miss the significantly smaller one standing in line that Ginny knew to be Steve.

She saw Peggy stalking down the line of recruits and watched as she paused in front of one of them. A moment later, he was sticking his right foot out in front of her, and then the next moment Peggy had swung her fist back and hit him with a mean right hook. The recruit was sent flying to the ground just as Ginny, Erskine, and Phillips pulled up in their Jeep.

“Agent Carter! I can see that you are breaking in the new candidates, that’s good,” the Colonel said as he approached Peggy and the downed recruit. “Get your ass up out of that dirt and stand in that line at attention until somebody comes and tells you what do,” he ordered.

The recruit hopped to his feet with a sniff. Broken nose, maybe? At least a bleed going on, Ginny thought to herself as she analyzed the recruit’s face. He went straight back to attention and yelled, “Yes, sir!”

Ginny caught the brief smile on Peggy’s face and couldn’t help but allow herself a moment of pride for her friend. She did her best not to laugh, but then she met Erskine’s eye, glinting with humor, and chuckled quietly to herself. The Colonel briefly gave her a sideways glance, then stared down the line of men before he began pacing back and forth in front of them. “General Patton has said that wars are fought with weapons, but they are won by men. We are going to win this war because we have the best men.” He faltered as his eyes landed on Steve, who kept his attention focused on the distant tree line. Phillips glared over at Erskine and Ginny.

Erskine kept a straight face, while Ginny still was having difficulty holding herself together. “And because they are going to get better. Much better,” Phillips continued to describe the responsibilities of the SSR, and it took Ginny only a moment to realize that he was giving the recruits the same exact spiel he had given her in that operating theatre all those months ago. He even got the line about escorting Adolf Hitler to the gates of Hell. Ginny had to hide her smug grin behind her hand, and Erskine looked over to her with a confused expression. Ginny waved him off.

“I’ll explain later,” she whispered. Erskine simply shrugged. Ginny went down the line of recruits and collected the clipboards that had been handed to them. She pretended not to be bothered by the fact that Steve didn’t even cast a second glance at her as she collected his clipboard, and then returned the pile of them to the soldier that had handed them out originally. Ginny muttered to the Colonel as she passed him, “You absolutely rehearsed that this time around, Phillips.”

“I don’t want to hear it, Lieutenant. Take Hodge to the infirmary and make sure Agent Carter didn’t break his nose,” the Colonel remarked in his typical gruff attitude.

“Yes, sir.” Ginny said with a smirk, gesturing for the soldier—Hodge—to follow her. “Come on, Hodge, we’ll get you fixed up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the man responded. It might’ve been seen as an act of respect, but Ginny could hear the cockiness laced in his tone.

“It’s Lieutenant, thank you.” No response came from the man behind her, but she could feel his eyes on her as they made their way into the med tent a couple yards away. When Ginny ducked underneath the main flap of the entrance, she was pleased to see that the area was buzzing with activity as various soldiers unpacked boxes of supplies. The ones closest to her as she entered fell into attention, and she nodded for them to continue on with their work. She thought she heard a noise come from Hodge behind her—maybe it was impression, or perhaps he was taken aback, she couldn’t tell. Ginny gestured to a cot. “Sit,” she instructed. She was surprised that he listened.

“Only twenty minutes in and you’ve already managed to piss off Agent Carter. Not exactly a good first impression there, Hodge,” Ginny remarked as she gathered a few pieces of gauze and a butterfly bandage.

“Eh, way I see it is I’m already starting out by getting up close and personal with two beautiful dames,” Hodge said with a smirk. Ginny had to stop herself from rolling her eyes as she donned a pair of gloves and turned to the soldier.

“I think Agent Carter and I are the last two officers—" she stressed the word with a cocked eyebrow, “—that you’d want to get up close and personal with. Usually doesn’t end well for the second party, but I’d like to think you’ve already learned that lesson.” She dabbed one of the pieces of gauze at the small trickle of blood that had begun to descend from his nostril, clearing it as best she could. Blood still oozed slowly from the wound, so she took a clean piece and instructed Hodge to hold it in place as she turned to get a small penlight to examine his nose.

“Tilt your head back for me, please,” Ginny said quietly, clicking the light on and removing the soldier’s hand from his face. From what she could tell, there was a small misalignment of the bone and cartilage. Easy fix, she thought to herself as she checked the other nostril for safety’s sake.

As Ginny continued her examination, she became increasingly aware of the proximity—or lack thereof—to which she and Hodge had between them. It appeared that he noticed it too. With how close she was to his face, she was able to catch the jump of his pulse along his carotid and then felt his hand grazing her backside. Ginny tried to give the soldier the benefit of the doubt at first—perhaps it had been an accident—but it became impossible to ignore when he squeezed, hard, and she felt the hemline of her skirt begin to rise as he pulled on it.

Without even thinking, Ginny swung her left hand directly into Hodge’s face, on the exact opposite side of where Peggy had hit him originally. Hodge recoiled from the punch and brought his hands to his face while Ginny backed away from him. “What the-”

“Get the fuck out of my infirmary, Private Hodge,” Ginny ordered through gritted teeth, not even bothering to hide her anger. Hodge was still a bit out of it, and he made no move to exit the tent. “Now, before I re-break your fat nose.” Slowly, the soldier stumbled out, still clutching his nose—though Ginny had realigned it perfectly with her punch. The few other nurses and medics had taken a pause at Ginny’s outburst and looked at her as she adjusted her uniform and collected herself.

“As you were,” she ordered sharply, and they all quickly returned to their tasks. A moment after Hodge had stumbled out of the tent, Howard came waltzing in, looking over his shoulder at the cursing soldier.

"Hell of a shiner you gave that guy there," he remarked as he came to stand at Ginny’s side. She shook out her left hand—she wasn’t used to hitting with her non-dominant side—and shrugged.

"Eh, I've done better. Half of it was Agent Carter from earlier this morning."

"You don't say? Remind me not to piss either of you off.” Howard glanced back towards the tent entrance and shivered, then turned back to Ginny with a smile.

"Not that I don't love seeing your mustache around every corner, but is there a reason you're here? Or is this just a visit to annoy me while I'm trying to work?" Ginny asked as she packed up the few supplies she had gotten out to tend to Hodge’s wound.

"Yeah, I've got this rash, y'know, down there and I—"

"Howard, for your sake, you'd better be joking."

Howard laughed at Ginny’s reaction and patted her on the back. "Of course I am! What do you take me for, some gigolo?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Ginny asked with a raised eyebrow.

Howard pointed a finger at her. "Touché. No, I wanted to get your input on a few designs I've got buzzing in my head for this whole super-soldier transformation thing. You got a minute?"

Ginny removed her gloves and turned her full attention to Howard. "Yeah, I can spare a few. Talk to me."

Howard slung a casual arm around Ginny’s shoulders and guided her through the boxes and back outside the infirmary tent. "Well, I don't know if you've seen the other candidates aside from Hodge, but there's some... questionable choices that Erskine's brought in. One of the guys isn't even up to my armpit, and I feel like if I look at him wrong he's gonna break."

Ginny kept her face stoic. "Mhm."

"Like, this kid is scrawny. I'd hate to be stranded on a deserted island with him because he's just skin and bone, hardly any meat. I don't know how he got picked for this, maybe Erskine wanted him as a lab rat or something,” Howard continued.

"Yeah, maybe."

"But anyways, I'm losing track here. I'm just trying to think of all the angles to go about building this machine that Erskine wants to inject the serum and stimulate the transformation. If by some God-forsaken miracle little Jimmy—"

"His name is Steve," Ginny interjected, amused at Howard’s tunnel vision.

"Yeah—Steve, Rogers, Jimmy, whatever the hell his name is - gets picked, I need to figure out a way to get this kid to the size of what a super-soldier should be. I was thinking of something that could pump him full of vitamins, but I'm worried that if we put too many needles in him, his veins will blow."

Ginny stopped for a moment. "You know, for a supposed genius, you're quite dense."

Howard looked at her, confused. Then, the realization set in. "Oh God, I'm such an ass. I'm so sorry, Ginny, I didn't even think. He's your..."

"Brother."

"Right. I'm so sorry."

"Stop apologizing, it's fine. And you're right, Steve's got awful veins. If he does somehow get selected, though I'm praying he doesn't, I worry about how the injection process will go. I might suggest to Erskine to inject into the major muscle groups rather than using an intravenous method. It might be better all around, even if another recruit is chosen. That much serum going straight into a single antecubital might be too much.” Now it was Ginny’s turn to ramble. “You're on the right track with giving vitamins—I know Steve is severely lacking a majority of the necessary ones, and I think even if one of the other candidates is chosen, it would be a good idea to give them a bit of a boost in that area anyways. Is there a way you could develop something that could expose them to the necessary vitamins through the skin? Like how we get vitamin D from the sun?" Howard had his chin between his thumb and forefinger, a pose Ginny had seen him take quite often when he was thinking.

"I mean, possibly. In order to stimulate the growth that Erskine is wanting though, that absorption would have to be extremely high powered. I don't know what that would mean in terms of how much pain the subject might be in during the procedure,” he explained.

"Well, it certainly wouldn't tickle. But these boys know what they signed up for. If they can't handle a little pain, then they're in the wrong business," Ginny said. She watched as Peggy shouted at the group of recruits, engaging them in a block exercise before they began their regulated training for the day. Howard settled in beside her, eyeing the recruits as she did.

"Damn. Fan of tough love, I take it?" He asked. She caught his glance at her from her peripheral.

"You've got no idea."

The next few days were a whirlwind of action. Colonel Phillips and Agent Carter wasted no time breaking in the recruits; there were ropes courses, tactical fitness challenges, and dozens of miles ran by the recruits within the first twenty-four hours of training. Ginny was there to observe most of them, along with Erskine and Peggy, and she did her best during all her observations to be as impartial towards the recruits as she could. That being said, it was difficult not to notice how easy it was for Steve to fall behind the other soldiers.

He got halfway up the ropes course before he began wheezing, and the ropes had somehow gotten so twisted around his leg that when he let go he was left dangling upside down. The recruits’ drill sergeant, a man by the name of Michael Duffy, had called for him to get down from the course, and Ginny had to admit that she appreciated the fact that the sergeant didn’t seem to care about Steve’s ailments or show him any bias. On the other hand, every time he singled out Steve (even when it was warranted), Ginny felt a seed of anger growing in her gut that she couldn’t trim down no matter how hard she tried. Old habits died hard, and there wasn’t any way that Ginny could avoid the protective instinct she had when it came to Steve.

The other difficult battle was not giving Hodge what for whenever he made Steve’s setbacks even more difficult than they already were. Ginny was observing the recruits during their tactical challenges with Peggy, and as the men were crawling through a layer of mud underneath barbed wire, a jerking motion caught her eye. She watched as Hodge kicked out the base of one of the poles holding the frame above the men and sent the barbed wire right on top of Steve, pinning him down. Peggy practically had to hold her back and remind her that they couldn’t interfere with the training as Sergeant Duffy screamed at Steve to get his rifle out of the mud. Ginny shoved her clipboard into Peggy’s chest and promptly stormed off towards her and Erskine’s office.

“Pull his ass out, now!” She shouted by way of greeting, startling the doctor as he pored over some notes from the previous day.

“Virginia, you said that you would not let concern for your brother interfere—”

“I’m not talking about him, Abe, I’m talking about Hodge!” Erskine looked up from his reading and removed his glasses.

“What do you mean, schatzi?”

“Hodge, he’s just such…ugh! He’s an asshole, Abe! No. He’s worse than that, he’s a fucking... something, I don’t know! I just want him gone!” Ginny was beside herself; she could feel her hands trembling at her sides and could barely collect her thoughts enough to form a coherent sentence. Erskine noticed her unusual demeanor and rose from his desk, walking over and placing a hand on Ginny’s. The gentle touch he offered brought tears to her eyes.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice calm and his eyes intent on Ginny.

“What didn’t happen?! He insulted Peggy not ten minutes in on the first day, then groped me while I was trying to fix his stupid nose—”

Erskine’s grip on her hand tensed for a moment. “He what?”

“And now he’s purposely targeting Steve during training! I just watched him kick out the base of their tactical challenge and drop barbed wire onto him. And he did it all with a fucking smile, Abe. I can’t stand the kid,” Ginny finished, trying to keep her voice from trembling.

“It’s all right, Virginia. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will keep extra care to watch him. Hodge, you said it was?” Erskine said, releasing Ginny’s hand and returning to his notes, scribbling something down.

“Yeah…you can’t dismiss him?”

“Unfortunately, neither you nor I have the authority to do so. Only the colonel does, and right now he favors Hodge for selection, so I doubt he would dismiss him. I can bring it up with him if you would like, but I don’t know how much good it would do,” Erskine explained with a long face. Ginny was silent. She didn’t know what she expected; part of her knew that it was silly to have such an outburst over behavior that was comparable to a playground bully’s, but another part of her was so defensive of her and Steve’s pride that she wanted nothing more than to rub Hodge’s nose in the fact that he would never again get the opportunity to be special. A thought ran through her head at that moment.

“You and I get final say in who is selected though, right?”

“Of course. We must take into account everyone’s evaluations, but we have the ultimate authority on who is chosen,” Erskine explained.

“Promise me you won’t choose Hodge, then,” Ginny said. It was unethical of her, sure, but in that moment she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

It seemed that Erskine didn’t care, either, because he nodded and said, “Consider him forgotten.”

After that conversation, it became a little easier for Ginny to watch as Hodge targeted Steve. She still despised the soldier for his behavior, but the secret knowledge that he would never amount to anything more gave Ginny a sick sense of satisfaction.

Two days later, Ginny found herself leaning against one of the Jeeps with Peggy at her side as they watched Sergeant Duffy run the recruits through a block exercise. There had been a comfortable silence between the two women as they made their own notations on each recruit, until Peggy spoke up.

“He got the flag, you know. Not a single soldier has gotten it off the pole in seventeen years,” Peggy said, eyeing Ginny from her peripheral. Ginny didn’t even have to ask who she was discussing; judging from the Englishwoman’s tone and the look on her face, Ginny knew she meant Steve.

“How’d he manage that?”

“He took the pin out of the base. Rather clever if you ask me.”

“Yeah, well when you’re half the size of most guys with twice the mouth, you tend to get clever quick,” Ginny remarked, but she couldn’t stop the swelling of pride in her chest at Peggy’s news. Despite watching her brother practically collapse from doing high-knees in place, Ginny was growing increasingly comfortable with the idea of Steve becoming their first super-soldier.

She said nothing more, however, simply made a note on her clipboard and continued observing the recruits as they were ordered to drop into burpees.

June 21, 1943

The final day of training, and ultimately the day she and Erskine would have to select their candidate, came much faster than Ginny expected it to. It started like any other day: Ginny grumbling to the sound of the trumpet call in the morning and Peggy dragging her out of bed. Ginny met up with Erskine at 0800 in their offices and they discussed the notes they had on each recruit so far.

“What are your thoughts on Brooks?” Ginny asked, reading over her brief notes on the twenty-seven-year-old from Albany.

“He is good. But we have got better,” Erskine said. Ginny nodded in agreement, and then Erskine remarked, “Floyd did particularly well in the stamina evaluations. That is good to have when it comes to operating during combat and holding up as a leader.”

“I can’t disagree, but isn’t the point of the serum to make it so that anyone who receives it is able to operate well during combat?” Ginny countered.

“You are right, of course.”

“Parker has high marks all around and with every evaluator. Even Sergeant Duffy said he favors him out of most of the recruits,” Ginny said, reading from the sergeant’s notes that she had in front of her. Erskine nodded but said nothing in response. “What are you thinking, Abe?”

“I’m thinking,” Erskine began, sighing and removing his glasses. “That we can discuss these prospective men all we would like, but none of them hold a candle to the clear choice.”

“What happened to not letting our biases affect our final choice?”

“I promise you, Virginia, I am saying this without any bias or favoritism. Your brother has proven time and time again that he is able to meet every quality that we are looking for,” Erskine assured her.

“That you’re looking for, you mean. You know Phillips cares more about the physical attributes of these recruits than anything else.”

“Well then, it is a good thing the final decision is not up to him, isn’t it?” Erskine asked. Ginny could only shrug her shoulders because she knew he was right. Both about Phillips’ authority over the decision, and about Steve being the final choice. As much as she hated it, she couldn’t deny her brother’s tenacity. And she knew that that was exactly what Erskine was looking for.

“I’ll let you break the news to the Colonel, then. I’m going to join Peggy and make some final observations, but I’m in agreement with your decision. I just don’t know what I’m going to say to him when the time comes,” Ginny said, giving Erskine a pat on the shoulder.

“Have you spoken to him at all since we got to the base?”

“Not a word. He’ll hardly look at me.”

“I’m sure he will come around. Give him time,” Erskine said, giving her a small smile. Despite her utmost trust and faith in the doctor, Ginny wasn’t sure whether or not she could be certain he was right on that front.

“Faster ladies, come on! My grandmother has more life in her, God rest her soul,” Peggy shouted at the recruits. Ginny had a difficult time looking away from her brother as he struggled to push himself up from the ground repeatedly. “Move it!”

Footsteps sounded from behind Ginny where she leaned against the supply truck, and she watched as Colonel Phillips and Doctor Erskine approached. Phillips had his usual scowl on his face as he spoke to Erskine, and she could tell they were having some type of disagreement. It wasn’t uncommon, and Ginny figured that Erskine had deigned this the best time to inform the colonel of their unanimous decision.

Peggy shouted for the recruits to stand at attention as Phillips approached. Ginny had to admit that her brother had done well in following protocol. He stood at attention silently and was as still as a statue. He was certainly hundreds of times better than her at following orders, which was saying something. It surprised her that he was able to fall into line so well, considering the smart aleck streak he’d had for the past couple of years. Not that Ginny was in any place to judge that. She caught the back end of the argument that Phillips and Erskine were having.

“You stick a needle in that kid’s arm, it’s gonna go right through him,” Phillips said, his eyes trained on Steve.

“That’s what I’m here for, Colonel. I didn’t get the title of best stick at Bellevue for nothing,” Ginny commented. Peggy called for the recruits to start with jumping jacks, and Ginny had to keep herself from cringing as she watched her brother’s pathetic attempts at exercise. He could stand at attention and address commanders with respect, sure, but that didn’t mean he was physically equipped to be a super-soldier. Little late to worry about that now, though, Ginny thought.

“Come on, girls!” Peggy taunted.

“Look at that,” Phillips said, turning to Erskine. “He’s making me cry.”

“You need a hankie?” Ginny snarked. Phillips ignored her. He’d been getting plenty of practice with that over the past week.

“I am looking for qualities beyond the physical,” Erskine explained to Phillips.

“Do you know how long it took to set up this project? All the groveling I had to do in front of Senator What’s-His-Name’s committees?”

“Brandt. Yes, I know. I am well aware of your efforts, Colonel.”

“Then throw me a bone. Hodge passed every test we gave him. He’s big, he’s fast, he obeys orders. He’s a soldier,” Phillips said. Ginny eyed Hodge with a wary glance. He had that ever-present smirk on his face that made Ginny’s skin crawl; it was like he could hear the conversation that was going on between Erskine and the Colonel.

“He is a bully,” Erskine commented.

“Can’t keep his hands to himself, either,” Ginny added under her breath. Whether Phillips caught it or not, she couldn’t tell.

“You don’t win wars with niceness, Doctor. You win wars with guts,” the Colonel said as he reached into a box labeled TRAINING GRENADES. He shot a look towards Ginny and Erskine as he pulled the pin and tossed it directly into the two rows of recruits. “Grenade!”

The recruits startled and all scrambled to hide behind the nearest vehicle or piece of equipment. Even the other troops that were close enough to hear the call ran for cover. All, of course, save for Steve fucking Rogers, who instead jumped on top of the grenade and covered it with his body as he lay in the fetal position.

“Get away!” He shouted. Peggy advanced towards him, but he gestured for her to back away. “Get back!” He laid there for a moment, body braced for an impact that would never happen. Ginny was filled with a disturbing mix of pride for her brother’s innate sense of bravery, and exasperation at the same innate lack of self-preservation. Half of a migraine was building in her head just from the image of Steve curled up over a grenade.

“It was a dummy grenade. All clear. Back in formation,” an officer called. The other recruits slowly began to emerge from behind their covers. Everyone had eyes on Steve, who was slowly coming out of his huddle on the ground. Looking to her right, Ginny could see that Erskine had a growing smile on his face, while Phillips had a growing look of exasperation.

“Is this a test?” Steve asked, looking to Erskine and Ginny. It was the first time in the week since they had arrived on base that he’d actually met her eyes. Phillips looked between Ginny and Erskine, very clearly disgruntled with the situation at hand, and Erskine simply shrugged his shoulders in response.

“He’s still skinny,” the Colonel said as he stalked off.

“And a complete dumbass,” Ginny added as Steve rose to his feet. There was no denying the smile on Erskine’s face, though, and she knew that he was entirely certain in their final decision. There was no stopping it now, even if she wanted to.

The more she thought about it, though, the more she realized that Erskine was right about Steve. She only worried about how she could tell Steve that himself.

The opportunity came that evening, after all the other recruits had packed their things and left the base. Erskine had caught her idly chewing on her penlight in the infirmary tent as he headed for the now nearly empty barracks. He had a bottle and two glasses in his hand.

“I’m on my way to speak with your brother. Perhaps you would like to join me?” He asked, gesturing with his head outside the tent.

“Sure. But I’ll give you your own moment. I need my own too, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. When you’re done, you can share some of this with me if you would like,” Erskine said, lifting up the bottle in his hand.

“What is it?”

“A very old liquor from my home. I have been saving it for a special occasion,” Erskine said, nudging Ginny playfully with his elbow. She could only muster a small smile in response. The rest of her was too consumed by nerves to do much of anything else except overthink what she’d say to Steve.

When she and Erskine arrived outside the barracks, Ginny nodded for the doctor to enter first. He gave her a quick squeeze on her arm and entered through the door, leaving Ginny to her own thoughts as she leaned her head against the wall. She did her best to calm her growing nerves—she took deep breaths and exhaled in counts of four and eight, shook out her limbs, and cracked her fingers—but nothing seemed to help.

She had never been this nervous to talk to her brother before, ever, not even when he'd caught her with David Bushnell in the back of his Cadillac. In all their equal time as siblings, her and Steve rarely had a fight as awful as the one they were currently in. Ginny tried not to think about the fact that when they did fight, it tended to be her fault. More often than not, it was due to her speaking before she thought about the words she was saying and usually had something to do with her trying to protect Steve from some outside force.

“You can’t do that anymore, Evie,” she said to herself, hardly even realizing that she’d referred to herself the way Steve usually did. He was the only one allowed to call Ginny by that name, and it had stemmed from a nickname their mother had given the two of them when they were kids. She had liked to refer to Steve as “Stevie” when they were younger, and she often called Ginny “Vee,” rather than Virginia.

Steve, in all of his three years of wisdom, had taken to modifying that name in his own special way and began referring to Ginny as “VeeVee,” which quickly morphed itself into “Evie.” It only really bothered her when they were teenagers, and he used it as a way to flex the twelve hours he had in age over her. Nowadays, it reminded Ginny of simpler times, before their mother had died and they were left to fend for themselves. Before the war became the sole focus of Steve’s efforts, and before Ginny had witnessed more death than she could ever care to recount.

She tried giving herself a short pep talk before Erskine emerged from the barracks, but she had misjudged how quickly the doctor would be done with his conversation. He exited the room only a few minutes after he entered, and held the door open for Ginny to go in. She found herself stuck in place for a moment, and was only able to move her feet after Erskine gave her a pat on the arm. “Go on, Virginia,” he said. Ginny took a deep breath in, exhaled, and stepped inside.

Steve looked…bigger, somehow. Ginny would have thought that seeing her brother sitting alone in such a large room would make him seem infinitely smaller, but his posture was taller, his back straighter, and maybe she was just imagining it, but he seemed to have a bit more muscle on him than he did at the beginning of the week. He turned to face her when the door shut, and she saw him roll his eyes as he turned back in the direction he was facing.

"Can we talk?" Ginny asked, her voice cracking slightly.

"Free country,” Steve responded, not looking back at her. As she walked closer to his bed, she saw what he was holding in his hands. The Machinery of War. Ginny held back the hitch of her breath.

"I'm sorry," she started, sitting down carefully on the bed across from Steve.

"You said that already."

"Can I finish, please? I'm sorry for a lot. For lying to you. For treating you like a child. For doubting you." God, you can’t think of anything better, Rogers? “The decision was unanimous. Both Erskine and I thought you were by far the best choice for this. I’m sure he told you about Schmidt and how the serum amplifies what’s already there. So, I hope you realize that I don’t think of you as a child in need of protection, at least not anymore.”

"Where is this coming from?" Steve asked, not meeting her eyes. He thumbed idly through the pages of his book.

"A lot of places, honestly. I've watched you over this past week and I saw how determined you were, how you didn't take any shit from the other guys. I've never been prouder, honestly. Watching you this week helped me realize that we’re not kids anymore. We’re both getting involved in something much bigger than us, and we’re not going to be there to protect each other all the time anymore. So, we need to be able to protect ourselves."

“Is that why you chose me? So I could get big and strong and protect myself?” Steve questioned angrily. Ginny groaned in frustration.

“No, Steve! God, I’m trying to apologize, here! I chose you because you have the best heart of any man or woman I know! Because I know that you won’t take this serum for granted!” Ginny couldn’t keep herself from raising her voice. She took a breath, trying to calm herself. “I chose you because I know that if it comes to a decision between yourself or an innocent person, you’ll always choose to protect the innocent first. I’ve seen it my whole life, I just couldn’t realize it until now.” Steve was quiet. He still wouldn’t look at Ginny. Realizing she had nothing more to say, she rose from her spot on the bed and headed for the door.

“Evie.”

Ginny turned to see Steve looking at her with tears welling behind his eyes. He’s scared, Ginny realized. “Yeah?”

“Will you be there tomorrow?”

Ginny let out a small laugh. “Of course I will.”

“Are you going to, uh…be giving me the serum?”

“The machine does it all on its own, but I could give you the prep. If you want me to, that is,” Ginny said.

“You think you could do that thing Ma did when I got my shots as a kid?” Steve asked. Ginny let out a breath and laughed even harder now, though she felt tears running down her face at the same time.

“You mean give you sugar water before and make you blow on a pinwheel while they inserted the needle?”

“Well, maybe not that. I don’t think that’d be the best first impression for the world’s first super soldier,” Steve admitted with a cheeky smile.

Ginny walked back over to his bed and sat down beside him, wrapping an arm around her brother. He leaned his head on her shoulder and let out a long sigh, and suddenly they were eighteen again watching their mother’s casket being lowered into the ground in front of them, right alongside the grave of their father that they’d never come to know. She’d known it back then, and she knew it now—there was nothing in this world that could harm Steve so long as Ginny was there to fight it. And now, she knew that Steve would stop at nothing to make sure she was safe.

Ginny smiled to herself and said to her brother, “I’m sure I can figure something out.”

HYDRA Base Camp C3; Austria

Herr Schmidt was posing for his portrait as Doctor Arnim Zola entered his main workspace. Schmidt hadn’t called for the doctor, but humored his presence all the same, flicking off the spotlight he had trained on him for his artist’s sake.

“Is there something you need?” He asked, his annoyance seeping into his tone. The squirrely doctor eyed him in the darkness.

“I understand you found them,” he said by way of greeting.

“See for yourself,” Schmidt replied, gesturing to the group of photographs lying on the table in front of the doctor.

One of the subjects they both knew to be Doctor Abraham Erskine, who had been ripped from their Kaufmann facility a few years prior. The photographs showed him going about his new daily life in Brooklyn, and a few of them featured the newest addition to his team, and HYDRA’s newest target. A young woman that Erskine had recruited in November of the past year. Virginia Anne Rogers was her name. Why Erskine had deemed her good enough to know of his secrets and not Schmidt, the man would likely never know. Not that it mattered, anyhow. They’d both be dead in the morning.

Zola eyed the photographs on the table, but made no move to speak. “You disapprove,” Schmidt observed.

The doctor gestured to the photographs and let out a feeble laugh. “I just don’t see why you need concern yourself. I can’t imagine he will succeed. Again.” Schmidt didn’t miss the final addition to Zola’s sentence, but let it slide.

“His serum is the Allies’ only defense against this power we now possess. If we take it away from them, then our victory is assured. And this woman, this girl,”—the idea was like poison on his tongue— “likely knows more about it now that he has recruited her.” He tried not to think about the possibility of either of them surviving. It would mean almost certain destruction of his plans if his operatives did not succeed.

Zola seemed to consider Schmidt’s words, and finally nodded. “Shall I give the order?”

“It has been given.”

Chapter Text

June 22, 1943

Ginny almost felt guilty for leaving only about a swig of Erskine’s schnapps in the bottle. Almost. She justified her over-imbibement by telling herself that Steve had never really been a big drinker, anyhow. Any time he did have alcohol it made his stomach upset.

She understood why the following morning, when she woke up two hours before she’d meant to, hurling chunks into the women’s toilet in the nearly empty barracks. Peggy, by the grace of God, slept through the ruckus that Ginny had made, and so she took it as a sign to be the early bird for once and began getting ready for the day ahead. After she had showered and changed, she took a long glance at herself in the mirror. Somehow, over the course of her time with the SSR, she had aged from the baby-faced nurse that was too confident about undermining a supervising doctor into a military woman, a proper lieutenant, with taller posture and a sterner resting face. It was the first time in months that Ginny had actually looked at herself in the mirror.

With her un-styled, slightly damp honey-blonde hair hanging just below her chest, she realized that she looked far closer to her mother than she ever had before. Ginny had always wondered if she would grow into her mother’s features; when she was younger her eyes were a dull steel color, while Steve’s and their mother’s had always been a soft blue. While her mom and Steve had a similar warm blond tone to their hair, Ginny’s had remained platinum until she was in her early twenties, only darkening when she started working night shift more often.

For a few years when they were kids, Ginny sometimes doubted that she and Steve were actually twins. She thought that maybe her mom had lied to her about that for some reason, but then she and Steve would ask their mom the same question at the same time in the same tone of voice, and all suspicion Ginny had flew out the window.

Staring at her reflection and seeing part of her mother stare back sent a shiver down her spine. She could really only recall what her mother looked like at Ginny’s age from pictures. The most prominent memories she had of her mother were when she was on her deathbed, dying from a tuberculosis infection. Her mother had lost all the color in her face, and her lips had been cracked and bloody from her breathing through her mouth all the time. She was hardly lucid by the time she died.

Ginny found herself vomiting for the second time that morning, then finally decided that she was going to style her hair for once. Not only because she never recalled her mother’s hair being styled in any fancy way, but because Colonel Phillips had mentioned that there were going to be photographers at the facility today, and there was no way in hell Ginny was going to end up on the front page of the New York Examiner looking like some souse.

After some attempts, she was able to get her hair up into a few curls. She was going for something similar to the way she’d seen Peggy wear her hair before, but Ginny’s was significantly longer and thinner than the Englishwoman’s, so it wasn’t a perfect match. But it would do. It was likely going to be ruined by her uniform cap, anyhow. Checking that Peggy was still fast asleep, which she was, Ginny quickly stole a few swipes of the woman’s lipstick and mascara, powdered her nose, then set the makeup back just as she had found it.

It was a strange sensation on her face, and she remembered quite quickly why she hated wearing makeup. Too frustrated to remove it all, she let it be and headed out to the front porch of the women’s barrack. The sun still had yet to rise, but Ginny could hear the faint sounds of the birds beginning to wake, and the wind rustling the surrounding trees around the base.

This was the first semblance of peace Ginny had felt in months, really ever since she had been recruited into Project Rebirth. She thought for a moment that maybe this was God’s way of rewarding her for the work she had done; that after all the chaos she had been put through, all the turmoil in herself and her relationship with Steve, this was how God showed her it was all worth it. That she had to work through the worst of it to come out better on the other side.

It was a comforting thought for all of about five minutes, and then Howard’s luxury car pulled up in front of her, and the comfort was gone, and Ginny could’ve sworn she heard God chuckle on the wind. Mister Jarvis opened the back door and let Howard out, who approached Ginny with an extra pep in his step. Ginny groaned.

“Does the SSR require all recruits to become morning people upon joining?” She asked, accepting Howard’s outstretched hand and letting him help her up from her sitting position on the front steps.

“Says the woman who’s clearly been up for hours,” Howard remarked.

“Got the jitters, I guess.”

“You and me both.” Ginny retracted for a moment, her eyebrows raised. “What? It’s still a huge task we’re trying to accomplish; it makes sense for us to be nervous. We’ve done all we can to prepare, every single one of us. Now’s the time for us to trust the science that we know backs everything up,” Howard explained, wrapping an arm around Ginny in a futile attempt to comfort her. As they both walked toward the car, Mister Jarvis opened the back doors for them and greeted Ginny with a smile.

“Wait, isn’t Peggy coming with us?” Ginny asked. She hadn’t heard any movement come from inside signaling that their friend had yet to wake.

“No, she’s the one bringing your brother in. She’ll be getting to the facility after us,” Howard said.

“Huh. Draw the short straw or something?”

“From what I heard, she volunteered.” Ginny pondered that for a moment. Interesting, she thought.

She recalled earlier in the week when Peggy had told her that Steve had gotten the camp flag. Rather clever if you ask me, the Englishwoman had said. And it was easy to catch the fleeting glances the woman had been giving Steve since then, though Ginny doubted her brother was noticing them.

Interesting indeed, Ginny thought, a small smile creeping into the corners of her mouth.

“What’re you smiling at?” Howard asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

SSR Top-Secret Facility; Brooklyn, New York

The facility was bustling with activity even when Howard and Ginny arrived as dawn was breaking over the horizon. This was the busiest that Ginny had ever recalled seeing the facility—she caught every single nurse and medic she had hired running about and making sure that supplies were readily available, and emergency countermeasures were being put in place in case anything went wrong. There were also people checking the machinery and equipment that were front and center in the middle of the room; Howard made an immediate beeline for the group of them and began rattling off instructions and numbers they needed to reach before they were able to get started.

Ginny spoke with each of her nurses and double-checked that things were where they needed to be. As she was conversing with one of the medics, she felt a hand on the small of her back. Ginny turned to see Erskine standing behind her, a wide grin on his face.

“Good morning, Abe. You ready for this?” Ginny asked, pulling Erskine into a hug. He returned it and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“I’ve never been more nervous or more excited for anything in my life, schatzi. We are about to make history,” Erskine said, holding tight onto Ginny’s hand. She could feel him trembling slightly, but when she looked into his eyes all she could see was determination. Knowing Erskine was having nerves as well made her feel a bit better about her own concerns, but seeing him remaining steadfast in spite of them helped her stand a little straighter.

“When I spoke to Steve last night, he asked if I would be able to administer the shots rather than one of the medics. He’s always had a thing with needles—I hope that’s okay.”

“Of course. Though you know the serum will be administered through the machine.”

"Yes, I know. I told him I would do what I could,” Ginny reassured. Erskine nodded, and turned to speak with one of the nurses that had approached him. Ginny continued on over to the Rebirth Chamber—Howard had finally come up with a name for it a few weeks prior—and began checking it over. She only knew how half of it worked, really, but almost everything else had already been done and she needed to keep her hands busy.

"It’s all in working order, Ginny. You can quit your fussing.” Howard materialized on her left shoulder, a gentle hand on her arm.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m just…”

“Nervous. I get it. But your brother is gonna be here soon. Don’t you think it’s better for him to see a confident front on all of our parts rather than a bunch of goons?” he asked. Ginny knew he was right, of course, not that she was going to say that to his face. She nodded and turned to Howard.

“Just promise me something. Please,” Ginny said.

“Anything.”

“If I tell you to pull him out, do it.”

Howard considered her for a moment. “What happened to tough love?”

“That was when I was still upset with him. Now, I just…I don’t want to hurt him any more than I have to,” Ginny explained, doing her best to keep her voice steady. Howard nodded, then gave Ginny a half-cocked smile.

“You should wear your hair like that more often. Looks good,” he said, before giving her a wink and heading back to the main control panels. Ginny turned around to hide the growing flush on her cheeks.

A moment later, she heard the doors at the top of the stairs swing open, and silence fell over the facility. Every medic, nurse, and assistant turned to see their soon-to-be super-soldier for the first time. Ginny turned to see Steve standing there in his standard uniform, the khaki material hanging off his body awkwardly. He certainly didn’t look like a super-soldier yet, and the moment of silence quickly wore off after enough people got a look at the seemingly insignificant soldier that had just appeared. Peggy was to his right, and Ginny caught her eye and nodded to her. The Englishwoman continued on down the stairs, gesturing for Steve to follow her, and Ginny tapped Erskine on the shoulder to join her as she moved to greet Peggy and her brother.

“Hey, Evie,” Steve said by way of greeting, letting Ginny wrap him in a hug that was probably a little stronger than it needed to be, but Ginny couldn’t help it. She gave Peggy a hug as well, then moved aside as Erskine approached Steve.

“Good morning,” the doctor said to him, extending his hand. Steve shook it, and as he did one of the newspaper reporters flashed a camera their way.

“Please, not now,” Erskine said, gesturing for the photographer to back off. “Are you ready?” Steve nodded, though Ginny could see the slight hesitation in it. Erskine either didn’t see it or didn’t care because he continued on. “Good. Take off your shirt, your tie, and your hat.”

As Steve began to follow Erskine’s instructions, Peggy came up on Ginny’s right and murmured, “He got beat up in lots of alleys, didn’t he?”

Ginny nodded. “Yep. Half of them I got beat up in, too.”

“So, you both had something against running away?”

“I guess it’s a family thing.”

Peggy chuckled at that, then looked between Ginny and Steve for a moment. “Has he ever…you know…”

“What?”

The woman stuttered for a moment before finally forming a sentence. Ginny had never heard her sound nervous like that before. “Well, in the car ride here, he talked about finding the right partner. For dancing, I mean. He sort of stumbled over his words a lot.”

Ginny groaned outwardly and pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “Oh God, did he call you a dame?”

“How’d you know?”

“Just a feeling. Him and his friend James started saying it a while ago, more often than they should and James more than Steve. Bad habit he’s picked up. I told him it’s not exactly the best thing to say to a woman, but he doesn’t know how to listen—” She stressed the ending of the sentence towards her brother.

“Huh?” Steve questioned. He was too busy gawking at the nurse that was collecting his clothes to be listening to what Ginny and Peggy were saying.

“Case in point. James has always been a bit more of a playboy than Steve, though.”

“I think your brother was very charming with it, actually,” Peggy said with a small smile. Ginny wanted to vomit suddenly.

“Ew. Gross. Go upstairs, we’re done with this conversation,” she said, pointing to the viewing area that was becoming fuller by the minute. Peggy rolled her eyes and moved to turn away, but before she could Ginny stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Though, I wouldn’t be disappointed if something did happen between you two,” she murmured to Peggy. “You’re certainly an excellent choice for a partner. For dancing, of course.” She left with a wink, then cringed inwardly, realizing how quickly she had picked up that habit from Howard.

When she turned back, Steve was climbing into the Chamber with Erskine standing at his side. He looked tiny in the thing, and for a moment Ginny feared that it would be too powerful for him to handle. Then Howard’s voice was in her mind: Trust in the science. Quit your fussing. Ginny quaffed her worries and smiled to her brother as she approached.

“Comfortable?” Erskine asked.

Steve laughed nervously. “It’s a little big.” Ginny nodded in agreement, but said nothing. “You save me any of that schnapps?” Steve asked, directing the question at Erskine.

The doctor’s lips flattened into a line. “Not as much as I should have. Sorry. Next time,” he said, patting Steve on the arm.

Ginny leaned into Steve and added, “That’s my bad, honestly. I got a bit carried away.” At that, Steve laughed a genuine laugh, and Ginny’s worries began to melt away by the second.

Erskine watched the two of them for a moment before calling over his shoulder, “Mister Stark, how are your levels?”

Howard came up from the main control panel at the mention of his name and replied, “Levels at one hundred percent. We may dim half the lights in Brooklyn, but we are ready as we’ll ever be. Ain’t that right, Ginny?” He slapped her on the back for good measure with a smile.

“I can only hope.” Ginny couldn’t miss the confused look that Steve shot between her and Howard. There wasn’t enough time for her to explain their newfound friendship over the time she’d been with the SSR, though she made a mental note to try and update Steve on it the next chance she got.

Erskine turned and murmured something to Peggy, who was still hovering on the main area with Ginny and Howard. At Erskine’s words, she apologized and turned to finally make her way into the booth with the rest of the audience. As she walked away, she cast a long glance back to Steve where he lay dwarfed in the Rebirth Chamber. Ginny did her best to hold a straight face, though she couldn’t help throwing Howard a knowing glance as Peggy made her way upstairs.

Once Peggy had made it into the booth, Erskine nodded to Ginny and took the microphone that one of Howard’s assistants handed to him. He began speaking into it, introducing the procedure for the viewers upstairs. As he was speaking, Ginny set to work preparing Steve’s doses.

“Do you hear me? Is this on?” Erskine tapped the microphone a few times, sending a wave of feedback out for a moment before beginning his introduction. “Ladies and gentlemen, today we take not another step towards annihilation, but the first step on the path to peace.”

Ginny turned to her brother as one of the nurses began moving parts of the machine into place. Two pads were placed over his pectoral muscles—if you could even call them muscles—holding him in place. Another one of the nurses took six of the seven vials of serum and loaded them into the designated chambers on either side of the Rebirth Chamber. Ginny took one of the alcohol swabs and cleaned a small area on Steve’s left bicep.

“So,” she began. “What was your favorite part of basic, do you think?” Out of Steve’s line of sight, she uncapped the needle.

“Am I allowed to say none of it?” Steve asked, craning his neck to try and look at Ginny. She laughed and gently tilted his head so that it was facing straight forward.

“Sure. It wasn’t exactly supposed to be enjoyable, after all.” While she was speaking, she inserted the needle into his arm as gently as she could, pinching some of his skin and muscle together for good measure. He flinched, but only for a moment, and then it was over.

Steve let out a small breath. “That wasn’t so bad,” he said.

“That was penicillin, Steve,” Ginny said. She wasn’t going to tell him whether or not the serum would be better or worse. She didn’t even know for sure what it would be like. Instead, she placed her hand on her brother’s shoulder and held it there as Erskine turned back to the two of them. Ginny gave him a small nod, and he turned back to the viewers in the booth.

“Serum infusion beginning in five…four…three…two…one.” Ginny heard the needles in the pads activate, and she gave Steve’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he groaned in pain. The blue liquid in the vials drained simultaneously, and Ginny knew she had to back up at that point. She gave Steve a final pat on his bare shoulder, and walked on down to the main control panel next to Howard. “Now, Mister Stark,” Erskine instructed.

Howard moved over and pulled down on a red-handled lever, and the Rebirth Chamber hummed to life, tilting forward so that Steve was vertically positioned. The sides of the pod folded together over his body, and the top portion slid down so that his face was covered, leaving only a small window for viewing purposes. It was almost pointless, though, because Steve was too short to be seen in it. The pieces locked together with a hissing sound, and Erskine approached the machine. He rapped a knuckle on the small window.

“Steven?” He asked, his voice raised. “Can you hear me?”

A quiet and tense moment passed before Steve’s muffled response came. “Probably too late to go to the bathroom, right?” Ginny let out a breath and rolled her eyes, her gaze meeting with Erskine’s.

“We will proceed,” the doctor said, nodding to Howard. At the confirmation from Erskine, Howard donned the safety goggles he’d developed, as did the majority of the other workers down on the floor. Then the moment came where Howard began to turn a wheel on the control panel to the right, and the Rebirth Chamber began to emanate a resonating hum. Howard started calling out power percentage levels, and Ginny kept her eyes trained on Steve’s vitals as they were coming through her end of the control panel.

The power levels reached forty percent, and Ginny called out, “Vital signs are normal,” as her, Howard, and Erskine had previously discussed. The goal was to get to one-hundred percent power, but they needed to monitor Steve’s life force periodically as the power surge increased.

Howard continued turning his wheel. “That’s fifty percent. Sixty. Seventy!” The humming coming from the Rebirth Chamber was only getting louder as the power increased, and the light emanating from the Vita-Rays inside was growing brighter with every passing second. Ginny braced herself as Howard moved to continue turning the wheel, but froze as a scream began to rip out from inside the pod.

Oh, no. “Steve?!” Ginny yelled, whipping around to look at the Chamber.

“Steven!” Erskine cried, dropping his hand from where it was shielding his eyes and running to the Chamber. Ginny heard a door flying open and footsteps pounding on metal, then Peggy’s voice from up above.

“Shut it down!” the woman yelled. Erskine was still yelling for Steve, calling his name, and Peggy yelled at them again, “Shut it down!” Ginny was frozen in place, not knowing whether she should call it and rip this moment out from under Steve or leave him be for a few moments more. Then, she heard him screaming again, louder this time, and she had to fight back tears from listening to the utter agony her brother was in.

“Howard, turn it off!” she cried, looking over to her friend and praying that he remembered the promise he had made her only a few minutes before. He seemed to be frozen in place as well, and Ginny couldn’t tell if he was as terrified as she was, or if he was waiting for final confirmation from Erskine before he would obey orders. “Howard!” Ginny yelled, her heart jumping into her throat.

Then Erskine was yelling and racing towards the control panel. “Kill the reactor, Mister Stark! Turn it off! Kill it! Kill the reactor!” Finally, Howard reached for the wheel, only to stop when an agonized voice came calling from inside the Chamber.

“No! Don’t! I can do this!” Steve cried out. Ginny let out a choked sob and looked between Erskine and Howard. Her friend was staring right back at her, this time like he was waiting for her permission, and she nodded to him grimly. There was no stopping her brother, that much she knew. She would have to live with the consequences if she pulled him out now.

Howard began turning the wheel once more and called out the percentages as they increased. “Eighty…ninety…that’s one hundred percent!” He yelled. The light from the Chamber grew brighter and the humming was damn near bursting Ginny’s ear drums, but she couldn’t draw her gaze away from the sight, not until she knew Steve was safe.

Without even realizing it, she had reached for Howard’s hand and had it in a death grip while they waited with bated breath for the machine to power down. Sparks began to fly from the machinery along the back walls of the room, and Ginny flinched as some ignited on the control panels directly behind her and Howard. He moved to cover her from them, and then the humming began to quiet, and the light began to dim as the Chamber had reached its maximum energy output.

She thought her heart was going to beat out of her chest as Erskine asked, “Mister Stark?” He had his eyes trained on the Chamber, as well.

Ginny realized that she had yet to let go of Howard’s hand, and quickly released it to allow him to lift the lever that opened the panels on the pod. There was another hissing sound, and steam began to pour from inside the pod as the panels opened to reveal…

A super-soldier. There was no doubt in Ginny’s mind that that was what her brother would now and forever be classified as.

The formerly five-foot-four-inches tall kid that hardly filled up the Chamber now stood at approximately six feet or more, and the skin and bone boy Ginny remembered her brother being was gone, having been replaced with a man that looked akin to a Greek statue one would find in a museum. Steve was panting, and his eyes were squinted shut against the pain he had just gone through. If Ginny didn’t know her brother, she would’ve guessed that this was some magic trick that no one had let her in on. But then, Steve opened his eyes and his mouth started to form into that shit-eating smile of his, and suddenly it didn’t matter what he looked like anymore; that was her brother, and Ginny couldn’t hold back her tears of pride and joy as she hurried toward him, Howard and Erskine on her heels.

Erskine was muttering, “Steven, Steven,” under his breath while he went to support Steve under one arm. Howard had him on the other side, and together the two men helped him out of the machine.

Steve gasped for air, then his eyes fell on Ginny as she stood in front of him, arms outstretched to catch him if he took a tumble forward. “I did it,” he breathed out.

Erskine laughed from beside him. “Yeah, yeah. I think we did it.”

Howard was looking between Ginny and Erskine with a mix of pride and awe. “You guys actually did it,” he said. Steve had seemed to find his footing, and soon he was standing on his own, allowing Erskine and Howard to duck out from under him.

For the first time in their lives, Ginny found herself having to look up to meet her brother’s eyes. He was looking around the facility, no doubt stunned by his new point of view, and the doors to the booth swung open as the viewers began pouring out and into the main area. The energy was palpable in the room, and then Peggy was at Ginny’s side, shamelessly raking her gaze up and down Steve’s new and improved physique.

“How do you feel?” She finally asked. Her hand hovered over Steve’s chest for a moment, then she caught Ginny’s watchful eye and let it drop.

“Taller,” Steve replied, still a bit out of breath.

“You look taller,” Peggy confirmed, handing him a t-shirt that one of Ginny’s nurses had brought over.

“And sweatier,” Ginny added, wrinkling her nose at the sheen that was covering her brother’s bare torso. Steve looked over to Ginny with a smile and ruffled a hand in her hair before taking the shirt from Peggy and pulling it over his head. Amidst all the commotion, Ginny caught Erskine waving her over, and she excused herself from Peggy and her brother and made her way over to him.

Senator Brandt, whom Ginny recognized from the week prior, was shaking Erskine’s hand as she arrived. “Congratulations, Doctor. And you as well, Lieutenant,” he added, shaking Ginny’s hand as well. She accepted it, and he started to say something else to the two of them, but Ginny was distracted as Erskine’s gaze fell to the corner of the room.

His eyes went wide, and Ginny started to ask, “Abe, what’s wr—” but she was abruptly cut short as an explosion ripped through the viewing booth and sent glass raining down over the crowd of people on the main floor. Ginny threw an arm over her head to protect herself from the flying glass, then looked up at the same time as Erskine rose and pointed at the man in the corner.

“Stop him!” Erskine yelled, and Ginny saw what he was referring to. The man had snatched the last vial of serum from the container on the side of the room and was turning to run. That was bad enough, but Ginny’s stomach fell to her feet when she saw what was in his other hand.

“Gun!” Ginny yelled, just as Erskine cried: “Get down!” and shoved Ginny behind him and to the floor. At the same moment, two shots rang out, people screamed, and Ginny saw Erskine collapse onto the ground. Two spots of blood were beginning to bloom on his chest. From her collapsed position on the floor, Ginny crawled over to the doctor, his name a strangled cry on her lips.

“Abe!” she cried, immediately putting pressure on the two wounds in a futile attempt to stop the bleeding. In a moment, Steve was at her side, his now hulking figure leaning over Erskine and Ginny. The doctor’s gaze was desperately flitting between the twins as they both hovered over him on the cold metal floor. As Ginny called for a gurney, he reached his hand up and jammed a single finger into Steve’s chest, right over his heart. Steve looked down at it, then to his right at Ginny. She blinked back tears, and nodded.

Get the bastard.

Like he could read her mind, Steve slowly redirected his glare to the man that was beginning to run, and took off like a shot after him. Ginny watched her brother go for a second before turning her focus back to Erskine, who had fallen still under her hands.

“No, no, no. You’re not dying on me today, Abe. Not like this,” she muttered, abandoning the idea of pressure on the wounds. She instead started chest compressions, counting to herself until she reached thirty, then opening Erskine’s lips and breathing twice into his mouth.

No response.

She started again, her hands slamming down on the doctor’s chest in a steady rhythm. She felt his sternum crack under the strength of her compressions, and once again she breathed air into his lungs.

Still nothing. Ginny felt herself growing more desperate with every push onto Erskine’s chest, and her field of vision was becoming blurred with tears that she couldn’t hold back. “Come on, Abe. Please.” She was begging, willing for her friend to open his eyes just one more time. “Somebody help me!” She yelled, desperately looking around for someone. A few of her nurses were just watching her, dumbfounded, as she performed CPR on a dead man. She knew he was gone. She just wasn’t willing to accept it.

A hand placed itself on her shoulder, and she looked to her right to see Howard kneeling beside her, his face grim. He had tears of his own welling in the corners of his eyes, and it brought Ginny pause. She had never seen Howard without some semblance of a smile or smirk on his face. Ginny let out a choked sob and collapsed into her friend as he held her against him tightly. Howard rested his chin on Ginny’s head and let her cry, running a hand through her hair. Chaos reigned around them, but all Ginny could focus on was the lifeless body that laid in front of her, his blood still warm on her hands.

“Ginny. Look at me,” Howard finally said, releasing his embrace on her and holding her by the shoulders. Ginny directed her gaze towards him, but she couldn’t register his face. “There are people that need help. The explosion hurled glass at a bunch of them.”

Ginny finally looked around at the situation before her. Colonel Phillips was checking on Senator Brandt and his assistants, and a few of Ginny’s nurses were running to and fro with gauze and bandages to the injured that Howard was referring to. He still had his gaze trained on Ginny, who wiped at her tears and steeled herself against the agony weighing in her chest. “Right. Triage, then treat.”

“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like a start,” Howard said, patting Ginny on the shoulder and helping her rise to her feet. She looked around and grabbed the nearest nurse.

“Check everyone for lacerations and embedded glass. If you see a wound more than half an inch in length or depth, staunch the bleeding with a tourniquet and let me know so I can suture it. If there’s glass embedded near any major arteries or organs, leave it in until I can get to it. Everyone else gets an alcohol swab and a bandage,” Ginny ordered. The nurse nodded and set out into the crowd. “Does anyone see someone unconscious close to them?!” Ginny yelled over the din of the group.

A few people shook their heads, but no one spoke up immediately. Satisfied, Ginny walked through and did a once over for everyone she could see. There didn’t seem to be any emergent injuries; a rogue thought ran through her mind that this was the closest she had felt to comfort in months. This was what she was made for: finding some semblance of order amidst chaos and blood. She thought back to her last patient she’d had before Colonel Phillips had recruited her, and found herself wondering how he was doing. Recalling his horrific gunshot would suddenly brought her back to the present, and Ginny realized there was another person unaccounted for upstairs.

Miss Hattie. “Oh God,” she whispered, looking up to the balcony where the doors had been flung open as the gunman fled. During her panicked CPR, she had hardly registered the sound of automatic gunfire coming from up above, but now Ginny could only think of the worst.

“Howard!” Ginny yelled. He was at her side in an instant. “Help the nurses sort out the injuries. Anyone that needs stitches goes to the left side of the room. Everyone else should be able to bandage themselves, but if they can’t, get one of the nurses to do it.” She didn’t wait for confirmation from him, just headed for the stairwell.

“Lieutenant! Where do you think you’re going?” Colonel Phillips called as he saw her heading up the stairs.

Ginny didn’t respond, just rounded the corner into the main hallway. She pointed at the first two MP officers she saw and said, “You two, with me,” and grabbed an abandoned gun from the floor. She didn’t know what kind it was, but it looked mean, and it felt good in her hands. The two officers she had selected looked at each other quizzically for a moment before falling into step behind Ginny as she advanced towards the open doors leading to the shop front.

When she reached the curtain in the back of the store, she stopped for a moment and listened for any movement. She heard none, save for some commotion coming from outside on the street, and turned the corner sharply, gun raised. Ginny realized she probably wasn’t the best person to be up there with the possibility of the gunman still being inside, but she was the only one that had stepped up to do it. When she’d been recruited originally, Colonel Phillips had demanded she learn basic military tactics and training, and Peggy had taught her to shoot. So sure, maybe she wasn’t the best option, but she was good enough. Doesn’t matter who puts the bullet in that son of a bitch, so long as it gets done, she thought to herself.

The two MPs behind her fanned out to either end of the shop, guns raised as they checked around corners and shelves, but they turned up with nothing. Ginny slowly advanced from behind the counter, noting that Hattie’s gun she kept there was missing. When Ginny was standing in the middle of the shop, her heart dropped again. Hattie laid there, a single wound bleeding from her chest, her hand reaching towards an empty space where her gun had likely been. Her eyes were open and glazed over, fixed on the ceiling above her, and when Ginny held two fingers to her pulse point, there was nothing there.

“Damn it,” Ginny hissed, quashing the second wave of grief that threatened to spill over. She then looked up to see what the commotion was about in the street. As she walked to the front door of the shop, she saw a car on fire that was parked alongside the street, the metal frame of it mangled and charred. Another explosion, probably, Ginny realized. People were running around, screaming, and in the middle of the street was Peggy, rising to her feet and dusting her skirt with a scowl on her face. She caught Ginny standing there in the front door, and stalked towards her.

“Your brother just ruined my shot,” Peggy snapped. Ginny didn’t know what to say. She looked down either end of the street but didn’t see any sign of her brother. She could only pray that he wasn’t doing something incredibly stupid.

“Abe’s dead.” It was the first thing that came out of Ginny’s mouth, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.

Peggy’s face fell, and then she was running back inside. The two MPs that Ginny had brought up with her were waiting for her to come back in, and they reported no other bodies in the shop front. Ginny thanked them, and watched as one of them picked up Hattie’s body and carried it into the main facility hall.

When they arrived back, most of the chaos had died down, and a majority of the people left had been sorted into two groups like Ginny had ordered. She tried to avoid looking at Doctor Erskine’s body; someone had moved him from the center of the room, and he was now laying along one of the walls. If Ginny hadn’t known better, she would’ve thought he was sleeping.

Colonel Phillips was on a war path, so it seemed, and Senator Brandt just so happened to be at the focus of it. Howard was assisting the nurses like Ginny had instructed, and he approached her as she made her way back down the stairs, his eyes trailing to Hattie’s body as the MP carried it down the stairs and laid her next to Erskine.

“Ginny, I’m—”

“Don’t.” Ginny cut Howard off, her voice curt. It was the only way she could keep herself from breaking down again. “Who needs suturing?” She asked, not meeting her friend’s gaze.

“The group on the left. Didn’t seem like anything too bad, but you’re the expert.” Without another word, Ginny headed over to the group Howard gestured to, stopping at one of the supply tables first and grabbing a box of suturing needles and thread. There was no rhyme or reason to the group that she could see, so she had the first person in front of her sit down as she donned a headlight and got to work. There was no available anesthetic, so the process was likely painful for the patient, but at that point Ginny couldn’t find it in her to care. She worked almost silently, only speaking to call each patient forward and dismiss them, and to instruct them to move a certain way or to hold steady.

She wasn’t sure how much time she spent stitching up wounds on people, but at some point Steve returned, having run barefoot through the streets of Brooklyn after the gunman. Ginny caught him approaching her in the corner of her eye, but then Howard moved in front of her brother and put a hand on his chest, muttering something to him and guiding him away from Ginny as she worked.

Most of the wounds that presented only required basic suturing methods, so Ginny was able to get a majority of the people taken care of within an hour or so. There were a few that had larger gashes or deeper cuts which required more time and care, but ultimately she had finished only two hours after she began.

When Ginny finally looked up from her work, she saw that most of the facility had cleared out. The only people that remained were Colonel Phillips, Howard, Peggy, Steve, Senator Brandt, and a few of Ginny’s nurses. Erskine and Hattie’s body were nowhere to be seen. As she set down her tools and rose from her seat, Steve came running over to her and wrapped her in the strongest hug she’d ever gotten. Ginny didn’t really know how to react. She was just…numb. She returned her brother’s embrace, of course, but she could feel the emotion radiating off of Steve.

Ginny felt nothing.

Eventually, Steve released his bear hug on her, and looked her over. “You’re hurt,” he said, eyeing the blood on her uniform.

“It’s not mine,” she rasped. Steve stopped for a second, and his eyes went soft. Despite growing in size and height, he still had the same gentle nature from before. In that moment, Ginny wondered what that could mean for Steve when it came to fighting on the front lines. Suddenly she was doubting whether or not he could bring himself to take a life, if he would be able to surround himself with death.

“Did you kill him?” Ginny asked, her voice low and grating from having kept mostly quiet for the past few hours.

Steve shook his head. There’s your answer, Ginny thought. “He chewed a cyanide capsule before I could bring him back.”

“Did you get anything from him?”

“He was sent by HYDRA. The serum vial, it shattered,” Steve said. He looked hopelessly apologetic, like it was his fault that any of this had happened. Somehow, Ginny felt the same.

“Of course it did,” Ginny muttered. It was still a strange feeling, looking at her brother and how he appeared now, but the feeling faded as she caught a hint of red on Steve’s left side. “You’re bleeding,” she said, mostly to herself, reaching for his now seemingly oversized arm and lifting it up.

Sure enough, there was a patch of bright crimson on his otherwise pristine white shirt. Without a word, Ginny grabbed the stool she had been sitting on and dragged it over, pushing on Steve’s shoulder in an effort to get him to sit down. She used to be able to do it without a problem, but now she was met with resistance, and Steve didn’t budge. Ginny just raised an eyebrow at him, and he sat immediately, his eyes widening the way they always did when Ginny gave him that particular look.

“Evie, I’m fine, it’s just a cut,” Steve said, though he allowed Ginny to inspect the wound.

“Shut up,” she replied, then tapped on his t-shirt. “Off,” she ordered, turning to grab some gauze and alcohol. Steve let out a disgruntled sigh, but removed his shirt anyhow.

He was right; the wound was superficial at most. Even on a normal human with a normal immune system, it would take maybe about a week to heal. Ginny could see where parts of Steve’s flesh had already begun to stitch themselves back together, but she fussed over her brother anyways. It was the only thing that made sense for her do right then. She dabbed at the wound with a bit of gauze and cleaned it up with the alcohol, and Steve didn’t even wince when it seeped into his open skin.

“You stink,” Ginny muttered from under her brother’s arm. He really did, honestly. She wasn’t just saying that to be an annoying sister. Scientifically she knew it made sense; his metabolism burned four times faster than the average human, so his body was likely producing four times the normal amount of sweat compared to an average person to keep his body temperature regulated.

“Well, hell, I’m sorry. I only just ran through half of Brooklyn chasing a deranged German. You’re right, I should smell like roses,” Steve quipped.

Ginny jabbed him in the side with her index finger. The transformation clearly hadn’t diminished how ticklish he was. “I’m just messing with you. Unclench, you freak.”

“Unclench? Seriously? You know what, you little jerk?” Steve suddenly brought the arm Ginny was under around her neck and locked her in a chokehold, shoving her face directly into his sweaty, nasty armpit. Ginny screamed, but with his newfound strength she was no match against Steve.

“Steven Grant Rogers, let me go!” Ginny yelled, trying to fight against his grip, but to no avail. After a few moments, Steve released her, and Ginny took a long minute to wipe the sweat and grime off of her face, glaring at her brother the entire time. He just looked at her with that signature smile of his, though Ginny could see in his eyes that he too was feeling the loss of Erskine.

Steve had always had a habit of latching on to people quickly, particularly when they showed him great kindness or acted like his previous ailments were nonexistent; that was one reason why him and Barnes had become such fast friends, and why Steve was so loyal to the man. She was almost certain that the moment Erskine had signed that damn medical release, Steve had felt that same sense of dogged loyalty to him. Her heart ached for her brother, and for Erskine and Hattie and all the blood that had been spilled over the serum.

A dark part of her—an almost animalistic instinct rooted in revenge and hate—wished that Steve had killed the man, or that she had gotten the opportunity to do so. Knowing that he took the coward’s route and let himself die on his own terms made her blood boil; it was too easy an end for him. Ginny wanted to make him feel a fraction of the pain she felt when she was trying to revive Abe.

She’d have to settle for the rest of HYDRA, then. And somehow, she knew that everyone else in the room would be right next to her in the fray.

June 23, 1943

SSR Facility; Brooklyn, New York

Ginny didn’t sleep a wink that night. Every time she closed her eyes, glass was raining down around her, shots were echoing through her mind, and Abe’s lifeless body watched her from the corner. She’d woken up in a cold sweat shortly after falling asleep in the makeshift barracks that had been put together in one of the unused work rooms of the facility.

Steve was fast asleep on the floor next to her, mouth slightly parted and a low rumbling coming from his chest. He’d never snored before; due to his asthma he actually tended to wheeze in sleep. Ginny knew the events of the day had to have taken a toll on him, so she didn’t blame him one bit for passing out as soon as his head hit the pillow she’d pulled for him. Peggy was on Ginny’s right, also asleep, though Ginny could see the woman’s eyes moving from underneath her eyelids, and there was a slight furrow to her brow. Nightmare, Ginny thought with a twinge of sympathy. Howard had gone home a few hours before Phillips had ordered for everyone to get some shut eye; she hadn’t seen where the Colonel had slipped off to after that.

As quiet as she could, Ginny rose from her position on the floor and draped her blanket over Steve. He’d knocked his own off of him in the middle of the night, ever the restless sleeper. She was glad to see that a lot of things about her brother hadn’t changed after his transformation.

Ginny padded on bare feet out from the room and into the dark hallways of the facility, not really knowing where she was intending on going—she just needed to walk. The facility had cooled down in the night and Ginny found herself shivering as she wandered through the halls; she’d changed out of her bloodied uniform and into a spare dress Peggy kept in her locker. It was a little big in the shoulders and chest, but Ginny wasn’t about to complain. She didn’t know what she’d do if she would have been forced to keep Abe and Hattie’s blood on her overnight.

As she wandered, she purposefully avoided the main arena of the facility. Most of the mess of the day’s chaos had been cleaned up, but Ginny couldn’t get the image of the two dead bodies in the corner out of her head. Instead, she made her way down a hallway she’d had little reason to explore before, and as she continued further down she heard the sound of a repeated thunk on metal. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, and despite being unarmed, barefoot, and exhausted, Ginny continued towards the sound as silently as she could. There was a light coming from down the end of the hall, and it seemed to be where the sound was coming from as well.

When she reached the door to the room, she peeked around the corner to see that it led to a small lab, fully stocked. There was a wall of glass on one side, and beyond that was where the light and sound was coming from. It appeared to be a garage of some sort, and in the middle of it hanging from chains was a jet-black submersible.

Howard was beating it with a wrench, a single spotlight fixed over him as he worked. He’d changed out of his clothes from earlier in the day and now just wore a simple white t-shirt with trousers that were stained with sweat and spots of grease. Ginny felt her heart rate return to normal, and she found herself leaning against the doorframe between the lab and the garage, watching Howard work. He was so engrossed in his beating of the metal vehicle that he hadn’t taken any notice to her arrival.

After a few minutes, he paused and wiped the sweat from his brow, putting a hand on his hip as he eyed the machine with a look of confusion and…anger? Frustration? Ginny couldn’t really tell. She took the opportunity to clear her throat, and Howard damn near jumped out of his skin at the sound.

“Are you trying to beat it into submission, or is this just how you prefer to think?” she asked, walking down the stairs and into the main area of the garage.

Howard leaned against the wall and tossed the wrench onto the floor with a clatter. “I can’t figure this piece of crap out for the life of me. And I don’t like that one bit,” he said. Ginny nodded. She knew that feeling all too well from strange cases that presented in the hospital.

“I didn’t even realize you’d come back in,” Ginny said, swallowing a yawn.

“Yeah, Steve told me about this hunk of junk that the gunman tried escaping in, so I had it brought over here with Phillips’ permission. Couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get a head start on trying to figure it out,” Howard explained, then looked on the watch on his wrist. “Ginny, you know it’s four o’clock in the morning, right? Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“Same reason you’re down here abusing a submarine,” Ginny replied, walking over closer to Howard and sitting down. She let her legs dangle off the edge of the cement floor into the pit that Howard and the machine were currently settled in. “I tried, but…”

“I get it.” Howard met her eyes, and within the look he gave her she could tell he meant more than just the insomnia. There was a comfortable silence for a while; Ginny swinging her legs back and forth, hands tucked underneath her thighs, and Howard walking around the submarine like he could read its secrets just by looking at it. Ginny watched him as he worked.

There was no denying that Howard was an attractive man; the dark hair and lean build was one of the current beauty standards that most women loved, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he had a large wallet to sit on, either. Ginny knew from news articles and anecdotes Howard frequently told while he worked that he wasn’t inexperienced when it came to women, and Ginny suddenly realized how similar he and Barnes were. She didn’t know what to do with that fact except stew on it. Maybe Steve will take a liking to him. At least Howard is a bit more tolerable than Barnes, Ginny thought.

“I got something on my face, Ginny?” Howard suddenly asked, having caught on to her staring. Ginny drew herself out of her own thoughts.

“Yeah, actually.”

“What? Where?” Howard asked, suddenly wiping at his face. Ginny hopped down into the pit and walked over to him, grabbing a stray rag from nearby and wiping the spot of grease off of the man’s forehead. The new point of view allowed her to notice a small cut above his eyebrow that was weeping a bit of blood.

“You didn’t tell me you had this,” she said, poking at the skin close to it to see if it might need stitches.

“Meh, it’s nothing. You were already so swamped with everything else going on—”

“Howard,” Ginny said, her voice stern as she met his eye. The man just shrugged, and Ginny clambered out of the pit and searched the lab upstairs for a bandage. It was quick work patching him up, but Ginny still felt a small sense of satisfaction with it. “There,” she said, smoothing the bandage over the cut. “Like it never happened.”

“Yeah,” Howard said with a laugh. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, just doing my job.” Ginny turned to sit back on the sidewall, but before she could move away, Howard’s hand fell upon her wrist, holding her there.

“How are you doing?” He asked, his voice soft. Ginny felt her breath hitch at the question. She didn’t know how to answer it.

“I’ve certainly been better,” she finally said, not meeting Howard’s gaze.

“You know that none of what happened today was your fault, right?”

“That’s not true,” Ginny said, almost instantly. “As soon as I saw the gun, Abe threw me down on the ground. I was supposed to die today, too, Howard. There’s no way that HYDRA knew about this facility and when we’d be doing the transformation and not about my part in any of it.”

“I get that, and sure, you’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean you’re to blame for Erskine’s death. He made his choice, and his choice was to protect you,” Howard said. Ginny could feel his grip on her wrist tighten slightly, like he was trying to get his words to resonate through his touch.

Ginny almost found herself saying, “I don’t need protection,” just like Steve said to her before all of this started, but she stopped herself. It was only then that she understood her brother’s frustration. She didn’t want Erskine to protect her because that meant she couldn’t protect him, and she knew that was the exact thought going through Steve’s mind whenever Ginny stepped in front of him in a back alley. “I just wish—”

“Don’t do that. Wishing will get you nowhere. What’s done is done, unfortunate as it is, but Erskine died happy knowing that you were safe. I’m sure of that,” Howard said, his voice earnest.

“I just don’t know what to do from here,” Ginny murmured, letting Howard draw her into his chest. His rested his chin on the top of her head.

She could feel his voice rumble through his body as he said, “Now, we go to work.”

Chapter Text

Ginny spent about another hour watching Howard work, though he made little headway from where he had started. Eventually, Ginny realized that the sun had started to rise from outside, and she figured it was time for her to get her own day started. When she returned to the small room they had been sleeping in, Peggy was gone, and Steve was buttoning up the new khaki uniform shirt he’d been gifted after the transformation.

“I was wondering where you were. I woke up and you were gone,” Steve said.

“Yeah, had an early start, I guess.”

“I know you didn’t sleep. You don’t have to pretend,” her brother said, throwing her a knowing look. Ginny just shrugged in response. “What are we supposed to do now? Erskine never told me what would happen after all of this,” Steve asked.

“Well, considering the fact that the only other vial of serum we had got spilled on the docks, we’re kind of back at square one. And without Abe it’s going to be a long time before we can get anything developed,” Ginny said. She dreaded the idea that all of her and Erskine’s hard work had amounted to nothing save for Steve.

"Which is why we need both of you in the lab.” Peggy was standing in the door to the makeshift bedroom. Ginny hadn’t even heard her approach. “Colonel’s orders, not mine,” the woman added before turning on her heel and heading in the direction Ginny had followed earlier that morning. Steve was the first of them to follow Peggy, Ginny on his heels, and as they neared the lab Ginny could hear Howard still hard at work, though this time he’d called in a few of his assistants as they arrived at the facility.

When Ginny rounded the corner behind Steve, she was surprised to see an unfamiliar gentleman standing there in a white coat. He extended a hand to her and asked, “Lieutenant Rogers, I presume?”

“Yeah. Who the hell are you?” Ginny asked. Steve whirled around at her, eyes wide. She ignored him.

“I’m Doctor Alberts, I’m going to be working in the late Doctor Erskine’s place on re-developing the serum formula,” he explained, eventually realizing that Ginny wasn’t going to shake his hand and placing it back at his side.

“Peggy, what the hell is this?” Ginny asked, turning to the woman. She was casually leaning against one of the counters.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” she responded. Ginny kept her glare fixated on the Englishwoman. “Don’t look at me. Colonel Phillips called him in,” Peggy said, throwing her hands up in surrender.

“Where’s Phillips now?” Ginny asked, looking through the windows to see if he was in the garage with Howard.

“Not here, but I am, Lieutenant. You report to me now, so let’s get started. I need fifty vials of blood drawn from the subject and then promptly delivered to my office. Can you do that?” Doctor Alberts said, his tone curt. Ginny heard Steve let out a low whistle and Peggy turned around, busying herself with a clipboard on the counter. Ginny bristled, then returned her gaze to the doctor.

“Let’s make a few things clear, Doctor Alberts. The subject—” she pointed to Steve, who had a hand on his neck and was avoiding looking at either Ginny or the doctor, “has a name. Steve Rogers. He’s a person, not an experiment—”

“Actually, that’s not true,” the doctor interrupted. Ginny was stunned. She’d never met someone who could match her when it came to attitude.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t finished—”

“And I don’t care. Just do what I say, when I say it, and keep your arguments to yourself. Otherwise, I will have you promptly dismissed from this team,” the doctor snapped. He stalked out of the room without another word; Ginny, Steve, and Peggy all watched as he left—Steve flicking his eyes nervously between Peggy and Ginny, Peggy leaning against the counter once more with a resigned look, and Ginny with murder in her veins.

“Can I kill him?” she finally said, directing the question towards Peggy.

“No, unfortunately. He’s the next best mind we know of, so we’re sort of stuck with him. I despise him just as much as you do, Virginia,” the woman said.

“I highly doubt that.”

“We’ll just need to put up with him. We’re short on options.”

“No, we’re not. You have me. I know more about the serum than anyone else besides Abe, you know that,” Ginny said, snatching Peggy’s clipboard from her and forcing the woman to look at Ginny.

“Yes, you’re right.”

“So why the hell do we need a new doctor in here? I can do this on my own.”

“You know why, Virginia,” Peggy said with a knowing look. Because you can never be a doctor like him. Ginny heard what went unsaid in the back of her mind. She huffed, handed Peggy back her clipboard, and pointed at the table next to Steve.

“Sit,” she ordered, gruffer than she meant to be towards her brother, but she was pissed. Steve would understand. He sat, and rolled up his sleeve as Ginny grabbed her tubes and needle. She made a point of getting fifty-five vials as opposed to the fifty Doctor Alberts had ordered. Once she had everything she needed, Ginny tied a tourniquet around Steve’s bicep, palpated for a vein—though she really didn’t even need to with the way they bulged from his arms now—and inserted the needle in one swift motion. Steve flinched, and Ginny cringed. She’d forgotten to talk to him to calm him down like she always did.

“Sorry,” she said quietly.

“It’s okay. Didn’t even hurt, really.”

“Don’t lie. It’s allowed to hurt; I’m stabbing a needle through your skin,” Ginny said as she switched tubes. It took a few minutes—it was the largest blood draw Ginny had ever done in her entire career—but eventually she filled the last tube and dropped it into the rack, removing the needle from Steve’s arm and capping it before wrapping tape around the site. She realized after she did it that Steve probably didn’t even need a bandage, but it was a force of habit, and she didn’t bother taking it off.

“Think you got enough?” Steve asked as he rolled his sleeve back down.

“More than Doctor Alberts could ever dream of,” Ginny muttered, turning to the other counter to start bagging the vials.

“Any hope of reproducing the program is locked in your genetic code. But without Dr. Erskine, it could take years,” Peggy said from her spot by the counter. Steve stood from where Ginny had made him sit and idly watched the other half of the team as they worked in the garage, buttoning his cufflinks.

“He deserved more than this.” Steve’s voice was quiet.

“If it could work only once, he’d be proud it was you,” Peggy said, looking at Steve. He wouldn’t meet her eye. Ginny watched the two of them for a moment, wondering what was going through Steve’s head. He’d hardly had a moment to breathe since the transformation.

Two new voices came from inside the garage, and Ginny recognized one of them as the terse tone of the Colonel. She still had a bone to pick with him; protocol be damned, she was going to shatter it. She made a beeline for the stairs, Peggy and Steve hot on her heels like they could do anything to stop her. Phillips was in an argument with Senator Brandt, who was trailed as usual by his assistant. Ginny caught the tail end of what Phillips was saying to the senator.

“HYDRA,” he said. Ginny bristled at the name. “I’m sure you’ve been reading our briefings.”

“I’m on a number of committees, Colonel,” the senator replied.

“HYDRA is the Nazi deep-science division. It’s led by Johann Schmidt. But he has much bigger ambitions than just this,” Ginny said. The senator removed his hat upon her approach, and Colonel Phillips turned to regard her with his usual glare. “Colonel, I’d like to have a word with you when you’re done here.”

Phillips glared at her for a second longer, but didn’t acknowledge her request before turning back to Brandt. “HYDRA is practically a cult. They worship Schmidt, think he’s invincible.”

“So, what are you going to do about it?” Senator Brandt asked.

“I spoke to the President this morning. As of today, the SSR is being re-tasked,” Phillips said, turning back to Ginny, Peggy and Steve.

“Colonel?” Peggy asked. Ginny was confused, as well.

“We are taking the fight to Hydra. Pack your bags, Agent Carter. You too, Stark. We’re flying to London tonight.,” Phillips ordered. He looked at Ginny and hung his head. “And yes, you as well, Lieutenant, much as I hate to admit it.” Just like that, the Doctor Alberts problem had taken care of itself.

Steve piped up from behind Peggy and Ginny. “Sir? If you’re going after Schmidt, I want in.”

“You’re an experiment. You’re going to Alamogordo,” Phillips said.

Steve looked between him and Ginny. She avoided her brother’s eye; she’d had a feeling this was what the Colonel had in mind now that Erskine was gone. He didn’t have anyone with the authority to fight him on decisions regarding Project Rebirth anymore. “The serum worked,” Steve said indignantly.

Phillips regarded Steve with disappointment. “I asked for an army and all I got was you. You are not enough,” the Colonel said before turning away from them and speaking to a few of Howard’s assistants. Steve’s face fell, and Ginny’s heart ached for him. After all the effort he put in to get to where he was, he still didn’t get an opportunity to fight. Ginny knew he wouldn’t go against direct orders from the Colonel; that wasn’t his style. Or, it hadn't been as of late. Ginny could recall a time where Steve would have told the Colonel to shove Alamogordo where the sun didn't shine and head straight for the front lines. She figured he was likely worried about ruining the one opportunity he'd been given by stepping too far out of line.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ginny caught Brandt approaching the two of them. He nodded to Ginny before saying, “With all due respect to the Colonel, I think we may be missing the point. I’ve seen you in action, Steve. More importantly, the country’s seen it. Paper.” He snapped his fingers, and his assistant scrambled to his side and placed a newspaper in his hand.

Ginny saw a black and white image of Steve on the front page, holding a Lucky Star taxi door in front of his body like a shield. The headline above read: NAZIS IN NEW YORK/MYSTERY MAN SAVES CHILD. Ginny found herself rolling her eyes—of course Steve used a car door of all things to block a bullet.

Senator Brandt continued, “The enlistment lines have been around the block since your picture hit the newsstands. You don’t take a soldier, a symbol like that, and hide him in a lab.” He wrapped an arm around Steve’s shoulders, though it was a bit awkward considering Steve had a good two or three inches on the senator. “Son, do you want to serve your country on the most important battlefield of the war?”

Steve straightened his posture, gave Brandt a serious look. “Sir, that’s all I want.”

“Then congratulations. You just got promoted,” the senator said, shaking Steve’s hand firmly. “Meet me at my office this afternoon, let’s say one o’clock, and we can go over the details.” Steve nodded, and with a tip of his hat to Ginny and Peggy, the senator and his assistant left. She wasn’t sure why, but Ginny had an uneasy feeling about the proposition he’d given Steve. It was hard to tell whether or not it would really be any better than what the Colonel had planned for him. She waited for the senator and his assistant to fully exit the garage before she turned to Steve.

“Be careful with Brandt. I don’t know what it is, but I fear he doesn’t have your best interests in mind, only his own,” she said. Steve gave her a confused and curious look.

“At least he’s offering something more than Alamogordo. I don’t doubt he’s got his own agenda with me; he’s a politician. But at least he’s giving me something better than what the Colonel has in store,” Steve replied, crossing his arms. Ginny held her hands up in defense.

“I know, I know. I’d much rather you be Brandt’s bitch than Phillips’s lab rat, believe me. I just don’t trust Brandt, not as far as I could throw him.”

“I can tell.” Steve went quiet for a moment, like he was trying to think of what he wanted to say next. “I just hope he’s not thinking of something similar to what Phillips wants.”

“I mean, if he is, just tell him you won’t do it,” Ginny said.

“Sure, like that’s an option.”

“It is! Don’t let yourself become America’s pincushion, Steve. Be their hope.” Ginny pointed to the newspaper still crumpled in his hand. “You’re already halfway there.”

The rest of the day went by rather quick. As soon as Colonel Phillips left the facility, a whirlwind of gathering personal belongings and supplies erupted from Peggy, Howard, and Ginny. Steve eventually had to leave for his meeting with the Senator, and was gone for a couple of hours. He returned late that afternoon with an unreadable expression on his face.

Ginny was packing up the two duffel bags of belongings she had in the facility when she saw her brother enter from the shop front. “How’d it go?” she asked.

“It was…interesting. He wants me to sell war bonds,” Steve explained.

“And how exactly are you supposed to accomplish that?”

“He’s making a whole production about me. Captain America: The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan.” Ginny couldn’t stop the laugh that came out of her at that. Steve gave her a glare.

“I’m sorry, really. It’s still a lot better than being a pincushion, that’s for sure. I just never would have taken you for a show-choir guy is all,” Ginny laughed, which earned her a half-hearted slap from Steve. Despite him pulling the hit, it still hurt, and she grumbled at her brother as she massaged the spot on her arm where he’d hit her.

“Listen, if it gets me any closer to joining you and Agent Carter over in Europe, I’ll take it,” Steve admitted. The one thing Ginny would never admit to him is that she prayed he never got that far; she was already getting a coil of anxiety in her stomach about the thought of going over to the European Theater herself. She didn’t want to add having to worry about Steve’s well-being on top of that. She’d rather him be singing and dancing on a stage for the rest of his life than ever setting foot in a war zone. Though Ginny knew the moment he got the opportunity, that’s where he’d be. “I don’t like that you’re going over there, you know,” Steve added, as if he was reading her own thoughts. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I’ll do my best,” she said. Steve grabbed her arm as she was stuffing some articles of clothing into it.

“I’m serious, Evie. Don’t try to be a hero or anything.”

“Me? Never.” All Steve did was give her a look, one that immediately called her bullshit. He knew that if she had the opportunity to help someone, to play the hero, she’d take it, just like he’d take the first opportunity to fight. “I promise,” Ginny finally said. Only then did Steve relinquish his grip on her arm.

It took only a few more moments for her to gather her things and shoulder her bags, and then she found herself staring at Steve. He wore a morose look on his face, and Ginny couldn’t figure out if he was more upset at the fact that she was getting to fight and he wasn’t, or that she was leaving and he wouldn’t be able to watch her back like they’d done for the last twenty-five years.

Before she could say anything to Steve, a hand was clapping itself on her shoulder and Howard was at her side. “Plane’s leaving in an hour whether you’re on it or not, Ginny,” he said, then added, “Although, I’m the pilot, so technically what I say goes.” Ginny gave him a small smile.

“Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure thing. Good to see you again, Rogers. Best of luck with your own efforts,” Howard said, turning to Steve and extending a hand to him. Steve shook it, and then Howard let the two of them be, though not without pointing to Ginny and tapping his watch.

“So…” Steve trailed, eyes still on Howard as he walked away.

“So?”

“How long have you and Stark been a thing?” he asked, looking back at her with a cocked eyebrow. Ginny nearly choked.

“What?!”

“Oh please, don’t give me that. I’ve seen you two talking to each other during all of this.” Steve had that shit-eating smile on his face again, the one he got when he’d caught Ginny sneaking in late at night before their mother had died. “I mean, of all the guys in the world, he’s not the worst catch. A little big-headed for my taste, but…”

“Well then, it’s a good thing you’re not dating him, isn’t it?” Ginny said as she shouldered her bag.

“So you two are a thing then?”

“God, no. Not in a million years.”

“Well, gee, Ginny, I’m flattered!” Howard called from where he was talking to Colonel Phillips.

“You should be! Normally she’s got a lot worse to say than that!” Steve replied. Ginny gasped in fake offense and backhanded her brother on the arm. “Hey!” He said, rubbing the spot she’d made contact, as if she could hurt him.

“Give me a hug so I can get the hell outta here,” Ginny said, opening her arms and wrapping them around Steve. It was strange; normally she’d be able to wrap her arms entirely around him, and their skulls would awkwardly clunk together due to Steve’s shortened stature. Now, when Steve went to embrace her, he had to bend down a touch to do so, and Ginny found her hands unable to meet themselves across his broadened shoulders. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get used to Steve and his new body.

“I love you, Evie. Please be careful,” Steve said. He ruffled her hair, and she grumbled. “Don’t win the war ‘til I get there.”

“I’ll make sure to call you before putting one between Schmidt’s eyes,” Ginny replied. Steve furrowed his brows at her comment, but she simply shrugged, gave her brother a two-fingered salute, and headed over to where Howard, Peggy, and the Colonel were waiting. She didn’t miss the long glance that Peggy gave to Steve, and she almost said something to her friend about saying goodbye herself, but decided against it.

The last look Ginny got of her brother was him leaning against the railing in the middle of the SSR facility all alone, looking both like the strongest man in all of the country and the smallest at the same time.

June 24, 1943
SSR Headquarters; London, Great Britain

When they landed in London, it seemed like everyone knew immediately where they needed to go; Peggy ran off to speak to some associates with MI6, Howard got straight to setting up his own work area, and Colonel Phillips was of course met by dozens of people of varying rank asking him every question under the sun about files and missions and whatnot. Ginny was left standing holding her two bags looking like a stray dog that had wandered into the SSR Headquarters. She felt utterly useless, and found herself wondering if perhaps she’d have been better off back home.

Eventually she found the gall to set her bags down and leaned against the nearest table, watching everyone go about their work as they adjusted to the new presence of Colonel Phillips and his attitude, which may as well have constituted for a second person—Ginny would know. A good amount of time passed before she even saw Phillips near her again, and she took the first opportunity she got.

“Colonel!” she shouted, waving her hand at him for good measure. He looked up from a file that had been shoved into his face by a taller, lanky fellow and excused himself before making his way towards Ginny. He looked almost…grateful that she had called him over.

“Thank God. If I have one more Brit coming up to me with papers to sign, I might burn this whole place down.”

“We’ve only been here twenty minutes.”

“I know. What do you need?”

“Uh. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but orders. What the hell am I supposed to be doing here?” Ginny said, knowing she’d regret asking for that from the Colonel of all people.

“Right now, not much. Did Agent Carter not show you your room?”

“No, she flitted off as soon as her feet hit the tarmac,” Ginny said with a hint of disdain. The Colonel sighed, and gestured for Ginny to follow him. He led her through the main room of the bunker and around a corner in the southwest area, through a few doors and down a few hallways until they reached a hallway lined with identical doors, five in total.

“These here are the barracks for ranking female officers. This one is yours,” Phillips gestured to the immediate door on his left, “the next is Agent Carter’s, and the others are…presently waiting to be filled.”

“So Peggy and I are the only two ranked women in the entire bunker?”

“As of right now, yes. The rest of the girls sleep in the barracks down at the other end of the hall,” the Colonel said, pointing down the long hallway to where Ginny could see a set of double doors that were currently closed.

“Hmm. I don’t know whether to be flattered or disappointed.”

“How about busy? Get your stuff put away and then report back to me in the common room. I should have your assignment figured out by then,” Phillips said, opening the door for Ginny and promptly leaving the same way he’d come.

Ginny flicked the light switch on by the door and took stock of the small room she had been given; in one corner was the twin sized bed—regulation standards, from what Ginny could tell—with a nightstand next to it that had two small drawers with a short lamp sitting atop it. On the wall opposite the bed, facing the foot, was a tall wooden wardrobe that stood with open doors, like it was welcoming a friend home.

On the other side of the wall with the wardrobe there was also a small writing desk, already equipped with a stack of paper and a typewriter. Ginny was slightly surprised to see that she’d been given a typewriter; she nor Steve had ever been able to afford one for themselves, so she certainly wasn’t complaining by any means. The last and only time she recalled ever using one was when Mrs. Barnes, James’s mother, had let her borrow their family typewriter to compose a message for her and Steve’s distant family to inform them their mother had died.

She took her time putting her belongings away, but even moving slow, it still only took her about ten minutes. Most of the clothing she’d brought were duplicates of her dress uniform and a few sets of her utility uniform, with some basic nightdresses that she felt comfortable enough wearing around the gentlemen in the bunker if there was a sudden emergency in the night.

Most of her unpacking consisted of her leisure items that she’d brought, though she doubted she’d have much time to enjoy them. She had brought roughly five books with her, including the copy of Gatsby that Steve had gifted her, and a few sketchpads she’d stolen from Steve’s stash back home. Ever since he and Barnes had started taking their art class together, Ginny had grown jealous of their artistic talents and was slowly but surely trying to teach herself to draw.

It wasn’t going all that well, but that was beside the point.

Ten minutes later, she was reporting back to the Colonel as he had requested. Ginny couldn’t recall a time when she had been this adept at following the man’s orders. When she approached the Colonel, he saw that he was conversing with a gentleman in a uniform with the Red Cross band on his arm. Ginny’s eyes flicked to his rank insignia: Sergeant First Class.

“All right, Colonel, what have we got going on here?” Ginny asked, sidling up to the two gentlemen as they were mid-conversation.

“Oh, good. Sergeant First Class William Abney, allow me to introduce—”

“Lieutenant Rogers! Oh my goodness, it is such a pleasure to meet you. I’ve been reading about your recent work on Project Rebirth and with Doctor Erskine and it’s just so fascinating, not to mention your history at Bellevue!” The Sergeant entirely forewent a salute and moved immediately to shaking Ginny’s hand with vigor as he rambled on at a million miles an hour. Ginny felt her cheeks flushing at the man’s knowledge of her recent endeavors, and then realized…

“I’m sorry, did you say Bellevue? How did you know…”

“Oh, it’s all in your file. When we heard that you lot were heading over here, I started reading up as much as I could. That arterial graft you performed on that gentleman back in November was just absolutely splendid work! I would never have thought of doing something like that. I was really intrigued by—” the young man spoke violently with his hands, and Colonel Phillips caught one of them as it sliced through the air, accentuating one of Abney’s words.

“All right, Abney, I didn’t bring you here to fawn. Lieutenant Rogers here is going to need your reports on the hardest hit areas of the European front. From there you are free to decide where you go, Lieutenant. Give any orders for procedure while you’re away to Abney here and he’ll oversee operations while you’re out fixin’ up our boys,” The Colonel said. “Sound good?”

“Wait a minute. You want me out there?” Ginny asked, pointing in the vague direction of the rest of Europe.

“Well, yeah. Why would I put my best anywhere else but where she’s most needed?” Phillips asked, like there was any other place he could have ever thought of putting her.

“Right. Well, then. Show me the numbers, Abney,” Ginny said. The young man happily began leading her through the bunker and towards the infirmary, all the while chattering on about old procedures she’d done at Bellevue. It wasn’t hard to miss that most of the ones he mentioned from her “file” were specifically procedures that hadn’t been put into hospital reports, and Ginny found herself wondering how the SSR had gotten the information for her file in the first place. But that was a question for another time, because before she knew it there were mountains of field reports being shoved into her face.

One by one, her and Sergeant First Class Abney rifled through them, trying to organize them by location, then number of casualties. At first, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their search, but eventually Ginny began to find a pattern. Her focus drifted to previous battles all making up one larger operation, and she grabbed that stack and began rifling through it.

“Operation Cartwheel, tell me about it,” she said as she skimmed through the important bits.

“Oh, yeah. Nasty business, all that. It’s actually being fought over in the Pacific Theatre; we shouldn’t even be looking at that.” Abney reached for the files in her hand.

“Why the hell not? We’ve got men in those battalions, right?” Ginny asked, backing away from Abney and holding the files close to her chest.

“Well, yes, but Colonel Phillips—”

“One thing you’re gonna need to learn real quick, Abney, is that you go where you’re needed. Not where Colonel Phillips tells you to. Matter of fact, I hardly ever listen to what Colonel Phillips thinks is best. You know why?” Abney shook his head. “Because I trust my gut before anything else. And right now, my gut is telling me to go to the Pacific.”

“The Pacific is brutal, Lieutenant. I don’t think—”

“We’re at war, Abney. There’s not going to be a single place I go that’s not going to have some degree of brutality. I’ve come to accept that, and you should, too. We had fourteen thousand eight-hundred and eighty-nine casualties at Guadalcanal and that was a battle we won. I’d hate to imagine what a losing fight looks like, don’t you?” Ginny asked, shoving the file back into Abney’s chest. He looked at her with wide eyes. It was becoming more and more clear that he had yet to set foot on a battlefield, and Ginny tried to forget that she had yet to do so as well. But I’ve seen loss. Plenty of it, and that doesn’t change no matter where you see it.

Abney flipped through the pages Ginny had given him as she looked over the paltry information they had regarding the next move for Operation Cartwheel. “Lieutenant?” Abney asked hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“How many casualties did you say we had at Guadalcanal?”

“Fourteen thousand eight-hundred and eighty-nine that we know of, why?”

Abney nodded his head, flipped the page. “And how many did the Japanese forces suffer?”

“Nineteen thousand and two hundred; I know it’s a favorable ratio on our part but—”

“Oh, no, I’m not worried about that. I’m just fascinated that you could recall those numbers with only but a second’s glance at them,” Abney said, shutting the file with a snap.

“I have a partially photographic memory. Mostly for statistics and things like that; it’s part of how I was able to remember so many strange and…unorthodox techniques at Bellevue,” Ginny explained, directing her attention back to the file in front of her to hide the flush of embarrassment that spilled onto her face. Abney was looking at her in awe.

“That’s incredible. Simply incredible. Does…your brother have that same feat? Considering you’re twins and all, I wonder if that’s something that passes genetically,” the young man asked. Ginny suddenly felt like a lab rat being poked and prodded from behind a cage.

“I think? Honestly, never really thought to ask. Though, I will say, he never forgets a face. He can look at a person for just a minute or two and then draw them in near-perfect detail weeks later. And now, with the serum and all…”

“It’s likely that if he does have a photographic memory, it’s only been enhanced. Am I correct in that theory?” Abney finished her hypothesis for her.

“Why, yes you are, Abney. Very astute,” Ginny said, knocking her shoulder playfully into his. A rosy tint washed over his otherwise pale features, and he went back to reading the file in his hand.

“I’d very much like to meet your brother, someday. He seems to be quite the man,” Abney said quietly. “We were all abuzz when we heard that you and Doctor Erskine had succeeded. And I was so sorry to hear about the doctor’s passing.”

“You and me both, Abney,” Ginny said, her focus drawn from the files at the mention of Steve and Abe. She found herself lost in melancholy for a moment, thinking about her last glimpse of Steve before she’d left for London, and the image of Erskine bleeding out onto the facility floor, his chest a home for a bullet with her name on it. “Right!” Ginny said, snapping herself out of her own thoughts. “I guess I’m headed to…Rendova Island?”

“You’re actually going to the Pacific Theatre?”

“I go where the blood falls, Abney. I don’t care if it’s on the moon, I’ll be there.”

Chapter Text

June 30, 1943
The USS Talbot; Rendova Island, New Georgia, The Solomon Islands

It had taken a bit of convincing on Ginny’s part for Colonel Phillips to give her permission to pursue her call to the Pacific, but he eventually folded. Had it been a different place and different time, she would have simply asked Howard to fly her out to one of the naval carriers and drop her off. But she felt the rather annoying urge to set a good example for the clearly green Sergeant First Class Abney, so she used the proper avenues for once. Colonel Phillips sent the message to Admiral Turner and General Hester, notifying them of her imminent arrival, shortly after Ginny had won the argument of her deployment location. They had received no communication back, but the deed had already been done, so Ginny got on the plane anyhow.

When she landed on the deck of the USS Talbot the night before the incursion was supposed to begin, she was met with mostly confusion and a good amount of hostility from most of the troops. She was certain that if she hadn’t been wearing her uniform, she would’ve been shot on sight, or worse. It took her practically screaming down to the command deck for the Admiral for her to be able to actually get into the ship, and when she met the Admiral and General in the bridge, they laughed.

“We thought Phillips was joking when he sent that!” General Hester said while Ginny stood still at attention. She was fighting every nerve in her body that was telling her to punch Hester in his snaggletooth.

“In all the time I’ve known the Colonel, I have yet to know him as a comic, sir,” Ginny said, doing her best to keep her tone even.

“Well, welcome aboard, I suppose, Miss…”

“Lieutenant Rogers, sir. With the Strategic Scientific Reserve.”

“Right, right. That whole division is something I still can’t quite wrap my brain around, but I suppose we’ll take all the help we can get. Though, I don’t know what much you could do, Lieutenant. There’s absolutely no way in God’s good name that I’m sending a young woman out onto a Japanese island in the middle of an incursion,” Admiral Turner said. Ginny fought the urge to roll her eyes.

“So, here’s what we’re gonna have you do. You stay on the ship and treat the wounded as they come back. We’ll send a few of our medics on the transports to perform any battlefield treatments that are needed, and you can finish up whatever they can’t.”

“All due respect, Admiral, but I was sent because of my ability to think on my feet and in the midst of stress. Field surgery is one of my strongest areas,” Ginny replied.

“Well, according to the Colonel, you have yet to enter the field, so how can that be your strongest area?” the General asked, having suddenly procured a piece of paper from a file. Even from her position, Ginny could spot the SSR letterhead. What the hell, Phillips?

“That is true, General, I have yet to triage on an actual battlefield, but if you’ll look at my—”

“That’s all I needed to hear, Lieutenant. I agree with you, Admiral. Send some of our medics on the transport and let Lieutenant Rogers here play hospital to the ones that make it back,” the General said, mostly to Admiral Turner. “You’re dismissed, Rogers. Corporal Andrega will show you to the infirmary,” he added after seeing that Ginny was still standing there. She didn’t move. “I said, dismissed!”

“General Hester, may I ask you a question?” The General crossed his arms and regarded Ginny with contempt, but gestured for her to proceed, nonetheless. “How am I supposed to get past the fact that I have no true field surgery experience if no one will actually let me in the field?”

The General leaned forward so that he was at eye level with Ginny. “It’s a simple answer, Lieutenant. You don’t.”

That was the general tone of everyone Ginny interacted with on the ship. The medics that saw her enter the infirmary either laughed or glared at her, like her presence was insulting to the rest of them. There were, of course, the few that raked their eyes up and down her body like she was a piece of meat, but she could deal with that. Being dismissed so flippantly was an entirely different ball game.

During the landings at Rendova, Ginny treated three patients that had sustained more urgent injuries than were treatable by a field medic. It was as if there were a mutual agreement between the medics and everyone aboard that if any injuries could be dealt with before meeting Ginny’s eyes, they would be.

She remembered something her Ma had said to her before she died. There were some boys in the tenement that had been roughing up Steve to no end, and Ginny had been scared that she couldn’t help him. She was scared that she wouldn’t be able to patch him up if he came home beaten too badly. Her mother had taken her hand in a death grip, which was a feat for her with how weak she had been in the past months, and looked Ginny directly in the eye.

“What will you do about it, Virginia?” she’d asked. “When the world and its people fight against you with tooth and nail, what will you do? Will you let them tear you apart, or will you stand against them like you always have?”

What will you do about it, Virginia?

July 4, 1943
The USS Talbot

For the first time in all of their lives, Ginny and Steve found themselves separated for their birthdays. Every single year, without fail, they had been together first for Steve’s birthday, and then Ginny’s the following day. They always got a kick out of explaining to people that yes, they were twins, and yes, they both had their own birthday; Steve always made a joke that Ginny was trying to make sure she was the prettier one, so she took much longer to come out.

They were turning twenty-five this year. Ginny remembered a time when they didn’t think Steve would make it to twenty. How times change, indeed.

She had sent a post-card from London almost the moment she had arrived, but she knew it likely wouldn’t make it back to Steve until much later than his birthday; she didn’t even know where he was. Apparently Brandt had plans to drag Steve’s star-spangled ass all around God’s green earth making him dance like some circus monkey.

Well, it’s not like you’re doing much better, Ginny thought, realizing her situation was certainly less than favorable. She’d thought that performing well with the Rendova Island landings would allow her some grace from the men she’d joined, but it only seemed to spur them on even more with their doubts and jabs and leering. They were scheduled to leave for the Port of Bairoko in the early morning hours of the fifth, and weren’t expected to make landfall until the twentieth. Ginny didn’t know if she could take fifteen days at sea with these men; she felt like prey.

“Rogers!” It was General Hester, standing at the door to the ship’s infirmary. Ginny startled out of her thoughts.

“Yes, sir?”

“You got a go-bag ready?” He asked, leaning with one arm against the metal frame of the hatch door.

“Always, sir,” Ginny replied, reaching over to her locker and snatching it out.

“Good. Stop by the armory on your way out; you’re headed to Bairoko on foot with the 148th. Leaving at 0100,” The General ordered, turning on his heel and leaving without another word. Ginny couldn’t articulate the difference between giddy excitement and absolute terror that was swimming throughout her chest, so she simply shouldered her bag and headed towards the armory a few doors down.

The main armorer was a stout fellow with a cigar hanging limp from his mouth, who startled awake as he heard Ginny entering the room. “Can I help you, miss?” His voice was like gravel, with a long Southern drawl.

“General Hester sent me to collect some weapons. What’s standard for you all out here?” Ginny asked. The armorer, whose name tag read Sanders, shrugged.

“Whatever you want, sweetheart. We got it all.”

“In that case, I think a Colt M1911 and an M1917 Enfield will do me just fine, please. With plenty of rounds, of course,” Ginny asked, feeling only slightly silly; it was like she was ordering at the automat. Sanders procured the two guns rather quickly, all the while giving Ginny a sideways glance, but she ignored it and made sure that the weapons were in proper working order, and thanked Sanders as she left.

Most of the troops were already above deck, preparing to load into the transports, and more than a few heads turned Ginny’s way when they saw her advancing towards them in her utility uniform with her Enfield strapped to her back.

“Oh, what in good Hell?!” one of the men exclaimed. Ginny ignored it and continued onto the deck with her head held high.

“Hey, toots, much as we appreciate it, we don’t need weapons delivered,” another said.

“Who said we had to babysit Tinker Bell over here?” a man called out. Then, to his left, Ginny saw an elbow jam itself into the man’s ribs, and he doubled over in pain.

“Watch it, pal. She’s a medic, she’s here to help us.” The voice attached to the rogue elbow was quieter than the others, with a bit of a rasp and an unmistakable Jersey accent. Normally, Ginny would have walked the other direction, but he was seemingly the only man on the deck that was going to tolerate her presence, so instead Ginny advanced towards him. As she got closer, she could see that his name tag read Bennett; under the thick helmet Ginny could spot ruddy curls already sticking to his forehead with sweat from the humidity.

Ginny fell in next to him, avoiding eye contact, and muttered, “Thanks.”

Bennett said nothing in return, just gave a minute nod of his head.

As more and more troops began to filter onto the deck, Ginny felt more eyes land on her. Eventually, a young man with vague brown hair and an even vaguer look on his face approached her. His rank insignia showed he was a Corporal.

“What happened to Sergeant Lemansky?” he asked by way of greeting.

“Got himself a case of trench foot last I heard. I’m filling in for him,” Ginny explained, though she couldn’t help but think that if this were an SSR operation, there wouldn’t be a need to explain her presence at all.

The Corporal pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and put a hand on his hip, like he was having to scold a petulant child for stepping out of their room without permission. He sighed, raked his gaze over Ginny for a moment, then asked, “And General Hester allowed this?”

“General Hester requested it, actually. If you have concerns, you’re more than welcome to bring it up with him, but I don’t see any particular benefit to that considering you’d be leaving your boys without any medical personnel for the better part of two weeks,” Ginny retorted, mirroring the Corporal’s stance and placing her hands on her hips.

“We can get to Bairoko just fine without you, Rogers. I’ve fixed plenty of boo-boos during my time in the Army,” the Corporal said, waving a dismissive hand at her. Ginny bristled, but held her tongue.

"Corporal, can you tell me what you would do if you were to be shot here?" Ginny asked, taking his arm and prodding the area of his inner bicep.

"I'd bandage it, see if I need stitches when I get back to the ship."

"Wrong. Now you're dead." The Corporal gave her a puzzled look. "Can you tell me why you're dead?"

He stopped for a second to look around at the group that was now forming around them. When no one offered an answer, he replied, "Infection?"

"Wrong again. Under your skin along this area lies your brachial artery. If it's punctured and left untreated, you'd bleed out in thirty seconds. Now, I've practiced my reaction times and I can get a tourniquet out of my bag and around your arm in about seven seconds, and depending on the size of the wound have it stitched in less than five minutes. My reaction time is largely dependent on my mood, though, being the emotional dame I am, so I'd be careful about pissing me off."

"Well, now you've told us what we have to do if we get shot there. So, do we really need your help anymore?"

"Can anyone tell me how many arteries there are in the human body?" There was silence from the troops. "How about their precise locations?" Only the crashing of waves answered her. "That's what I thought. This is not a topic that is up for debate, gentlemen. I'm your field medic, whether you like it or not." Ginny surprised herself with how easily she slipped into an authoritative tone and demeanor; most of the men were significantly taller than her, but when she straightened her spine and held her shoulders back, they didn't seem so towering. Her words seemed to finally hit home with the troops, because no other arguments came.

As they began to load into the transports, Bennett kept close to Ginny, leaned down, and asked her quietly, "How many?"

"What?"

"How many arteries are in the human body? You never said."

Ginny smiled to herself. "Hundred and sixty."

Bennett's eyes widened slightly, and he nodded in understanding. "You learn somethin' new every day."

"That you do, Bennett."

July 5, 1943
Somewhere in the jungles of New Georgia

Trudging through swamp and jungle in the middle of the Pacific Theatre allows for individuals to become fast friends, and that's precisely what happened between Ginny and Bennett. They fell in line beside each other rather often and would pass the time by talking to each other about anything and everything they could think of.

Ginny learned that Bennett was the eldest of six, that he was from Rockaway, New Jersey (she had done a small celebration at the confirmation of her hunch), and that his favorite meal was his Ma's shepherd's pie that she made at Easter and Christmas. He also told her about how he had to move to Ohio with his family during the Depression; that was how he’d ended up with the 148th rather than a Jersey battalion. “I miss the east,” he’d said fondly.

In turn, Ginny told Bennett about how she was a twin with her own birthday (he found that quite amusing), about Steve and how for the longest time he'd had a bark that was bigger than his bite, and the story of how she had ended up with the SSR. Bennett seemed enthralled by every anecdote Ginny had to tell.

Every now and again she would have to fall out from Bennett to check on one of the other soldiers that had twisted an ankle or thought they got bit by a deadly viper (it had been a rat snake), but she never complained. She'd take needy soldiers over ones that denied her help at every turn. There were times that a soldier called her over and there was nothing that was wrong; she'd give them a once over for good measure, but always caught their eyes ogling her in her combat uniform.

After one of those occurrences, Ginny had made her way back to where she and Bennett had set up their gear for the night and heaved a heavy sigh as she sat down.

"Why do you let them get away with that?" Bennett had asked.

"It's easier than the alternative. Plus, I think if I handled it the way I have before, I'd get sent back to London in a body bag," Ginny remarked, remembering her altercation with Private Hodge back at Camp Lehigh. She was certain that the only reason she hadn't been dismissed then and there was because of Abe.

"How did you handle it before?"

"Punched a guy's broken nose back into place after he got handsy."

Bennett squawked in surprise, but nodded his head in respect all the same. "I wouldn't mind seeing that with some of these assholes."

"You and me both."

"How does your fella back home feel about a beautiful dame like you being out here in the muck with a gaggle of dimwits like us?" Bennett had asked after a few quiet moments.

"Hard to have an opinion when you don't exist," Ginny replied.

"No way. Not a single guy in New York has locked you down yet?" Bennett asked, appalled. Ginny shook her head, and Bennett let out a low whistle.

"What can I say? I'm married to my work, and I'm not exactly known for being a demure woman. Got into too many back-alley fights for any guy to wanna take a chance on me, I guess."

"They don't know what they're missing, then. I think you're a catch," Bennett said, shoving her shoulder lightly.

"Now, how would your girl back home feel if she heard you talking to me like that?"

"I don't think he'd mind," Bennett replied with a sly smirk. It took her a moment, but Ginny realized what he meant, and she nodded.

"What's his name?"

Bennett's eyes went soft, and the corner of his mouth quirked up into a smile. "Andrew," he said quietly. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a faded photograph of a young man, probably in his twenties, with dark hair and a toothy grin.

The edges of the picture were worn, and Ginny could see the pattern of how Bennett held the photo so often. "He wanted to enlist, but they denied him because of his medical history. He got the fever when he was a kid, and ever since then he's had trouble with his lungs."

"My brother dealt with that, too. He tried to enlist five different times."

"Well, shit. Andrew only tried four. I'll have to tell him that he got one-upped by a Brooklynite; he'll flip his wig." Ginny laughed as she returned the picture to Bennett. He ran a finger over it for another moment or so before returning it to his pocket with a somber look.

"Come on now, Bennett. Looking at him is supposed to make you all warm and fuzzy; what's the matter?" Ginny asked, nudging his arm in an attempt to get him out of his head.

"Can you promise me somethin', Rogers?" He had asked, his voice low. Ginny nodded somberly. "If I go down out here, take the picture off my body. Don't let my parents see it." He'd looked at her then, with tears in his eyes, and Ginny remembered that he'd told her he'd only just turned nineteen a few weeks prior.

He's just a kid, Ginny thought. He's too young to be worrying about any of this.

"Okay," Ginny had said, laying a hand over Bennett's. He was shaking. So help me, God. I won't let anything happen to this kid.

July 10, 1943

About halfway through their trek to Bairoko, the 148th was ambushed by a small Japanese battalion. There were about fifteen of them compared to the hundred or so members of the 148th that had been chosen for the journey, so the fight was over with quickly.

That being said, it was bloodier than anyone was anticipating. The small group of Japs got the drop on them in the middle of the day. They had been camping out in the underbrush just waiting for someone to get tangled up with them. It was clear that they were desperate and out of ammunition; rather than using their firearms, they attacked with shin-gunts and hunting knives.

Ginny and Bennett had been trudging along together when a Japanese soldier struck out from the brush and tackled Ginny into the mud. He’d landed a solid punch to her temple with enough force to make her see stars, then had advanced towards Bennett with a hunting knife brandished. Bennett had froze like a deer in headlights while chaos rained around them, and only fell into action after being slashed on the forearm by the Jap. After that, he’d taken out his sidearm and fired a single bullet into the soldier’s head, and the man’s body had dropped alongside where Ginny had collapsed, covering her in a splash of mud and blood.

The other fourteen soldiers fell dead around them within a minute of their attack, and the only injuries sustained were punches. Everyone else had been able to dodge the Japanese blades—everyone except for Bennett. He’d gotten a deep laceration on his arm that was already caked around with dirt and sweat.

Captain Watts—the captain leading their group—had gone around after that, checking for any injured, and when he saw Ginny lying in the mud, he’d sighed in exasperation. “You gonna take a nap in the mud there, Rogers, or are you gonna get up and tend to these men?” he’d asked.

His voice had been distant in Ginny’s ears and the ground was still spinning beneath her, but she’d risen shakily to her feet anyways and checked Bennett’s wound. It was about six inches long and almost an inch deep; she could see a flash of his white bone through the mangled mess of blood, tissue, and muscle that had been rent apart. When Bennett looked down at the cut, Ginny saw his eyes begin to roll back in his head, and she reached out to catch him before he hit the ground.

“Sorry, Rogers. Forgot to tell you I’m bad around blood,” he’d muttered, his voice groggy.

“Think you might be in the wrong business then, Bennett,” Ginny had responded as she dressed and cleaned the wound. “I’ll likely have to pack it when we stop for the night, okay?” Bennett had simply nodded, and stood up after a few moments of recovery. Ginny was almost certain that she’d sustained a concussion, but signaled to Captain Watts that they were okay to continue all the same.

They’d marched for a few more hours after the ambush before Watts allowed them respite, and almost the entire unit settled down in their tracks, clearly exhausted. Bennett had collapsed where he stood, not even bothering to remove any of his gear, and fell into a fitful sleep clutching his arm. Ginny had no intention of sleeping, at least not until her dizziness subsided, so she made her rounds again throughout the unit.

For the first time since her arrival, the soldiers actually seemed grateful to her. Rather than being ignored or snapped at, she got “Thank you’s”, and even a few soldiers asked how she was feeling. She’d been so pre-occupied with Bennett’s wound and the pounding in her head that she’d forgotten to clean her own blood up. She’d settled in beside Bennett as they’d done the previous nights and dampened a rag with a bit of water, then set to cleaning herself up as much as she could.

When Bennett would stir awake, she’d check his dressings and clean the wound, reassure him that everything was looking fine, then let him fall back asleep once more.

She didn’t feel safe falling asleep for two days after that.

July 11, 1943

Bennett’s fever started a day after the ambush.

At first, Ginny thought his excessive sweating was a typical response to the humidity, but then he started to shiver in the middle of the day under the sweltering sun, and Ginny quickly realized that something was wrong. When she checked his wound, it was oozing a sickly-green liquid that she soon realized was a layer of pus, and the few parts of the wound edges that had begun to scab were red and inflamed.

“How’s it lookin’, Doc?” Bennett had asked after a chill had run through him. Ginny couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“It’s gonna be a long healing process, but you’ll get there. I’m gonna give you something for the fever, though,” she’d replied, reaching into the med bag on her back. When she reached into the pocket where her vials of penicillin were kept, her fingers were met with shards of sharp glass, and she retracted her hand with a hiss.

Oh, God.

She’d packed ten vials of penicillin; all of them had shattered, likely from when the Jap had tackled her onto her back the day prior. When Bennett noticed her panicked search in her bag, he’d started to sit up from his position, asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Just thought I’d forgotten a syringe,” Ginny replied, trying to keep her voice calm in spite of the hammering in her chest. Unless he could fight the infection naturally, which was about a twenty-five percent chance, Bennett would die before they’d even get back to the Talbot.

Rather than stomach the look on Bennett’s face that would accompany that news, Ginny instructed him to look away as she inserted the needle into his skin, holding it there for a moment before withdrawing it. Perhaps the placebo effect would take over and help his immune system fight off the infection. Perhaps the gesture was just for Ginny’s comfort that she did something. Either way, a pit of dread began knotting itself together in the depths of her stomach.

When Bennett gave her a tired smile after she capped the needle, the knot grew tighter.

July 16, 1943

Bennett died five days later.

As far as infections were considered, he hung on for much longer than Ginny expected. She’d seen people admitted to the emergency room at Bellevue die within twenty-four hours due to sepsis; Bennett’s lifespan after her diagnosis was a record for her. The thoughts running through her mind felt wrong, like she was only viewing Bennett as another notch in the belt of casualties she’d racked up since beginning her time as a nurse.

If she didn’t picture his death as a statistic, she would have still been sitting next to his body where they’d left it.

He’d died in his sleep, and Ginny had woken up next to a lukewarm corpse. He had been clutching Andrew’s photograph—he had fallen asleep holding it every night since the ambush. She’d taken it from his rigid grip and stowed it away in her own pocket as she had promised, and Captain Watts had come to take Bennett’s tags off of his body.

“We can’t bring him with us. Too dangerous,” the captain had said somberly. Ginny was somewhat surprised at the remorse in the man’s tone; once Bennett had defended her before they set out into the jungle, he’d made himself a bit of a scapegoat for Ginny’s sake. Perhaps he had always been the odd man out in the 148th, but Ginny had a feeling that the ostracization stemmed from his fast friendship with her.

She watched Bennett’s lifeless body fade away as the unit continued marching towards Bairoko, and the knot tightened even further. What will you do about it?

July 20, 1943
Bairoko Harbor, New Georgia, The Solomon Islands

By the end of the Battle of Bairoko, Ginny had lost fifty men, and it became abundantly clear to her why her presence was fought with such tenacity.

They didn’t need her. There was nothing to treat.

Anyone who suffered injuries were dead before they hit the ground.

Ginny felt like she was chasing dead bodies during the entirety of the battle; she would hear a cry of anguish or see someone go down, and by the time she was able to reach them, they were already gone. She was collecting a rapidly growing pile of dog tags. The Japanese fired on their troops with deadly precision, dropping boys left and right like flies, and all Ginny found herself doing was praying.

She’d never appreciated being dragged to church as a child, but what kid would have? Her, Steve, and Barnes had always been those rowdy kids in the back pew giggling during the sermon and making fun of the choir singers during the hymns, never once thinking that they might need to know those prayers someday.

She struggled her way through the first few sentences of the Lord’s Prayer as a mortar shell detonated ten feet from where she stood, and as she scrambled for cover she finally remembered the rest of the words.

“Thy will be done—” A grenade launched through the air and detonated ten yards away.

“On earth as it is in Heaven.” One of her boys to her left wailed and fell to his knees before another bullet silenced him completely.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses—” From above the felled tree she’d hidden behind, a short Japanese soldier landed not three feet from her and turned to her with a wild look in his eye. Ginny pulled the trigger on her Colt before she could even think about it, and the man’s blood splattered onto her face as the left side of his head was blown away.

“As we forgive those who trespass against us.” Her voice was shaking as much as her hands were, and she curled herself into a ball under the tree trunk and let her tears fall freely. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. She knew those were the next words, but as she stared at the man she’d just killed lying in front of her with half of his brain seeping into the dirt and grass, she couldn’t bring herself to say the rest of the prayer.

Deliver us from evil. An explosion rang out somewhere within the forest, and Ginny felt it rattle her bones.

Deliver us from evil. Flames licked up a palm tree nearby, and a collapsing Jap fell into them. His screams echoed through the forest, but were quickly swallowed by the clatter of machine gun fire.

Deliver us from evil. Ginny thought about Steve, somewhere back home, and how this was what he wanted for himself—how could he want this?

She thought about how if she died there, she hoped that there was at least a body for Steve to bury alongside Ma.

She thought about Peggy and Howard and what they’d think if they saw her cowering like a lost child.

Hell, she thought about Barnes and wondered if his end of the war was going any better, or if she’d see him on the other side and get a lecture about leaving Steve behind on his own. What will you do, Virginia?

“Rogers!” It was Captain Watts calling her name; Ginny hadn’t even realized he’d approached her. He was crouched in front of her, frantically looking over his shoulder but extending a hand towards her all the same. “We’re retreating! Come on!”

She let him drag her through the brush and amidst the rain of bullets to where a small group of the 148th had started to defend an area of cover. Watts pointed in the vague direction of the harbor, and Ginny caught sight of transports on the shore, with the Talbot a couple hundred yards out. The ringing and static in her ears died down long enough to hear him say, “…run like hell!” She nodded along with the rest of the soldiers, and a few moments later Watts cried out, and they were off through the forest like bats out of a cave.

As she ran, Ginny saw soldier after soldier dead on the ground. Most of them were Americans. None of them could have been saved. Thy will be done, she thought, before her foot caught on a tree root and she collapsed onto her stomach, bringing her body down beside the Corporal that had argued with her before they set out a week or so prior. He was missing a hand, and his hair and scalp had been singed away to reveal the soft, spongy material of his brain.

Ginny snatched the tags from around his neck and stumbled to her feet. She didn’t allow herself a moment to be sick, just kept running and praying and pleading to God until her feet hit the metal slope of the transport. Finally, she let herself collapse and upset the contents of her stomach as more footsteps sounded on the floor. A few minutes passed, and then Captain Watts was hollering for the ramp to lift up, and then Ginny felt it lurch against the shoreline and waves as it carried their meager group back to the Talbot.

There were eight men remaining of the 148th on the transport. The rest, whether they were dead or alive, had been left at Bairoko.

Ginny didn’t have it in her to complete any of her prayers with an Amen.

July 22nd, 1943

Howard arrived in one of his private planes at the behest of Colonel Phillips two days after the Battle of Bairoko.

Upon their retreat, General Hester and Admiral Turner had tore into Ginny for her conduct in the field and sent correspondence to the Colonel demanding her immediate pickup. Throughout their entire tirade, Ginny stood at attention completely stone-faced; she’d hardly said a word since arriving back on the ship.

Every single thing the men were saying was true, and she was not going to do anything to deny it. She had been arrogant, careless, and had let her base instincts get the best of her when she should have been able to fight past them.

She had failed.

Most of the following day was spent patching up the surviving soldiers aboard the Talbot, and the rest consisted of packing her bags. When Ginny heard the unmistakable sound of the plane engine above deck, she’d practically sprinted into the open door as Howard was climbing out to greet her.

His open arms fell to his sides as he watched her clamber into the belly of the plane. “What? You seasick or somethin’?”

“I wanna go home, Howard,” Ginny said, avoiding his eyes. “Please.”

She caught him eyeing her from her peripherals, but he said nothing except, “All right. We’ll take off as soon as they’re done fueling,” and climbed into the plane behind her. They sat there in silence for a few minutes—Ginny staring into the distance so intently that she was surprised she hadn’t bored a hole through the metal of the plane, and Howard watching her with growing concern.

A knocking on the hull of the plane startled Ginny from her stupor and she willed the tremors in her hands to ease while Howard finally peeled his gaze from her and settled himself into the cockpit of the plane. He pressed a few buttons and pulled a few levers and the vehicle thrummed to life from underneath them, and before she knew it they were in the air departing from the Solomon Islands.

She’d never been more grateful to say goodbye to a place before.

Her and Howard spent a generous portion of the trip in silence, though Howard’s periodic glances back towards Ginny didn’t go unnoticed. For the most part, she spent her time staring at the vast expanse of ocean through one of the small windows, trying to count the whitecaps in her field of vision. She started getting dizzy when she hit around the three-hundred mark, and turned her attention back to the interior of the plane. It was sparsely furnished and rather drab, at least for Howard’s taste, but it’s not like she was complaining; she’d never even seen a plane in person before she met Howard.

Ginny recalled the flight to Rendova being particularly long, so eventually she let herself close her eyes and drift off into a fitful sleep. She’d always been a light sleeper, and trying to get any decent rest in a shuddering and clanking tin can in the sky certainly didn’t help her in any way. Nevertheless, sleep eventually fell upon her.

When she closed her eyes, she saw Bennett’s corpse staring back at her. She blinked, and then his body had been laid atop a pile of other dead soldiers, American and Japanese alike, and every single one of them had their dead gaze fixated on her. She tried to move, tried to scream, to do anything to get away from them, to get them out of her head, but she was frozen in place. Her breath caught in her lungs and her heart pounded from inside her chest, and God help her she felt like she was dying. Like she would soon join the growing pile of bodies laid out before her.

She blinked again, trying to rid the bodies from her vision, but when she opened her eyes they were still there; they started to crawl towards her, dirt caked under their fingernails and their pale, clammy skin stained with blood. Ginny tried to scream, but a hand slapped itself over her mouth from behind her. When she turned to see her attacker, she was met with Bennett’s cold stare once more. His mouth was open at an odd angle, like he was trying to take in a breath that wouldn’t come, and she could hear his chest rattling. He smelled of rotting flesh, jungle rain, and the iron tang of blood.

“What will you do, Rogers?” He rasped, though his lips didn’t move as he spoke. It was like the words were coming from him, but also from the surrounding corpses near them. “We are all gone, all abandoned. What will you do?!” He was practically screaming at her now, and Ginny fought against his grip with all her strength. Somehow, she was able to wrench herself free, the motion causing her to collapse into the muddy ground. She turned to see Bennett and the other corpses crawling towards her, grabbing her ankles and beginning to climb on top of her, all the while screaming and bleeding and decaying all around her.

She blinked her eyes once more, and she was back in the belly of Howard’s plane.

Howard himself was kneeling in front of her where she had fallen asleep, one hand on her shoulder shaking her awake. His brows were furrowed and his face was laced with concern. Ginny could feel a bead of sweat dripping from her forehead. She was panting, like she’d been hyperventilating, and her pulse was rapid along her throat.

“What—” she paused to clear her throat. “What happened?” She asked, sitting up from her prone position along the bench seat.

“You fell asleep, and then just started screaming. Scared the hell out of me,” Howard said, not taking his arm off her shoulder even as she sat up. “You wanna talk about it?”

Ginny was still half in her head—her brain felt foggy, like she’d gotten her bell rung, though that could’ve been remnants from her concussion. She glanced around the plane, then registered that they were still in the air. And Howard was sitting with her, rather than in the cockpit.

“Uh…Howard? Shouldn’t you be, oh I don’t know, flying the damn plane?!” Ginny exclaimed, gesturing to the empty pilot’s seat.

Howard waved a nonchalant hand. “Relax, sweets. I’ve got it on autopilot.”

“On what now?”

“Long story. And don’t think I didn’t notice you trying to change the subject. Tell me what you dreamt. It obviously wasn’t rainbows and butterflies,” Howard said, pointing an accusatory finger at Ginny. She felt herself shrinking away from Howard at the idea of explaining what she had just seen in her mind’s eye. How could she explain that her first real mission as a combat medic resulted only in casualties? What would he think? She wasn’t used to racking up failures like they were going out of style; let alone admitting to even having them.

“I…uh. I don’t—I’m not sure…” Ginny trailed off, her focus drifting away from Howard and over his shoulder. She swore that even over the din of the plane’s engine she could hear Bennett screaming in the back of her mind.

“Ginny. Hey—look at me,” Howard said, taking Ginny’s face in his hand and guiding her focus back to him. This was the most sincere Ginny had seen him look in a long time—perhaps ever. “You can talk to me.”

She opened her mouth to try to say something, anything, but all that came out was a choked sob. There were no tears in her eyes, but her breath was coming in short bursts as Howard immediately wrapped his arms around her. He ran a soft hand along the back of her head, shushing her quietly, and held her until her breathing returned to normal. Still holding her, he started talking.

“I told you about my old man, yeah?”

“He had a fruit stand.” Ginny’s voice was muffled from where she still had her head buried in Howard’s shoulder.

“Yeah. Everyone always thought he was the nicest guy, because he was when he was selling his fruit. He’d come home happy as a clam so long as he made enough cash that day. But if he didn’t…well he’d come home not so happy. Half the time he’d be drunk, and he’d take it out on my mother most often. Sometimes on me, but more often than not he’d make me watch. He’d tell me, ‘I want you to grow up to be just like your pops, Howie.’ Then he’d hit my mom again, for good measure. My father had the kind of anger all fathers do. Loud and terrible. It lingers for your whole life, Ginny.”

Howard ran a hand up and down Ginny’s back, his fingers soft and soothing over her coat. The motion reminded her of when her mother would trace patterns on her hand before she fell asleep. She’d try and guess what word her mom was spelling, or what shape she was drawing. It never failed to bring Ginny’s eyes to a close. She felt sleep lingering on the edges of her vision even now.

“Why’re you telling me this, Howard?” She asked quietly. Howard finally released the embrace and looked her in the eye.

“I’ve never told anyone that before. I told you because I want you to know that you can trust me. That nothing you say could shake me. Could make me care about you any less. You got that?” Howard asked, maintaining strict eye contact with her. Ginny nodded her head. “I wanna hear you say it, Ginny.”

“I got it,” she replied, stifling a yawn. Howard seemed to catch on that sleep was going to overtake her any second, and gave her a pat on her arm.

“Get some more shut-eye, you look like shit run over,” He quipped, removing his light linen jacket and balling it up. He placed it under Ginny’s head as she laid down and gave her a soft smile before returning to the pilot’s seat.

“Thank you, Howard,” Ginny murmured as she closed her eyes.

She just barely heard Howard’s laugh before he replied, “Anytime, hon.”

This time around, the only sound Ginny heard in her dreams was the sound of the plane engine rumbling.

Chapter Text

July 24th, 1943
SSR Headquarters; London, Great Britain

The first thing Ginny did when her and Howard made it back to the SSR Headquarters was take a much needed bath. After that, she slept for almost twenty-four hours. Surprisingly, no nightmares or visions of the 148th dead at her feet plagued her during that time. She was blissfully enveloped by a calm, silent darkness.

When she did finally wake up of her own accord, she took her time getting dressed for the day. The small clock she’d placed on the nightstand told her it was approximately ten o’clock in the morning, so she was already late as it was. Few extra minutes won’t kill anyone, she thought to herself. There were still a few cuts and bruises on her face, hands, and legs from her time in the jungle, and she took extra care to make sure they were clean and cared for.

She avoided the mirrors as best she could.

As Ginny emerged into the main common room of the SSR bunker, the chatter of voices quieted for a moment as everyone stared at her. Some looked at her with pity, others with admiration, and a few with disappointment. Guess the news got out about Bairoko, Ginny thought to herself, though she didn’t let herself falter under anyone’s gaze.

“Uh…Lieutenant Rogers?” a timid voice asked to her right. She turned to see a younger gentleman with bright red hair cut short along his skull. He was all limbs, with a smattering of freckles across his boyish face. He looked almost scared to be addressing Ginny. In his hands was a small pile of envelopes.

“Yes, can I help you…Saling?” Ginny asked, pausing to read his name tag.

“Um, these arrived for you while you were gone. Colonel Phillips asked me to deliver them to you once you were back on your feet,” Saling said, shoving the envelopes towards her. She took them and shuffled through each one.

Return Address to Steven G. Rogers was printed on every single one. Ginny counted about seven different envelopes in total, and she couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face. It felt almost foreign to her. Even halfway across the world, Steve never failed to be a light for her in an otherwise dark room.

“Thank you, Saling. I appreciate it. Speaking of, do you know where Colonel Phillips is?” Ginny asked, tucking the envelopes into her coat pocket.

“Last I heard, he was in the filing room, ma’am.”

“Great. Thanks again, kid.” Ginny turned on her heel and headed straight for Phillips.

She did indeed find him in the filing room with Sergeant First Class Abney, who perked up as Ginny entered the room. “Lieutenant Rogers! So good to see you again! You were greatly missed while you were gone,” he said, wrapping Ginny immediately in a hug. She froze for a second, not expecting the gesture, but eventually gave Abney a small pat on the back. He must have found it satisfactory, because he released her shortly after with a smile.

“Right...um. I’m sure you both heard about how Bairoko went,” Ginny started awkwardly, running a hand along the back of her neck. Colonel Phillips said nothing, just stared at her with an unreadable expression. Abney nodded solemnly.

“We were very sorry to hear the extent of the losses, but it seems that there was almost nothing that could have avoided the casualties. You did your best, I’m sure,” the young man said, offering her a sympathetic smile.

“Yeah…well. I, uh…” Ginny trailed off and she found herself unable to look either man in the eye. The Colonel was still just staring at her, and the longer his eyes were on her the more she felt herself shrinking away from his glare, folding within herself. Abney started to say something, but Ginny could hardly make heads or tails of his words because the blood in her ears was so deafening. She pictured Bennett and his ruddy curls in place of Saling, the one that had given her the envelopes from Steve, and the bead of sweat dripping from her forehead felt like blood.

“Abney, give us the room, please,” Colonel Phillips suddenly said, interrupting the young man in the middle of his rather graphic description of an infection he treated while Ginny was gone. Abney faltered for a moment, looking between Ginny and the Colonel, but left without another word.

Ginny hardly registered the door shutting behind Abney as he vacated the file room. She was focusing all of her efforts into keeping her hands steady and her breathing even. Phillips regarded her for a moment before shutting the file he was reading. He turned to face her entirely, casually leaning against the cabinet beside him. If Ginny wasn’t halfway out of her body at that moment, she probably would have made some joke about his lack of rigidity.

“Where’s your head at, Rogers?” He finally asked, his voice surprisingly soft.

“I’m…not sure,” Ginny replied. The words almost got caught in her throat.

“Still in the Islands,” Phillips said. It wasn’t a question; he knew without needing to ask. Ginny could only nod her confirmation.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Ginny shook her head and tried to keep the tears from welling up in her eyes.

The Colonel was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again. “General Hester and Admiral Turner told me everything that happened in their report a few days ago. I didn’t appreciate the way they spoke of your actions, but I can’t do much to reprimand them for that. I should’ve known not to send you out there. So, if you’re going to blame anyone for what happened to you over there, because I damn well know you’re blaming yourself, you can blame me.”

Ginny wasn’t sure what to say. Phillips had never been this soft-spoken with her, this willing to lay on the wire. Either he was simply trying to keep Ginny from spiraling, or he really did feel like he was to blame for what happened.

“How is any of it your fault?” Ginny finally asked. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Phillips.

“I should’ve never let you go over there. If I hadn’t…maybe you wouldn’t still be stuck there.” The Colonel’s voice was low and dangerously quiet. Ginny spared a glance his way, and his eyes were trained on his boots. Regret.

“You couldn’t have known—”

“But I did,” he interrupted. They finally made eye contact, and Ginny saw not sympathy or pity in his eyes, but understanding.

He’s been stuck somewhere before, too, she realized.

There was a long moment of silence between the two of them—Ginny was still trying to bring herself back into her own head, and the Colonel was waiting to see if she’d be able to return. It took some time, but eventually Ginny was able to unclench her fists and let her hands rest still at her sides. She took a deep breath, and Phillips visibly relaxed as she did.

“When you first recruited me, you told me that Abe had asked for me specifically,” Ginny finally said, her gaze still trained on the floor. Colonel Phillips made a sound of agreement. “Why did he ask for me?”

Phillips took in a long breath and let it out before he said anything. “He’d heard from a friend at Bellevue about you. Watched you for a while. He was able to snag some reports, too. You were great on paper, but it wasn’t until you broke protocol that he was sure you were who he needed. He said he admired your guts, your confidence. He liked that you stood up to the doctors when they did something wrong.”

“So, breaking the rules is why he wanted me?”

“In a sense. But if you ask me, I think he recognized that he needed someone like you—a spitfire—to counteract his meticulousness. You gave him the guts he never had.” Phillips had a small smile on his face as he talked about Erskine; Ginny hadn’t seen it before, but the Colonel very clearly had a fondness for the doctor even now. With the amount of times they had bumped heads, she assumed that Phillips found Erskine more akin to a very tenacious tick; he just never gave up despite Phillips doing his very best to fight against him.

“I’d hate for him to have seen me over there. Hard to have guts when all you’re seeing is death,” Ginny mused.

“You’ve still got ‘em, kid. And I know he’s still just as proud of you as he always was. You couldn’t do anything to stop that,” the Colonel said, patting a hand on her shoulder. It was a strange gesture coming from him, but surprisingly Ginny found herself bolstered by it just a bit.

“Think you’re ready for your next assignment?” Phillips asked.

Ginny steeled herself, banishing her memories of the jungle to the very back of her mind.

“Hell yeah, sir.”

August 6, 1943
107th Regiment Camp; Italy
Five miles from the front lines

There was a palpable energy amidst the 107th when it was announced that members of the Strategic Scientific Reserve would be joining the ranks for the foreseeable future. Most of the men figured that the help was much-needed, but there were a few that saw the additions as unnecessary and even insulting.

Bucky couldn’t care less, so long as they helped him fight and stay alive. The one thing that seemed to be a consensus among his fellow soldiers, however, was the exciting news of more nurses. They’d had a fair few come in and out of their ranks, but none ever stayed for long, as they went where they most needed. It just so happened that it had become his regiment’s turn to be considered the most needy.

He’d been checking on his squad when the trucks rolled up, and damn near had to fight for his troops’ attention as they watched the SSR backup exit their vehicles. There were two Jeeps that had dropped off a group at the med tent, and another one that had gone straight for command. Bucky kept a loose eye on that one, and was surprised to see a woman climbing out of the vehicle alongside a Colonel.

“That’s Colonel Phillips, I heard,” one of his soldiers—Gabe Jones, originally from the 92nd—said. Bucky nodded, but he couldn’t have cared less about who the Colonel was.

“Who’s the dame with the red hair?” he asked.

Gabe shrugged. “Dunno. Secretary, maybe?”

Bucky made a noise of surprise, but said nothing else. Wasn’t his business, far as he was concerned. He had other things to worry about.

“Hey, Jones. We get any word on Brooks’ status?” Bucky asked. Brooks had gone in to the infirmary a few days prior for a nasty cough, and Bucky had yet to hear anything back.

“Not that I know of, Sarge. Though I did hear the med tent was in rough shape; we lost a lot of them between gettin’ called to Sicily and our last attack. Who knows if Brooks even got what he needed,” Gabe replied. Bucky nodded; he remembered the mass exodus of nurses and medical personnel when word got to camp that the Sicily invasion was going down. It had been utter chaos for about four hours, and Bucky was only a little surprised (and definitely not jealous) that his unit didn’t get called to assist with the invasion.

“I’ll check on him here in a little bit. Got a few things I need to do first,” Bucky said, to which Gabe nodded and continued cleaning his rifle.

In the meantime, Bucky headed over to the post, asking once again if any letters or postcards had arrived for him. Once again, he left empty-handed.

He’d been writing to Steve and Gin ever since he got deployed, and none of his letters had been replied to. Part of him knew their responses were probably just stuck somewhere with the million others that were circulating, but a quiet voice in the back of his head told him that they didn’t care to respond. Why would they? They both had lives—Gin had her new job with the fancy new doctor, and Steve…well. He honestly couldn’t imagine why Steve wouldn’t write back, and the idea that he didn’t care hit him in the gut harder than a .20-gauge slug.

The only thought worse than Steve ignoring him was if he somehow convinced a recruiter to let him in the Army. Bucky didn’t want to think about that, either.

He tried to get those thoughts out of his mind as he trudged through the mud back toward his squad. There was a buzz in the air as he approached a cluster of them sitting in a circle, smacking each other on the knees and laughing. Occasionally, they’d look over to the med tent wistfully.

“Somethin’ the matter, boys?” Bucky asked, settling in beside Dugan, who was chewing on an unlit cigar and rolling his eyes at the other soldiers as they laughed.

“They’re downright smitten with the new nurse those government boys brought in. Apparently she’s a real looker,” Dugan explained. Bucky laughed, and shot a glance towards the med tent. There was little activity going on around it, for once. “They’ve been sending each other in alone to see if one of them can get a better look at her. Sayin’ they’ve got the cold that Brooks came down with or somethin’. Damn idiots, if you ask me. That ain’t how you woo a woman,” Dugan added, his words slightly muffled by the cigar in his mouth.

“Oh yeah, Dum-Dum? And how would you suggest we do it?” Another soldier asked. The group of them turned to Dugan with bated breath.

“Now why in the hell would I tell you sorry suckers my secrets? You’d just go try and use ‘em on that poor girl in there. You’ve bothered her enough, I think,” Dugan replied with a chuckle. The group of men groaned and chided at him, but it was all in good fun.

“We should see if Sarge can get some time with her!” Someone piped up. Bucky froze and tried to fight the blush from creeping onto his face. As much as he dated around back home, he’d never thought himself good at flirting. He was better at dancing, at kissing; talking was where he faltered at times. He remembered a time when Gin had overheard him trying to talk up a girl at a bar, in which he had miserably failed. She’d done her best to hide her laughter as Bucky headed back to the table with her and Steve.

“James, honey. I know you can do better than that,” she’d said.

“I don’t normally trip over my words like that, y’know.”

Steve had given him a pat on the shoulder. “We know, buddy. You’ll get her next time.”

It was true. Bucky didn’t often stutter over his own tongue—it just so happened that as he was trying to get a sentence out, he’d looked over at Gin and saw her flicking her hair off her shoulder in a way that made his heart skip a beat. Then she’d taken a sip of her drink, something fruity, probably, and he’d been able to catch the motion of her neck as she downed the liquid, and his brain had simply deserted his body.

Simply put? The only girl he’d wanted since 1938 was Virginia Rogers.

Not that he’d ever tell her that.

His squad was patting him on the back now, encouraging him to get up and use that “city-boy charm” of his, they called it. All because one nurse had been particularly nice to him after getting hit in the head by a rifle butt when he first made it to Italy.

Bucky tried telling the soldiers off, tried to point the focus to someone else, but once they got an idea in their heads, they were relentless.

“C’mon, Sarge! All you gotta do is flash her that smile and you’ll have her wrapped around your finger, you know it!”

“You let us know if she’s as soft as she looks now, huh?”

“I heard she’s pretty feisty, too! Wonder if that translates to other areas.” The group of them were a bunch of degenerates, that was for sure, but they couldn’t help it. Hell, half of them had girls back home and wouldn’t actually end up trying anything with this nurse they’d all gone smitten for. It was all just good fun, boys being boys, and who was Bucky to deny himself a shot, at least?

“Alright, alright! I’ll give it a shot,” Bucky finally conceded, standing from his position and dusting the dirt off his uniform as best he could. The squad rioted, jumping up and giving him good luck pats on his back or any place they could reach. He tried to calm the flush rising to his cheeks as he shook his head at his squad, but made his way towards the med tent all the same.

He tried to calm the hammering of his heart as he approached. Why was he so nervous? It’s not like this would go anywhere, anyways. Just a girl, just gotta talk her up a bit, that’s all,he said to himself. Maybe she’ll help you forget about Gin. Been needin’ that, lately.

The infirmary was quiet as he approached, which was always better to see than the alternative. The 107th had lost too many men over the course of the past few months; Bucky would take a bit of peaceful quiet over the wailing of dying men.

The first thing that caught his eye when he entered the med tent was the fact that the only person currently there was a woman—the one his squad had been talking about—and she was wearing trousers. The second was the uncharacteristically long blonde hair of hers that was tied back atop her head. The third was the unmistakable attitude that radiated off of her as she spoke, not even turning around and giving Bucky the decency of a single glance.

“If one more of you boys comes in here claiming you’ve got a case of the sniffles, I’m gonna be forced to quarantine this whole regiment, so think twice before you tell me why you’re here, soldier.” He could’ve clocked that silvery yet snappish tone anywhere. The familiar Brooklyn accent was just the cherry on top.

“Virginia fucking Rogers.” Bucky hadn’t even realized he’d said the words aloud until she turned around, eyebrows raised in surprise at his mouth.

“Nice to see you too, James,” she replied with a smirk, setting down a clipboard on the table behind her and crossing her arms. “Though,” she added, “I’d avoid cussing in front of a superior officer.” Bucky’s eyes flicked to her rank insignia on her shoulders. First Lieutenant.

Wait a minute. Why is she here?

“How did that happen? Does Steve know? Is he okay? Are you okay?” The questions came tumbling out of Bucky’s mouth one after the other as they entered his mind. He wasn’t sure what he’d do if she said that something had happened to Steve. Of course, the minute I leave the country he gets himself into too much trouble.

Gin laughed quietly, almost to herself, and Bucky almost went weak in the knees. “Steve’s fine. I promise. He’s uh…” she trailed off for a second, like she was thinking about how to continue. “He’s getting around the country pretty well. Started selling war bonds with a senator.”

“War bonds?” Bucky asked, almost not believing that Steve had given up trying to get into the Army. Gin nodded. “Huh. Never would’ve guessed.”

“You and me, both. He’s doing really well, though. I’m proud of him,” Gin said, a small smile creeping onto her face. Her smiles were infectious, and Bucky couldn’t help the one that came to him.

“What about you? How’d you end up here, Lieutenant?” he asked. Calling her by her rank felt strange, but he didn’t mind it.

“That’s a long story. One I don’t necessarily have time for, but maybe another day. All you need to know is that I’m here for now, and I’m taking over for the former medical officer,” she said with a sigh.

It was only then that Bucky noticed the bags under her eyes; they’d gotten darker since he’d left home. She carried herself a little different now, too. Her shoulders were dragged down a bit, like she’d been carrying heavy weight, and the smile that made his stomach do flips didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Gin,” Bucky said, waiting for her to look at him. When she did, he could see that her gaze was sadder, darker. “Are you okay?” he asked, much softer than he’d meant to. Usually when he got like that around her, she’d punch him in the shoulder and tell him to stop worrying.

This time, she said nothing, just heaved a big sigh and turned away from him.

"Now, be honest with me, Barnes,” she said, her voice light and teasing once more, like the sadness he’d caught had never been there to begin with. “Is there actually something medically wrong with you, or did you come here to gawk at me like the rest of the troops?" She leaned back against a stack of boxes and eyed him with a glint of humor.

Wait…what? Was she encouraging him? He could never tell.

Hell, he had come in here for a reason.

"I mean...if you're giving me the opportunity, I'm certainly not gonna turn it down. Not every day we get a view like this out here, y'know," he replied, running his eyes up and down Gin as he gestured to the whole of her. That move had always worked for him before, back home.

"Is that so?" she asked. Bucky started walking hesitantly towards her, and when she made no move to stop him, he continued, trying to slow the beating of his heart.

"Yeah," he confirmed, rubbing his chin with his hand while shamelessly eyeing her. "I mean, being completely honest? A face like yours could start a war," Bucky admitted. And he wasn’t lying. His confidence grew more with every step that she allowed. What’s happening? She’s never let me get this close before, what the fuck am I doing?

"Well, then. I guess it's a good thing I got here after the war had already begun."

"I wish you would’ve been here the whole time. It would've made getting shot at much more bearable," Bucky said, his voice low and his heart hammering in chest. Holy hell, she's right here, she's here. Don’t say anything stupid, keep it cool, keep it cool. Where had this guy been when he was trying to get girls back in Brooklyn? He’d never been so suave with his words before now.

"I'm so glad to see that three months at war hasn't changed you a lick, Barnes," Gin said. They were toe-to-toe now, with only a few inches between their noses.

Shit, shit, shit. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," Gin said, leaning in ever so slightly. Her eyes fluttered closed, and Bucky's stomach jumped into his chest as he leaned in to meet her. She took his chin gently between her thumb and forefinger and held him in place just centimeters from her lips.

Suddenly, her grip tightened, and Bucky flashed his eyes open again to see the patented Rogers' smirk on her face. "You're still the same player you were back in Brooklyn, or at least that's what you think yourself to be." She shoved him away from her and turned back to whatever file she was reading when he came in.

Bucky couldn’t help but laugh and run a hand through his hair. If he’d missed the sly smirk on Gin’s face, he would’ve thought she was about to kick him on his ass out of the med tent.

Recover somehow, you dunce. “So, I did actually have a question for you. Or, whoever was in charge here, before I knew it was you,” Bucky said, leaning against a cot. Gin turned to him and gestured for him to continue. “One of my soldiers, Brooks, came in here a few days ago with a nasty cough. I haven’t heard anything else or seen him at all. Was just wondering if you could give me an update on him."

Gin nodded, and turned back to the folder she’d had in her hand when he first entered the tent. She flicked through a few of the pages, eyes skimming over the files, and let out a low whistle.

“Well. He’s the first one I’m checking on. You can come with, if you want. I’m sure he’d like to see a friendly face.” With that, she turned on her heel and headed towards the east end of the tent, where a heavy-duty canvas curtain was blocking the rest of the infirmary off.

“You know anything about how he got sick?” Gin asked, allowing Bucky to hold the curtain for her as they made their way to the room of beds for the sick and injured.

He shrugged. “Not really. Just started coughing in the middle of the night about a week ago, and it kept getting worse, so I sent him here.” Gin sighed, but said nothing. Bucky knew better than to ask what the sigh was about.

“Little to no medical history…of course. Make my job even harder, why not?” Gin muttered, almost to herself, as they walked down the aisle between cots towards the very last one. Brooks appeared to be asleep as they approached, his breathing coming in shallow and ragged breaths.

About ten feet from his cot, Gin stopped in her tracks, almost causing Bucky to run straight into her back. She held out a hand for him to stop, and then turned to the nearest medic attending to an amputee to their right.

“Do you have two face coverings I could use?” she asked. The medic gave her a puzzled look. Gin rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. “Of course not. No wonder the former Lieutenant got so sick,” she muttered. She then turned to an empty cot and ripped two strips of cloth from the blanket covering the bed. She handed one to Bucky and the other she wrapped around her nose and mouth.

“Tie that around your face as tight as you can, just like I’ve got mine.”

“Why?” Bucky asked.

“Just do it, Barnes,” She said, her voice slightly muffled from behind the fabric. Though he was still confused, he complied with her order and tied the fabric around his face. It itched at his nose and mouth, and he did his best not to scratch at it. Seeing that he had followed her instructions, Gin continued on towards Brooks’ cot.

She approached without caution, a hand out to shake Brooks awake, and Bucky grabbed her by the shoulder without even thinking.

“Can I help you?” She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Do we have to wake him up? He’s been getting no sleep lately,” Bucky asked, looking back and forth between Brooks, his face pale and covered in a sheen of sweat, and Gin, who’s eyes had suddenly hardened. He barely recognized her like this—cold and calculating, likely running through Brooks’ options in her head. It made him shudder inwardly.

“I don’t like it either, but I’ve gotta talk to him. We have no idea how he could’ve gotten this sick this fast, so unless you or your squad have any idea, this is our only option.” Bucky sighed. He’d already asked around to see if anyone knew anything about Brooks’ condition and had come up empty-handed. Reluctantly, he removed the hand from her shoulder and let her shake Brooks awake. He didn’t miss the fact that she didn’t touch the soldier’s skin directly, instead opting to touch his leg, which was covered by a blanket.

Brooks startled awake at her touch and looked up at the two of them in a panic. Immediately, Bucky lowered the cloth from his face to show that he was a friend, someone Brooks knew. The young man calmed down quickly after that, but Gin was glaring at Bucky.

“Put the cloth back on. Now,” she ordered, her tone dangerously low. Without contest, Bucky raised the cloth back up, terrified of the look in Gin’s eye. Once he’d returned the covering over his face, she turned back to Brooks. In an instant, her eyes had softened, and she seemed to glow just a little bit brighter.

How the hell does she do that? Bucky wondered.

“Private Brooks? My name is Virginia, I’m the new Lieutenant for the 107th medical team. I wanted to check and see how you were feeling today.” Her voice was like a melody, soft and sweet, as she spoke to Brooks. Bucky suddenly found himself wishing he were lying in a sick bed, if it meant he could have Gin talking to him as sweet as that.

“Hey…I know you,” Brooks murmured, looking up at Gin with delirium in his gaze. She looked up from the file she’d started running over again, and then a flash of recognition fell across her face. “You…you were at Lehigh…with that real skinny kid. For the…uh, Project,” Brooks continued, reaching his hand out as if he was trying to caress Gin’s face.

Bucky caught the slight movement of her leaning back so that contact couldn’t be made, and her eyes widened slightly as Brooks continued speaking. There was a split second where her gaze flicked nervously to Bucky; if he hadn’t already been staring at her, he probably wouldn’t have caught it. A question rose in the back of his throat, but before he could say anything, she had turned back to Brooks.

She asked him a series of questions about his history that Bucky didn’t really understand; she asked who he had been in contact with recently aside from the usual suspects, and if he or his family had ever been exposed to any respiratory illnesses prior to him joining the Army.

He nodded at that, and Bucky felt Gin tense beside him.

“Do you know what it was you or your family might have been exposed to, Daniel?” she asked.

Brooks smiled and let out a small laugh, which quickly devolved into a coughing fit. A few moments later, it seemed to pass, and he spoke once more, “My ma was the only one that called me Daniel. Only when I was in trouble. Call me Danny.” Gin nodded, and Bucky could see the corners of her eyes curl up from a smile underneath the cloth on her face.

“Danny,” she said. “Any idea how you might’ve been exposed?”

“Ma.” Brooks had his gaze fixed off in the distance, like he was remembering something. “She was a nurse in a TB ward back home. Died about two years ago.”

Gin nodded, scribbled something down on the file in her hand. “Do you know how she died?”

“Killed herself. Dad had died about six months before, and she just couldn’t live without him, I guess.”

Gin murmured a soft apology and wrote something else down, then shut the file. “Thank you, Danny. I’ll be back to check on you a little bit. Is there anything we can get for you in the meantime?”

“A wet cloth? I’m sweatin’ up a storm right now,” Brooks asked. Gin nodded and quickly acquired a wet rag, placing it gingerly over Brooks’ forehead. He sighed in content as it made contact with his skin and shut his eyes, falling back asleep quickly.

Gin motioned for Bucky to follow her as she exited towards the front of the med tent, removing the cloth from her face as soon as they had passed through the curtain once more. She loosened her hair and let it drape down her back, ran a hand through it. She’d started to pace and was muttering to herself.

“Gin. You alright?” Bucky asked, having removed the cloth from his face as well.

She didn’t respond for a second, just started shaking her head. “Uh, no, not really. This is a problem, a big one.” She started to mutter again, grabbed a different file from the boxes littering the ground.

“How big?”

“Like, quarantine the whole regiment, big. I wasn’t joking when I said that earlier, James. Brooks has got tuberculosis, I’m almost certain of it, and with the number of boys that were coming in here complaining of head colds, I’ve gotta test every single one of you. At least the ones that had the closest contact with Brooks,” Gin said, her words coming out at one hundred miles a minute.

“I think the majority of them were just trying to get a look at you, if I’m being honest. It seems like Brooks was the only one on my squad showing symptoms,” Bucky said, trying his best to calm her down. He didn’t like the sound of a quarantine, and he certainly didn’t like seeing her this anxious.

She shook her head. “No. I need to test everyone. The bacteria can remain dormant in someone for years before symptoms show. If we don’t figure this out now, we could have half this regiment spreading it without even knowing.”

Bucky let out a low whistle. He was a smart guy, by most standards, but this was entirely out of his wheelhouse. He knew enough to get by with helping Gin take care of Steve when he had his sick days, but he’d had no idea that Brooks was showing signs of such a severe illness. No wonder Gin was panicking. She’d had to watch her mother die from it for months.

There was no way Bucky was going to let more of his men die from something like this. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Gin go through this problem alone. Maybe he was useless when it came to brain power, but he was still upright. He could do something, anything. Just so long as Gin was able to swallow her own stubbornness long enough to let him.

“How can I help?”

Ginny used to believe that every person, no matter how egregiously stupid they may have been, held a sliver of common sense within themselves. Enough to survive, at least. Maybe even make some intelligent decisions here and there based purely off that sense.

It was painfully obvious that the former medical Lieutenant barely had two brain cells to rub together, let alone any common sense to survive on. Maybe that’s why he’s dead, Ginny thought, almost feeling bad for her callousness. Almost. It was hard to pity someone that had died because of their own avoidable mistakes.

There had been no effort made to create a quarantine tent for contagious patients, no personal protection measures for any medical personnel, and barely enough supplies stocked to get through a week. How she hadn’t been called in sooner, she didn’t understand.

Corporal Hudlow had looked at Ginny like she’d grown two heads when she gave him an updated list of supplies they would need.

“I don’t take questions. Just get me what I need,” Ginny ordered, not staying long enough for him to even ask any. At her request, a team of nurses had begun setting up a quarantine tent for Brooks and any other symptomatic patients, though there had been none reported as of yet. Ginny wasn’t allowing herself any moments of celebration until they knew for certain how much the disease had spread throughout the regiment.

It didn’t take long for Colonel Phillips to turn up at the infirmary. He entered through the front canvas flap, looking around in concern at the tizzy Ginny had stirred up over the past few hours.

“Care to explain what the hell is going on, Lieutenant?”

“Tuberculosis, Colonel. I’m having a quarantine ward set up over on the east side of camp, far enough away from any living quarters to not raise concern for further infection but close enough for my staff to get there in an emergency. I’ve ordered the supplies that your former Lieutenant couldn’t be assed to think about, and I’m having Sergeant Barnes round up the rest of his squad for testing as we speak,” Ginny explained as she continued to work.

“And you didn’t think to clear any of this with me?” Phillips asked.

“Why would I? It’s not like you know anything about what we need to handle this.”

“You would ask me because I’m your Colonel and I call the shots, Rogers. What if we didn’t have the man power or the funds to get what you’re requesting?”

“Well, it’s a good thing we do. If we hadn’t, you might’ve been forced to do some real work, and that’s the day Hell would’ve frozen over,” Ginny quipped, ignoring the incredulous look Phillips gave her. She heard him let out an exasperated sigh from behind her, but he made no other comment. He just watched her work for a moment, an unreadable expression on his face.

“Something else you need, Colonel?”

“How are you testing the men?”

“I’ll need enough test kits for the entire regiment. I already gave the order to Corporal Hudlow to place. A shipment should be arriving from London within the next eight hours. Until then, I’m having Sergeant Barnes round up his squad so I can evaluate them for symptoms,” Ginny explained.

“Okay, great. But I meant how can you test the men? How can you know whether or not they’re infected?”

Ginny found herself smiling. It always made her heart sing when someone had a genuine interest in the process behind what she did. And God knows she loved explaining it.

“The United States government adopted a technology created by Doctor Florence Seibert just a few years ago. She figured out a way to create a purified protein derivative of the tuberculin bacterium, which is injected into the subcutaneous tissue of a patient. From there, we can observe if there is a reaction to the tuberculin. If there is, then we know the patient has the bacteria and can plan treatment from there.”

There was a small moment where Ginny worried that she had bored the Colonel to death, because he just stared at her with a glassy look in his eye, but then he nodded like he understood. “Right. Well. I suppose I better put an expedited request on those kits then,” he said. Ginny smiled and thanked him before he left.

He was growing on her more and more every day. She liked to think she’d grown on him a bit, too.

As the Colonel left, Barnes entered after saluting and headed straight for Ginny. He was slightly out of breath, and she almost smiled at the image of him running around collecting his squad at her panicked request.

“They’re all ready for you, Gin. I’ve got ‘em roughly organized. Dugan’s trying to keep them corralled as best he can.”

“Dugan?”

“My corporal. He’s a good guy, I’ll introduce you,” Barnes explained, gesturing for her to follow him out of the infirmary. It was a short walk to where Barnes’ portion of the 107th were waiting for her, some sitting on logs around a small campfire, others up and idly walking around the general area.

As the squad caught on to Barnes’ return, they turned their attention towards him, and likewise to Ginny, who was immediately behind him. It was easy to catch the wandering eyes and a few slack jaws here and there, but Ginny was past the point of caring. Besides, these were Barnes’ men. If there were any soldiers in the 107th she could trust, it was them.

Barnes headed straight for a stout fellow with a bowler hat on top of his head; his back was currently to the pair of them as they approached. “Lieutenant Virginia Rogers, may I introduce you to Corporal Timothy Dugan, or as we like to call him, Dum-Dum,” he said, gesturing towards the gentleman in the bowler hat. The corporal turned around at the mention of his name and immediately gave Ginny a warm smile and a salute. She nodded her thanks, then extended her hand.

“Pleasure to finally meet you, Lieutenant. We’ve heard a lot about you from Sarge,” Dugan said, shaking her hand. Ginny looked over to Barnes, who had conveniently turned away from them for the moment, then directed her attention back to Dugan.

“It’s great to meet you as well. I appreciate you all getting together for this on such short notice. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important,” she explained.

“No trouble at all, ma’am. We’re happy to help however we can. We’ve heard about the work you’ve done before coming here, so I can only hope you’ll be able to help us out here, too,” Dugan replied. Ginny gave him a puzzled look. “Sarge told us about some of the stuff you got up to back home. Mighty impressive, if I do say so myself.”

Ginny tried not to let her surprise show on her face. She didn’t realize Barnes had any idea of her capabilities, let alone talked about them to anyone. Usually when she was talking about work to him and Steve, she assumed they let her ramble just to humor her. She never thought either of them actually listened.

“Alright, Dugan, don’t go inflating her ego any more than it already is. She knows she’s good,” Barnes piped up, having turned back to the two of them once more.

“She ain’t the only one, Sarge,” Dugan replied with a laugh, giving a suggestive look to Barnes, who immediately flushed a light shade of pink.

Ginny flashed Barnes a teasing glare, to which he cocked his head and ran his tongue over his lips. "C'mon, sweetheart. Don't look at me like that unless you mean it," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Look at you how? Like you bother me? Because that's the only thing in my head right now, though I doubt I could say the same for you," Ginny said. Dugan let out a low whistle and laughed, clapping Barnes on the shoulder before he walked away. He muttered something under his breath to Barnes that sounded like "Good luck", but Ginny couldn't be sure.

"Let's just get this done, yeah?"

"Yes, ma'am," Barnes replied.

"And I'm not your sweetheart," Ginny added before stalking off towards the infirmary, gesturing for the squad to follow.

Chapter Text

Ginny had never been more mortified in her life.

There were ten men standing in front of her in nothing but their underwear, all watching her as she gathered the supplies for their physical evaluations. She’d turned her back to them so that the warmth on her cheeks went unnoticed. Get it together, Rogers. You’ve collected wound cultures from a seventy-year-old man’s anus. You can do this.

Of course, that man had been unconscious when she was collecting her cultures. And she wasn’t exactly looking him dead in the eyes. These men were, for the most part, young and fit. They were conscious. And they were staring right at her.

She could’ve made another medic perform the evaluations. Decorum said she probably should have. But, if any of them did have the bacteria, she’d just be exposing another person to it that didn’t need to be. She’d been exposed plenty of times before, so it just made sense.

She hated when she thought logically.

As embarrassed as Ginny was, there was still a job to do, so she swallowed her nerves and got started looking over the first soldier. As she examined him, she asked him a routine series of questions, aiming to keep her voice steady and wholly clinical.

“When was the last time you had contact with Private Brooks?”

“Have you had any symptoms of a respiratory infection in the past seven days?”

“Have you or a family member ever been exposed to the tuberculosis bacteria prior to this event?”

“Do you have any feelings of fatigue, fever, or pain with breathing?”

“Have you lost a significant amount of weight recently?”

“Are you coughing up blood?”

The first man passed Ginny’s evaluation with flying colors, so she dismissed him and moved on to the next, repeating the same questions and the same routine of a physical check. TB rarely manifested with any type of rash, but she’d seen it once before, so she covered the base. She listened to the soldiers’ hearts and lungs, checked their pulse rates and blood pressure, and felt for any swollen lymph nodes in their necks and underarms.

By the time she had cleared the first five men, she could feel sweat beginning to build on her face from underneath the cloth she’d been wearing. She fought the urge to itch at the cloth, to pull it down and wipe her face, mostly because she’d yelled at Barnes for taking his down for even a second. She took just a moment to steel herself against the summer heat in the tent, then moved on to the sixth member of the squad.

As Ginny ran through her checklist, she asked her same questions. With her stethoscope to the man’s right lung, she caught the faintest sound of crackling. She had him breathe in and out once more, listening more intently this time, and confirmed the sound. Removing the earpieces of the stethoscope, she gestured for the soldier to move to the far end of the tent, doing her best to keep the panic from showing on her face.

Two more soldiers had joined the first by the time Ginny completed her examinations. They stood together, looking at each other with some confusion.

“Gentlemen,” Ginny said, after all the others had left. “You three described having some symptoms, and when I listened to your lungs, I heard some crackling sounds, which can indicate an upper respiratory infection. We can’t know for sure what it is until we get the test kits in, but for now I’m going to need to isolate the three of you as a precaution. Please follow Corporal Hudlow to the quarantine tent. As soon as we get the test kits in from London, I’ll be back to officially test you.” The isolated soldiers either nodded or shrugged in acceptance, and trudged after the Corporal towards the newly erected quarantine area.

Barnes’s gaze trailed after his men; the guilt and apprehension he held was undeniable.

"Will they be okay over there?" He asked, watching as they disappeared into the quarantine tent behind Hudlow.

"Of course,” Ginny said, trying to put as much confidence in her voice as she could muster. “I've got my best watching over them. And they all seem to only be showing mild symptoms, so maybe it's nothing. They'll be separated from Brooks anyways." But Lord only knows how much good that’ll even do.

"Alright. Well, thank you, Gin. I'm gonna head back to my tent and try and get a little bit of shut-eye." Barnes placed a hand on her shoulder and made a move to exit the infirmary. Ginny trapped his wrist in her grip before he could move any further.

"Hold on there, Sparky. I'm not done with you, yet."

"What do you mean?"

"You think because you're their Sergeant you magically can't be affected by bacteria?"

"I mean, I feel fine. I've got the immune system of an ox, Gin, you know this."

Ginny shook her head. "Don't care. Strip, Golden Boy."

"Oh, c'mon, I thought I left that behind in Brooklyn," Barnes whined. Ginny laughed.

"Please! No way I'm letting you live that down." She recalled the group of grandmothers that lived down the block from her and Steve, and how Barnes had them all wrapped around his finger.

They'd call to him from their porches whenever he'd walk down the street with her and Steve, asking him if he was still single or if someone had finally made an honest man out of him. They started calling him the Golden Boy, because he was "the best damn man that ever walked through this alley". He'd bring them all flowers once a week, and they'd give him home-cooked meals in return, which he always ended up sharing with Steve and Ginny. The grandmas didn't like the two of them as much as they liked Barnes, but the association helped. When Ma had died, they'd brought casseroles over for weeks after, making sure the twins knew that it was a requirement that Barnes be saved a plate.

Barnes had always been a ham, but Ginny often caught the flush that graced his cheeks when the ladies spoke about him so well. Her and Steve never let him forget about it, either.

"Gin. You're seriously gonna make me drop my pants right here?"

"Yep. Or I'll take 'em off for you." The sentence left her mouth before she could even think about it, and she froze.

Barnes gave her a look she couldn't read; it was hard to tell if he more surprised or embarrassed at the insinuation. Ginny stuttered for a second, trying to think of a way to recover, but then Barnes started grumbling and removing his clothing.

Once he was standing there in nothing but his briefs, Ginny began the same examination, doing her best to not look too close at his body. He hadn't changed much physically from before he joined the Army; he'd always been a leaner, taller guy, but there was no denying the extra bit of muscle he'd put on from training. His arms had always been well toned from working on the docks back home, but now his chest and stomach were toned to match. Ginny even saw two or three ab muscles that she couldn't remember seeing before. His legs had become more muscular as well, likely from all the walking and marching he'd been doing these past few months.

Ginny tried to tell herself that she was eyeing him from an entirely clinical standpoint.

She most certainly wasn't.

His breath sounds came back clear, there was no sign of any type of rash, and he reported no symptoms. She was only a little disappointed when he put his clothes back on.

"Told you. I'm fine," Barnes said with a smirk.

"I had to be certain."

"You just wanted to see me in my underwear."

"Woah! You're awfully confident in yourself, aren't you?"

"Only when I know I'm right. You're seriously telling me you didn't enjoy that little show even a little bit?"

Ginny took in a breath and willed the blush to stay off her face. Looking Barnes directly in the eye, she said, "I've seen butt boils with more charm than you, Barnes."

A hand flew to his chest as he recoiled, like he'd been shot by an invisible bullet. He groaned dramatically, clutching at his chest and falling to a knee. "Oh, Virginia, how you wound me so!"

“Get up, you drama queen. You’ll dirty your trousers,” Ginny said, though it was hard to hide the smile that Barnes brought to her face. He stood up and dusted off the knee that had hit the dirt and gave her a smirk.

“As much fun as it is being your entertainment for the day, I’ve gotta get back to work. Let me know if you need anything though, or if anyone gives you trouble, all right?” Barnes said. Ginny gave him a two-fingered salute and smiled to herself as he exited the tent.

It was reassuring to know he didn’t seem to view her as his best friend’s annoying sister anymore. Now that she thought about it, she wondered if that was ever really the case to begin with. She had always assumed that Barnes put up with her for Steve’s sake, but now she could recall the times when he had walked her home from the hospital at the crack of dawn because he knew Steve couldn’t handle the trek.

He’d saved some of his lunches for her when he knew she had a long shift, and she was fairly certain he had chased off a few guys that had gotten a little too comfortable with her. She had never complained about it; Barnes wasn’t the worst looking guy that could have defended her honor, that was for sure. But even thinking about something like that felt like she was betraying Steve, somehow. He had always been so worried that Barnes was going to find a better friend to hang out with.

Ginny had no doubt in her mind that Steve was the only friend Barnes truly wanted around. And for that, she was eternally grateful.

Something was chasing her through the jungle. She’d heard the eerie cry of something like a bird, or maybe it was a boar? It was too distorted to really tell, but the pounding of footsteps had sounded like a drum in her mind, and she’d just started running.

Palm fronds whacked her in the face as she ran, and more than once she stumbled over thick tree roots and vines that got tangled underfoot. The thing behind her was only getting closer, she could feel it; she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her own heart beating and her blood rushing through her ears.

Ginny burst into a clearing, and saw a single man standing there, his back to her. In his right hand, he held a pistol, with his finger on the trigger.

“Please, sir, I need help. There’s something following me, something big, and I—”

“Why would I help you?” the man asked, and Ginny’s blood ran cold. She knew that voice. She knew it like she knew her own heart.

Steve turned around, a cold glare on his face as he studied her. His finger twitched on the trigger.

“Steve,” Ginny said, running up to him and wrapping her arms around him. It still felt strange to her, to feel the muscles of his back rippling under his thin shirt.

He shoved her away, and she faltered. “What…”

“I should let that thing devour you whole,” he said, his voice laced with malice. “It’s the least you deserve.”

“What? Steve, it’s me! It’s Evie. I…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ginny pleaded, trying to get her brother to look her in the eye. He simply shook his head.

“Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t care. You never have.”

“Steve, what are you talking about?!”

“Him!” Steve yelled, pointing somewhere behind her.

Ginny turned to see the dead face of Bennett staring back at her, his eyes glazed over and lifeless but still somehow boring into her soul. She backed away from him, only to hit the brick wall that was Steve behind her. His hands grabbed onto her arms, his fingers digging into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises. She couldn’t turn around or look away from Bennett’s lifeless form standing in front of her.

“You killed him,” Steve muttered, his breath a whisper on the shell of her ear. “You killed him, and you don’t even care.”

Ginny fought against her brother’s grip. “There was nothing I could do!”

Suddenly, Bennett surged forward towards her and took her by the throat. “Liar!” he yelled, with cold spit flying from his cracked and graying lips. She tried to fight against him and her brother, but both of their grips were unrelenting. She shut her eyes against the visage of Bennett, trying to will herself out of this place, but nothing seemed to help.

Steve threw her onto the ground, and her head smacked against hard, packed dirt. She opened her eyes to find her vision swimming, but Bennett nowhere to be found. A part of her breathed a sigh of relief at that, and yet another part knew that this nightmare was far from over.

“Lies won’t save you,” Steve muttered, picking Ginny up by the collar of her shirt. “They didn’t save her.” He thrust her forward towards a new body now, standing with its back to her. Matted blonde hair fell in rough tangles along its back, and the person stood there in a threadbare nightgown, feet bare. It turned around with a sickening groan.

Ma.

Dried blood stained her chin and lips, and her gaunt, sheet-white face was covered with a sheen of sweat. She was dead, for certain, but Ginny could hear her lungs struggling to bring in air. She rattled like a broken radiator, with mucus caught in her throat. She was mumbling something that Ginny couldn’t understand.

“Mama…”

“She’s dead because of you,” Steve said, his voice cold.

“No!”

“Yes!” He ripped her head back by her hair so that she had turned to face him. “You didn’t save her! And you won’t save them!” He cried, pointing behind him. Over his shoulder, Ginny could see the members of Barnes’s squad that she’d had to quarantine. They stood there, lifeless, just like her mother. Just like Bennett.

All of the ones she couldn’t save.

“Steve,” Ginny cried, not caring if the tears in her eyes fell down her face, “please. I tried. I am trying. I’m doing all I can.”

“That’s not enough. You’ll learn.” Steve said. In one swift movement, he raised the pistol in his hand and fired.

Ginny woke in a cold sweat, her hands trembling. She swore she could feel where the nightmare version of Steve had grabbed her by the hair. Her head was pounding where she’d hit it against the dirt in her dream.

On the other side of the barrack, Peggy was sprawled across her bed, snoring lightly. If Ginny had made any sound during her nightmare, the other woman clearly hadn’t heard it. Good, Ginny thought. I don’t want to explain that.

Sleep was out of the question, at least for the next few hours, and the dark of the barrack sent a chill down her spine, so Ginny grabbed her uniform coat and trudged outside. The camp was mostly quiet; only a few soldiers here and there milling about for night patrol.

She slipped quietly into the front triage area of the infirmary tent and lit one of the lanterns there with a match. The utility green canvas warmed with a yellow glow from the flame, and the various bits of furniture and equipment cast long, eerie shadows throughout the space.

Her head was still pounding, and she began to rummage through the boxes of supplies that had yet to be organized, searching for some aspirin and a rag to use for a cool compress. A few moments after she had entered, the flap of fabric leading to the sick beds fluttered open.

“Lieutenant?” a voice asked.

Ginny snapped her head up from the box she was searching through, a brief moment of panic fluttering in her stomach before she remembered that she was, in fact, allowed to look through her own supplies. A younger member of her staff had peeked his head out from his position inside the sick bed area, squinting against the light of her lantern.

“Private Sanborn, sorry to disturb you. I was just looking for something…”

“Oh, yeah, no. You’re all good, just wanted to make sure I hadn’t started hallucinating or somethin’,” Sanborn said, his voice slightly groggy. Ginny eyed him, trying to figure out if she had woken him up.

“You alright there, Sanborn?”

He nodded, rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. I’m all good.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he sighed in defeat.

“Okay, I might’ve been asleep just now, but I’m good for the rest of the night, I swear.”

Ginny shook her head. “Go get some rest, kid. I’ll take over the rest of your shift. When’s your relief due?”

“An hour, I think? Ma’am, you really don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do, and please don’t call me ‘ma’am’. It makes me feel like I’m a hundred years old,” Ginny quipped, flashing a small smile at the man to make sure he knew she was only joking. He flashed her a grateful look before exiting the infirmary.

She took her time walking through the sick beds, checking vitals of the soldiers that lay in them and ensuring they were all sleeping soundly. The rest of the hour she spent simply sitting, watching the soldiers sleep and considering the nightmare that had woken her up. The dark of the bedchamber was helping with her headache, but not with the anxiety coiling in her chest.

Every bump in the night outside brought her back to the unknown beast chasing her through the jungle, and every stray breath or snort from the sleeping soldiers nearby reminded her of the labored breathing that emanated from the vision of her dead mother. She knew there was no rhyme or reason to the dream; Steve would never put her in harm’s way like that. Ma was dead and buried back in Brooklyn. Bennett was…

She felt sick at the memory of Bennett’s dead body beginning to rot in the jungle.

The arrival of the next soldier on duty nearly caused her to jump out of her skin as he entered the bedchamber. With a quick report to him and not much else, Ginny hightailed it out of the dark and back into the triage area, taking a series of deep, cleansing breaths to try and calm the rapid beating of her heart.

She could feel a bead of sweat beginning to drip down the small of her back, and she shrugged off her uniform coat in an attempt to cool off, despite the chill of the night air outside. As she did, bits of cardstock fluttered to the ground. Steve’s postcards and letters. She’d almost completely forgotten they were in her coat.

She smiled and tucked them safely away. As good a time as any to read them, sure, but she didn’t want to head back to her bed yet. The near-empty barrack gave her the feeling of being watched, despite Peggy’s snoring. Instead, she took her lantern and headed towards the southeastern corner of camp, where she knew a creek ran up into the perimeter. The sound of quiet running water always helped to calm her nerves.

It was a funny thing, that. She’d grown up in the loudest city in all of America, yet could almost barely stand the chaos it brought with it. She’d always preferred the quiet peace of the ocean on the shore, or near the docks when she and Steve would visit Barnes at work. Brooklyn didn’t have a lot of creeks to spare, but there was one in the park that she always liked to sit by after her shifts to decompress.

It startled her to find someone already sitting on a fallen log alongside the creek when she approached. He was a soldier, that much was certain by his clothing, but he hadn’t seem to notice Ginny as she walked up.

“Sorry to bother you. Didn’t realize this was a popular spot at this hour,” she remarked. The soldier nearly jumped out of his skin at her sudden words.

It was Barnes.

“Jesus Christ, Gin! I could'a shot you, sneaking up on me like that!”

She looked him over in his regulated pajamas. “Do you even have a gun on you?”

He faltered. “Well, no. But my point still stands; don’t do that.”

The flustered look on his face brought a smile to hers, and she gestured to the log he was sitting on. “This seat taken?”

Barnes gestured for her to sit and scooted over a bit more to make room for her. The flickering candle of her lantern illuminated his face a bit better as she set it down, and she could plainly see the bags under his eyes. He looked away from her quickly after a moment, and she felt a flush run across her cheeks. Perhaps she shouldn’t stare so much.

“What brings you—”

“You doin’ okay?”

They both turned to each other and spoke at the same time. It was a welcome break in the unexpected tension, and Ginny couldn’t stop the laugh that rose from her throat. Barnes chuckled to himself, and gestured for her to speak first.

“I was trying to ask what brought you out here this late,” Ginny said, placing her hands between her thighs and the log. If she didn’t keep them planted, she’d have started fidgeting with the nearest small object, like the lighter Barnes had in his hand. She never recalled him smoking, which was curious.

“Couldn’t sleep. The fresh air helps, sometimes. Sharing a barrack with twenty other unwashed men can get real stifling real quick,” Barnes replied. Ginny nodded in agreement.

“What about you? You doin’ okay?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m good. I woke up a little bit ago and had a headache, so I went to triage to try and find some meds. Ended up scaring the shit outta the kid on watch, so I let him go to bed early and covered the rest of his shift.”

“And now you’re here?”

“Yep,” Ginny replied. She was hesitant to fully tell him why. What would he think? Probably that you’ve got no reason to be out here if you’re getting scared by your own thoughts, she figured.

Barnes eyed her with an analytic look. “You’re lying,” he finally deduced, crossing his arms over his chest. “Out with it.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Bullshit. What’s wrong?”

If any other man had spoken to her like that, she would’ve broken his nose. But this was Barnes—James, the kid she’d known for as long as she could remember, the one that stood up for her brother when no one else would. This was just how they talked to each other. No nonsense. No one had the time for it.

Reluctantly, Ginny told him about her nightmare. Which led to her telling him about Bairoko. She tiptoed around the matter of Steve and Project Rebirth, but otherwise caught Barnes up on everything that had happened since he’d shipped out.

He took it all in stride, and was contemplative when she finally finished. He was quiet. Ginny couldn’t handle the silence.

“I don’t think it means anything. I think I’m just…”

“Scared.”

“Yeah,” Ginny said. The admittance lifted a weight off her shoulders that was immediately placed by a heavier one. What was she doing out here? She wasn’t qualified for war. She was barely qualified for surgery.

"Fear is good. Fear makes you stronger," Barnes finally said, his voice firm.

"It makes me want to throw up."

"Me too. I was just saying that so you didn't think I was a priss."

Ginny was laughing before she could stop herself. She hadn’t been expecting him to admit that so fast. A shout came from one of the nearby barracks, and Ginny instinctively hunkered down in the dark, looking over her shoulder as if someone would come to drag them in the brig for causing a ruckus this late. Thankfully, all they got were some grumbles from the closest squad, but the men seemed to quickly fall back asleep.

Barnes turned back to her and rolled his eyes, though he had a smile on his face that betrayed his true thoughts. “You’ve never known how to control your volume, Gin.”

“Shut up. It’s your fault anyways.”

“I’m entirely innocent.”

Ginny elbowed him in the side, but said nothing. There was a peaceful moment between the two of them as they simply listened to the sound of the creek flowing over the rocks; some crickets sang from somewhere near them. Ginny was pretty sure she could hear an owl somewhere in the tree line ahead.

She missed Steve. It felt wrong without him here. Like she was missing a limb or a vital organ. She had almost no doubt in her mind that Barnes felt the same.

"Are you out here often?" she finally asked, breaking the silence. It was easier to talk than to think about the person they were missing.

Barnes hesitated, eyed her with a quirked brow. She couldn't stop the nervous laugh from bubbling up. "What? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"I'm trying to figure out if that was a pick-up line or a genuine question."

"It was a genuine question and you know it, James!"

"I don't know. You've gone and joined the Army and everything; Ma says I have to be careful with my virtue around you soldier folk."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Oh yes, because your virtue is as pristine as your parents' wedding china, I'm sure."

Barnes threw up his hands in defense. "Woah, hey now! Don't start talkin' like you know anything about that side of me."

"Really? James Buchanan Barnes, the Golden Boy of Brooklyn, ladies-man bar none, has never had sex with a woman?"

He gasped and put a delicate hand to his chest as if he were shocked. "You make it sound so vulgar! My ma was right about you!"

"Cut the shit, James!" Ginny exclaimed, shoving him in the shoulder. She really was trying her best to be serious, but damn it, Barnes had that goofy smile on his face and she couldn't help but smile back at him. She had forgotten how easy it was to laugh when she was around him.

“Shut the hell up out there!” a voice yelled from the same barrack as before. Ginny flinched again and swatted at Barnes as he laughed even harder. Then, a light shone through one of the windows in the barrack, and Ginny panicked. It started to move, like someone had lit a lantern and was walking with it, and before she knew it she was grabbing Barnes by the wrist and bolting back towards the med tent with him in tow.

“Gin, why did we run?! It’s not like we would’ve gotten in trouble,” Barnes asked through labored breaths. He had a flush to his face from the exertion; Ginny couldn’t help but think at how much cuter he looked with a rosy nose.

“It was instinct, I’m sorry! I’ve been brought to the principal’s office far too many times to not run at the first sign of being reprimanded.”

“You’re a lieutenant, Gin. You probably outranked him anyways.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t thought about that. To be fair, she was still getting used to her authority. Half of the soldiers didn’t respect it because she was a woman, and the other half only did so reluctantly because they knew there’d be hell to pay if they didn’t.

“Is this yours?” Barnes suddenly asked, stooping down to pick up a piece of paper from the ground. It was one of Steve’s postcards.

“Oh, yeah, thanks. Must’ve fallen out while we were running,” Ginny said, taking the card from Barnes’s hand. She removed the stack from her pocket and double checked that no others were missing. From the corner of her eye, she saw Barnes staring at the pile of them with an unreadable expression.

“James. You okay?”

He shuffled from foot to foot, scuffing the ground with his boot. He didn’t respond, at least not right away. “So, you have been getting your mail.”

“Yeah, I got it when I got back from the Pacific, why?”

“You see the letters I sent you?”

Ginny did a double take. “You sent me letters?”

Barnes finally looked at her. In his eyes were a mixture of hurt and hope. “Well, yeah. Of course I did. Have been since I got here. To you and to Steve.”

“I never got any, James. I’m sorry. These are all from Steve,” Ginny said, waving the stack of postcards. Somehow, Barnes looked even more defeated at that. “What is it?”

“Never heard back from either of you. For a second, I thought…” he trailed off, shook his head as if he was trying to rid the words from his own mind.

“Thought what?”

“That you two didn’t care anymore. That you’d forgotten about me.”

Ginny’s heart damn near broke in two. She wanted to hug him, wanted to do something to show it, but it just didn’t feel right. Inappropriate, at the very least. Instead, she put a gentle hand on his shoulder and made him look her in the eye.

“I swear to you, James, we could never forget you. Ever.” The soft smile that flashed on his face made her heart lurch. Recover, recover, don’t think about it. “You’re far too annoying for us to ever forget.” Not like that, genius.

Luckily, Barnes’s sense of humor hadn’t been as bruised as his ego, because he started laughing, and Ginny joined him, albeit her laugh was mostly to cover for the blush that threatened its way onto her face. “I think I know why we weren’t getting anything from you, though,” she finally said after Barnes had quieted his laughter.

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“You have to promise not to get upset,” Ginny began.

“What the fuck did Steve do now?!”

Chapter Text

August 15, 1943
107th Regiment Field Hospital; Italy
Two miles from the front lines

An explosion rocked the ground not fifty yards from the field hospital, sending another rush of adrenaline coursing through Ginny's veins as she bandaged the soldier laid out in front of her. The ringing in her ears had become almost standard at this point, and she could hear the soldier whimpering as she dressed his wound.

It consisted of a majority of his right shin; the skin had been torn apart to near shreds by a shrapnel blast that had detonated mere feet away from the man. Ginny had seen worse. He would live, if they made it off the battlefield, that was.

"I don't wanna die, miss! Please don't let me die!" He cried, grabbing Ginny by the shoulder. He was starting to sweat. Fever, likely, Ginny considered. Or just fear. Either way, it was a matter that would have to be dealt with later—there were more and more boys coming in with injuries far worse than his.

Ginny hurried her wrapping and said, "You're not gonna die today, soldier. We'll get you back to camp soon enough."

There was no time to hear his response. One of the medics was calling for her from the other side of the tent.

"Lieutenant! He's aspirating!" The medic yelled, pointing to another soldier on the cot. His entire left side was red; Ginny would've known an arterial bleed anywhere. The medic that had called for her was doing his best to staunch the blood flow coming from the soldier's arm, or what had once been his arm. Now, it was a nub ending in shreds at the middle of his brachium. Another medic held bandages to the soldier's side, which was also covered in blood. During her quick assessment, Ginny caught a glimpse at his left foot. It was twisted backward, attached to the soldier's leg only by his Achilles' tendon. By some miracle, the man was still conscious.

He coughed and sprayed Ginny in the face with blood, then began to choke.

"Someone get me anesthetic!" She yelled, reaching in one of her many uniform pockets for a headlight and her laryngoscope. A moment later, a medic handed her a small ampule of local anesthetic, and she cracked the top of it off using some of the loose fabric of her trousers. Someone handed her a filter needle to draw up the fluid and another medic pried the soldier's mouth open, giving Ginny the chance to empty the contents of the syringe along the back of the soldier's throat. It wasn't the best technique, and he'd likely still feel the scope down his throat, but it was better than nothing.

Being careful and being quick did not go hand in hand, especially not in an environment such as this, but this was where Ginny excelled—chaos. Within moments, she had the tube in place and was handing an oxygen bag to the nearest medic, giving him instructions for how to keep the soldier breathing until they could drain his lungs of blood. If he makes it that long.

The other medics tending to the soldier stared at her with a mixture of awe and fear. She was sure to be a sight—face covered in a spray of blood; drab-olive uniform stained with even more. Her hair had fallen into her face some, and the heat did nothing to help tame its frizz. She'd been told by other nurses before that she had this look about her when things started to get crazy; her eyes lit up in a nonsensical way and at times it seemed like she had a smile on her face. At the time, she'd lied and said it was because she was happy to be saving people.

Truth was, she had no idea why she smiled amidst blood and carnage. Perhaps she should've been worried about that.

"We've got another wave incoming!" Hudlow yelled from the front of the tent. No time to worry.

"Send the truck to tent six, we're full up here! Everyone not actively maintaining life report there," Ginny ordered. The medics around her scattered without question. It was a stark contrast to the soldiers she worked with over in the Pacific; part of her wondered if it was because they were all fellow medical personnel, or if maybe she had just gotten a bad batch. They weren't all like that, though, she thought. It was common for her to think of Bennett these days.

Ginny doused her hands in the trough of cold water that sat outside the tent, doing her best to get the blood off her hands and face. It was hardly sanitary, and part of her cringed at covering herself the already copper-tinted water, but she had no choice. Her and her unit had scrambled to get the field hospital set up in time to respond to the battle, which had broken out far earlier than Colonel Phillips had ordered.

Why the fight had begun so early, no one knew; all Ginny knew was that it was an all-hands-on-deck response. That meant little time to prepare necessary supplies and worry about perfect sterile technique. This wasn't a quiet operating theater run by a stiff physician that insisted on his scalpels being placed at his right hand and his forceps at his left.

This was war.

The truck bearing the familiar Red Cross symbol skidded to a halt in the dirt outside tent six just as Ginny and a few other medics arrived. Someone had found her a spare towel to dry her hands with, and even still the fabric came away pink. Shaking her head, she watched as some of the medics began to help the few soldiers still able to walk disembark from the back of the truck. They were taken toward the inner courtyard of the field hospital, where the less emergent injuries were saw to as needed by the batch of fresh nurses that had arrived a few days prior. She was more concerned about the ones that couldn't make it out of the truck on their own.

"What do we have, boys?" she asked, reaching up to help with the first soldier on a backboard. His body moved along the line of medics that had formed behind her and into tent six towards the open cots.

One of the medics in the truck reached for the next soldier and replied, "Four gunshot wounds in critical areas, two lacerations with enough blood loss to be concerning, three partial amputations..." He trailed at the end of his sentence, as if he wanted to say more, but couldn't.

Two more soldiers were passed down the line and into the tent. "Anything else?" Ginny asked, her concern growing. Field medics had seen damn near everything. If it brought this one pause...she shivered.

"I don't know how he's still alive, Lieutenant. But by God…he is." The medic pulled the final backboard down and out of the truck, lifting the soldier's body entirely on his own. Ginny wondered for a moment how the medic was able to do so, and then she saw what lay on the backboard.

Both legs had been severed above the knee; the right leg appeared to end at the mid-thigh and the left had been blown off almost at the hip joint. The ragged edges of the wounds were charred—cauterized, that's how he hasn't bled out yet, Ginny realized—and there were splinters of bone and metal embedded in the flesh surrounding the sites. The entire left side of the soldier's body was either charred black or red where the layers of skin had peeled away to reveal the muscle and tissue underneath. No, not peeled. Melted. He was missing half of his left arm, his ear, and Ginny could very clearly see the pinkish-grey and mottled white tissue of his brain peeking from the massive wound along his skull.

He looked so small as Ginny followed the medic into the tent. To her complete and utter shock, he opened his eyes as they set him down on a cot and got to work assessing his injuries. He looked right at Ginny.

"Mom?" He asked. His voice cracked as he spoke. Ginny froze.

He was a boy, likely no older than fourteen. A child. In uniform, with a pistol still strapped to his side. She felt sick.

"Lieutenant!" one of the medics yelling for her broke her gaze. "Where do we start?"

There were two others that stood around the boy's bed with her. They both looked at her, utterly helpless, just like she felt.

What will you do, Virginia?

A deep breath in, despite the acrid tang of blood and sweat, and Ginny sprang into action.

"First is that head wound; get sterile gauze on it and wrap it. Do not remove anything you see in the wound, it's too delicate for us to deal with here. Stabilize the neck when you're done and try to keep him talking if you can." One of the medics ran for some gauze and bandages.

Ginny continued, "These amputations are already cauterized, we don't need to be immediately concerned with blood loss, but I want someone on it just in case. Check his tags for his blood type and get me at least a thousand CCs of O-neg hung; I don't like how pale he's running." The other medic nodded and took off towards the supply tent where they kept extra stores of blood.

"Any available personnel, get your asses over here!" Ginny shouted, trying to keep the rising panic out of her tone for the boy's sake.

"Mama, you told me I can't cuss like that," he muttered, looking at Ginny with a glassy gaze.

"I know, baby, I'm sorry. We're just trying to help you, okay? Everything's gonna be fine." She couldn't bring herself to tell the kid the truth. Instead, she smoothed a hand over the uninjured side of his head, the way her Ma used to when she was sick.

Can't cry, not now. Don't let him see, she thought to herself, fighting down the tears threatening to spill onto her face.

Two more medics arrived at her side. "I want you two cleaning and dressing these leg wounds," she ordered, gesturing to the amputations. "I saw some shrapnel and bone fragments, get that shit out and debride any dead tissue from the burns. You run into anything weird, you let me know." She turned over her shoulder to the rest of the tent. "I need someone running vitals on this kid, now!"

A third medic responded and kept two fingers on the boy's pulse point, giving Ginny a thumbs up for the time being. A few moments later, the first medic returned and covered the head wound as Ginny had instructed. She began cleaning and debriding the amputation wound on the boy's arm, all the while humming under her breath. It was a tune she'd made up for Steve during one of his infections; she'd hum it to him before he fell asleep and when he had to take his medicine, something he always hated doing.

Minutes later, the medic she'd sent for blood came back empty-handed. "Lieutenant, the supply tent's a damn wasteland. You couldn't field dress a squirrel from what we've got left."

Ginny cursed. They had more blood back at camp—she had inventoried it herself—but the drive back was almost too long. The boy had probably lost a pint already, and though he wasn't bleeding heavily, he was still losing it at a rate that worried her. An idea entered her head—a crazy one, but it could work.

"What's his blood type?" she asked.

The medic dressing the head wound checked the dog tags hanging around the boy's neck. "A-positive."

"Get me a saline bag, a sixteen-gauge needle, and a line."

"Lieutenant?"

"Just do it!"

She had the supplies in less than a minute, and paused her debridement of the wound. From a table next to her, she grabbed a big metal bowl and emptied out the saline into it. The medics continued to watch her, some nervously, others looking at her like she'd gone crazy. After the bag was empty, she hung it on the IV pole beside the boy's bed, connected one end of the intravenous line to the bottom of the bag, and the other to the needle.

Holding her left arm out straight, she was easily able to see the blue-green tint of her vein just under her skin, and in one swift move she punctured it with the needle. Blood began to flow from her arm and through the line into the bag. She ripped a piece of tape off of the roll she kept in her pocket and secured the needle inside of her arm.

She continued working. The other medics continued to stare at her.

"Did he suddenly heal? Get back to work!"

They snapped back to what they were doing, muttering apologies. Ginny leaned over to check the tags for the boy's name. MICHAEL BARNETT. She started talking to him, calling him by name, asking him his favorite color and which baseball team he wanted to win the World Series. The poor kid was in so much shock that he didn't even register what Ginny and the other medics were doing to his wounds. The skin not covered in blood or dirt had grown clammy. Ginny checked on the bag she'd hung. Barely halfway full. Hooking him up to it now would be pointless.

"Mama, who's that behind you?" Michael suddenly asked, raising his uninjured arm and pointing to the space behind Ginny's left shoulder. She turned, but there was no one there.

"Mikey, honey, what're you talking about?"

"The man, behind you. He looks like...like..." his voice trailed off, and Ginny saw his eyes begin to roll back into his head.

The medic she'd put in charge of monitoring his vitals looked at her. "I lost the pulse."

Ginny's heart dropped, and then everything else around her went quiet. Nothing else mattered in that moment except getting life back in that kid's lungs.

"The hell you did," she muttered, and then began compressions. She felt the boy's sternum break from the pressure she was putting on his chest, but she'd grown accustomed to that. Thirty compressions later, she gave him two breaths into his lungs and waited. Moments drew by like days, but then the medic on vitals gave her a thumbs up and a smile. Michael hadn't opened his eyes again, but she'd take a win where she could get one, and gave the signal for the rest of them to continue working.

By now, the blood bag had filled, so she removed the needle from her arm and grabbed a fresh one, beginning the transfer of her blood into Michael's veins. It wasn't ideal; she'd have much preferred O-negative to give him, but her blood type was a good enough match in an emergency.

It was tedious work, but with three of them debriding Michael's wounds, they were done by the time the blood bag had been emptied into his system. Ginny realized she'd gained a bit of tunnel vision for the task at hand; when she was finally confident that his arm wound had been cleaned properly, she realized that the sounds of battle coming from outside had ceased. Looking behind her at the rest of tent six, she saw it was completely full of various injuries. The courtyard was likely packed to the brim as well. They needed to start moving these men out of the field and back to camp.

Like he'd read her mind, Ginny saw Sergeant Donovan approach at her left. "Lieutenant," he said, eyeing the mess of the boy in front of her, "should I start transporting the injured?"

Ginny nodded. "Yes, please. I'm going to finish what I'm working on here, and then I'll assist. You know the drill: worst off in the trucks first, those able to walk without aid are to report to their CO and await orders. Holler if you need me."

With a nod, Donovan began shouting orders and directing the worst wounded towards the first round of trucks heading back to camp. Satisfied, Ginny wrapped up Michael's arm in as much gauze as she could spare, and let out a long breath.

Blood began to spray from the boy's right leg. The medic that had been debriding that side cursed and fumbled to staunch the blood flow. The adrenaline knocked back into Ginny like a truck; she grabbed a tourniquet from a nearby cart and tied it above the bleed, then grabbed more gauze for the medic. The wad he had already placed against the wound was completely soaked through in a matter of seconds.

"What the hell happened?" Ginny questioned.

The medic stuttered. "Uh...I, uh. I don't know, Lieutenant! I was picking out a bone fragment and it just...exploded."

Ginny cursed. "Must've been blocking an artery or something. This isn't good; I need more blood for him. Someone get me two more needles and lines! How are vitals, Gibbons?"

"Pulse is thready, but present."

"At least we got one good thing going for us. Get him on the first truck outta here. Gibbons and I will go with him, everyone else find something useful to make of yourselves." At her word, they started to move the boy and his IV bag towards one of the trucks that were lined up outside the tent. Someone tossed her the needles and lines, and she pocketed them for the time being, searching for Sergeant Donovan. She found him giving orders to the soldiers and nurses occupying the courtyard.

"You're in charge of this group for right now, Donovan. I've gotta go back with my patient—he’s losing blood fast and I haven't got any blood stores left here. Anyone gives you shit, you have my permission to sock 'em in the face 'til they listen, or just leave them here, I don't really care. Report back once you make it to camp."

"Yes, ma'am." Donovan saluted, and Ginny rolled her eyes. How many times did she have to talk to them about the "ma'am" thing?

She made it back to the truck just as the engine sputtered to life, and before the vehicle began lurching too much, she stuck herself in her right arm and connected the line to the empty blood bag once more. Once her blood starting to flow, she got a second IV started on Michael and connected it to the bag as well. It was harder to keep track of how much blood she was losing that way, but the kid needed blood sooner rather than later. Ginny could do math well enough, at least she hoped.

The ride back to camp was fifteen minutes. It seemed to drag on for an eternity.

Halfway through, Michael's heart stopped beating again.

Thirty compressions, two breaths. Thirty compressions, two breaths. Thirty compressions, two breaths.

He'd been dead five minutes by the time the truck got to camp, but Ginny wouldn't stop.

Thirty compressions, two breaths.

Gibbons called for medics to haul Michael and the backboard out of the truck with Ginny on top of him, counting to herself as she desperately beat on the boy's chest.

Thirty compressions, two breaths.

The bag of blood was filling. If Michael's heart had been working properly, it shouldn't have filled more than a third of the way.

Thirty compressions, two breaths.

Her arms were on fire and the muscles in her legs were shaking. The only thing she could think was one, two, three, four, five...all the way to thirty. Gibbons had stopped checking for a pulse. The blood bag was about ready to burst, and Ginny was finally beginning to feel the effects of her blood loss.

Michael Barnett was declared dead at 18:22.

Ginny had to be ordered out of the infirmary by Colonel Phillips himself, with two lines of blood running down her arms and the still-pulsing rhythm of compressions in her head.

She wasn’t certain how much time had passed between Phillips ordering her out of the infirmary and Barnes sitting down beside her on the ground. The sun had started to set at the very least. The nasty voice in the back of her head sneered at the irony of the red hue it cast over the camp—compared it to the dried blood on her arms.

Barnes’s squad hadn’t been called out for this battle. It was a smaller scale, and he was missing a good chunk of them, anyhow. The testing kits Phillips had ordered had finally arrived early that morning, but Ginny and her people had been called out too early for her to get to testing the men. She was grateful that Barnes had been able to stay behind; she wasn’t sure if she’d have been able to focus on her job knowing that his body could be the next one coming in her tent, eviscerated.

They’d yet to share a battlefield. Ginny wasn’t sure if Barnes would be able to handle it, either. From the way he was looking at her, eyes soft and full of worry, she grew more certain that he wouldn’t.

“I know damn well some of that blood is yours, Gin. Gibbons told me what you did,” he finally said. Ginny kept her eyes focused ahead, watching as an ant attempted to lift a crumb off the ground.

“I did what I had to.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Stop it.” His voice was stern. The ant had begun its march off with the crumb, so Ginny had to look at Barnes now. He had that look on his face, the one he always gave to Steve when he’d done something particularly stupid. It made his eyes look far bigger than they were, and aged him about twenty years. Then again, her brother usually had that effect on people.

“Don’t give me your Steve face. It’s not like I jumped off the docks in the middle of winter just to try and get some girl’s purse back for her.” Steve had actually done that, once. He spent the next month sick in bed for it, with both Ginny and Barnes berating him the entire time they took care of him.

Barnes faltered. “I don’t have a Steve face.”

“Yeah, you do. You got it on right now.”

“I’m just worried about you.”

“Exactly. Steve face.”

Barnes sighed. “I thought you hated the fact that I didn’t worry enough about Steve. Now you’re telling me I have a ‘Steve face’ and getting mad at me for being too worried?”

“You didn’t worry about the right things. You were half his impulse control on a good day, and most days were not good days, Mister Coney Island,” Ginny remarked, remembering the time the two of them had wasted their money and gotten home in the middle of night, backsides damn near frostbitten from sitting in a freezer truck the whole way back to Brooklyn. Barnes rolled his eyes.

“You’re never gonna let me forget that, are you?”

“Nope,” Ginny said, popping the ‘p’.

Barnes grumbled, but said nothing further, and they fell back into silence once more. Ginny’s heart was still beating in her ears, and Barnes had leaned down to fiddle with a piece of grass by his foot. Behind them, nurses and medics still fought to save the lives they could, and Ginny felt utterly useless.

“Lieutenant,” a voice called, barely registering in Ginny’s ears. On instinct, she tensed up, and felt Barnes shift beside her as Donovan approached from one of the infirmary tents.

“Not the time, bud—” Barnes started, standing to his feet as if to block the path to Ginny. She shoved him away, cutting off the rest of his sentence.

“You got a report for me, Sergeant?” she asked, shooting a sideways glare at Barnes as he sat back down, a slight flush rising to his cheeks.

Donovan stood stiff as he read from a notepad. “Seven DOA, twenty-four suffering from minor injuries, fifteen requiring further care, and one deceased upon arrival back to camp.” Ginny had to keep herself from flinching at the last mention. “I haven’t had time to take inventory on supplies yet, but—”

“No need, Sergeant. I can take care of that. Make sure the nurses here have everything under control, then take the rest of the night off. You did good work today,” Ginny said, waving a dismissive hand at the soldier. He threw her a questioning glance, but didn’t protest, simply saluted to her and heeded her instructions. Her gaze trailed after him for a moment, still a bit surprised at his obedience.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Barnes muttered from her side, still looking dejected. She shoved him in the shoulder, trying to lighten both of their moods.

“Don’t worry about it. I appreciate you looking out for me, James. Really.”

He smiled softly. “I try.” Another moment of silence, then a quiet question: “You think you’ll be up tonight?”

Ginny nodded wordlessly. The past two weeks had been ground zero of an unspoken habit between her and Barnes: when they couldn’t sleep, they’d meet up at either the infirmary tent or beside the creek and just sit. Sometimes they’d talk, and other times neither of them had the wherewithal to say a single word. It wasn’t every night; if it had been, neither of them would’ve gotten a wink of sleep.

Every few nights, more often than not, and sometimes only for a few minutes. Other nights, they were up until the sun began to rise, giving the two of them a glimpse of the camp drowned in blue and purple hues. It was a strangely beautiful sight, Ginny had decided. The gentle fade from darkness to light was an ironic contrast against the war camp, always brewing for some fight or another.

“Promise me you’ll at least try to sleep some,” Barnes said, though his tone was laced with what sounded like pre-emptive resignation, like he knew that it would be damn near impossible for her to keep that promise. Even so, Ginny gave him a tight smile.

“I promise.”

Ginny really did try. For all of two minutes.

She just couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t get the face of the child that had died under her hands. Couldn’t shake the rattling sounds of gunfire and hollow echoing of explosions in her chest.

She tossed and turned, even tried putting her pillow at the foot of her bed, but nothing seemed to be able to work. Instead of staring at the dull ceiling of the officer’s tent, she opted to try and get something productive done and headed over to the med tent.

The place was a mess from the chaos of the day, and rather than forcing someone to stay behind and clean it all, Ginny had opted to leave it for everyone to tackle in the morning. There were pieces of gauze littering the ground, bloodstained linens haphazardly strewn about the cots and backboards, and discarded equipment laid on any available surface. She took a deep breath as she analyzed the mess, and then set herself to work on picking everything up.

It was tedious work, and a part of her hoped that maybe it might help put her to sleep, but she eventually began to make some headway after about thirty minutes of cleaning. She hummed a slow tune to herself as she worked; it was a soft, easy jazz song that Ma had always loved. As she cleaned, she remembered spinning around in the small living room to the radio with Ma and Steve, who had two left feet even worse than Ginny did. She remembered how Ma would laugh as her and Steve would end up colliding with each other as they danced, knocking each other onto the floor in a tangle of limbs.

She remembered how a few days after Ma’s funeral, the song had come on the radio again. Barnes had come by earlier in the day to make sure that Ginny and Steve had enough to eat, and the three of them were sitting in a peaceful quiet in the living room—Barnes and Steve were both sketching in their respective notebooks, and Ginny was re-reading Gatsby. The song had come on with its soft piano introduction, and Ginny had been the first to hear it. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was on her feet and spinning around in the afternoon sunlight.

Barnes had looked at her like she’d grown two heads at first, but realized what was happening after Steve decided to join in, doing his best to lead Ginny in a twirl despite being hardly able to reach over her head. Barnes had watched the twins dance around for a minute or two before standing up and joining them himself, with decidedly better dance moves. He had taken Ginny and twirled her around for a moment before bringing her into a low dip, while Steve swayed back and forth with a sad smile on his face. After he released Ginny from his grip, he’d stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Steve and maneuvered him through a jazz square, egging him on as Steve’s steps grew more and more confident.

Ginny had stopped dancing for a moment and watched the two of them dancing together, and for the first time since Ma had died, she felt like things were going to be okay. Barnes took her by the hands again and led her in a waltz around the room that very obviously did not match the tempo of the song as Steve continued perfecting his jazz square. The song had ended with the three of them collapsed in a heap in the middle of the living room, laughing as Barnes said, “To Sarah! By far the best dancer out of any of us here, that’s for sure.”

Ginny didn’t even realize she had tears in her eyes as she gathered up some more bloodstained towels from the ground. She also hadn’t heard the footsteps of someone entering the med tent behind her.

“Lieutenant.” The voice was familiar and made Ginny nearly jump out of her skin in surprise. She turned around, clutching a hand to her chest and willing her heartbeat to return to normal, and saw Private Hodge standing before her in his sleepwear.

Ginny had known that Hodge had gotten reassigned to the 107th after his misfortune in Project Rebirth, but part of her had tried to ignore that fact from the second she arrived to camp. She figured that he had tried to do the same, or perhaps he didn’t even realize she was part of the SSR reinforcements that had arrived. So what the hell was he doing in his skivvies in the infirmary at two in the morning?

He looked haggard. Had he been part of the squads sent out earlier in the day? If he had, he wasn’t one that came across her tables. Part of her was happy to see a lack of injuries. Another part hoped that maybe he’d get another good shiner or two, at least.

“Hodge,” Ginny started, taking a long breath in to try and steel her nerves. “You startled me. Is there something I can help you with?”

Hodge let out a dry laugh. “Yeah, actually. I had a question for you. Been meaning to ask for a while,” he said, advancing slowly towards her. Ginny willed herself to keep her feet planted on the ground; she was done cowering in front of men that thought she had no place in the war.

“By all means, please,” she replied, gesturing for Hodge to continue with his question.

“I was just wondering how many times you had to fuck the Colonel to get him to choose that beanpole Rogers for the Project over me,” Hodge said, still advancing towards her. He cocked an eyebrow, and Ginny faltered.

“I beg your—”

Before she registered what was happening, Hodge had lashed out and wrapped his hand around her throat, squeezing as he drew her within centimeters of his face. “Oh you can beg, bitch. You can beg all you’d like, but I doubt anyone around would hear you.” Ginny struggled against his grip on her throat, but Hodge had the unfortunate advantages of both strength and surprise against her. “C’mon now, Lieutenant,” he spat her rank in her face as he spoke, “tell me. How many times did you get on your knees for him, huh? Or maybe that’s not your style, no. Maybe you rode his ass all night long while we were in Jersey.”

Ginny tried shaking her head, but Hodge’s grip was relentless, and she could hardly move her neck without running the risk of snapping it. She tried to choke out her denial, tried to tell him that he had it all wrong, but his hand was crushing her windpipe and stopping the words from coming out.

“Or maybe,” Hodge said, his voice dangerously low, “you let him take you from behind. Like this.” He spun Ginny around by the throat until her back was pressed up against his chest. She could feel his breath hot on her ear as he leaned in.

“Yeah, I think that was it. You let him fuck you just like this, like the dumb fucking slut you really are. You pretend to be this high and mighty officer, you think you’re better than the rest of us here, but I know the truth. You’re just trying to make sure that you’re set for the rest of your life. Either by making your brother America’s hero, or by fucking your way to the top of the command chain.”

Ginny gasped for air and was finally able to let out a cry of, “No!” before Hodge grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. She cried out at the flash of pain, to which Hodge responded by moving the hand that was around her throat to cover her mouth. Ginny was awarded a brief breath before Hodge caught on and pinched her nose between two fingers while still covering her mouth.

She felt a hand snake its way over her shoulder and down her front; Hodge tore off the first few buttons of Ginny’s shirt and shoved his hand under the fabric, grabbing her breast roughly and pinching the skin. Ginny flinched against the sharp pain and thrashed in Hodge’s grip as his hand continued to move lower.

“I think I’ll see for myself just what the Colonel got to experience, yeah? I’ve been wondering how good this pussy had to be for him to drop me for someone like your brother.” Hodge slid his hand down between her legs and grabbed her, hard. She tried to scream, but the sound was muffled against his hand. Amidst her panic and the growing feeling of lightheadedness, she could hear Hodge fumbling around with the fabric around his hips.

In a last-ditch effort to get away, Ginny bit him until she tasted blood.

Hodge cried out in pain and instinctively loosened his grip on her, enough for Ginny to reach out and grab an abandoned scalpel off a nearby cot and jam the blade into the meat of his thigh.

Finally, Hodge lost his hold on Ginny completely and fell to the ground, clutching the wound Ginny had made. She scrambled as far away from him as she could get, still clutching the scalpel in her hand as she crouched into a tense defensive position.

“Fucking…bitch!” Hodge snarled. He rolled over onto his knees, almost like he was about to stand back up.

Ginny did her best to brace herself for Hodge to come charging towards her again and was still trying to catch her breath when she heard a voice call from outside.

“Gin? You alright in there?”

Before she could respond, Barnes had ducked into the med tent with a concerned look on his face. “Hey, I heard—” he stopped when he saw Hodge collapsed on the ground, blood seeping from the wound in his thigh. “What the hell…”

“Barnes! Help me with this bitch, will you?! She’s fucking crazy!” Hodge exclaimed, looking up hopefully at Barnes, who was still flicking his confused gaze between Hodge and Ginny. She couldn’t even think of anything to say; she was just getting past the fuzzy feeling in her head from the lack of oxygen, and she could still taste Hodge’s blood on her tongue. When she breathed in, her breaths were ragged and sharp. She was keyed up to eleven, hardly able to hear Barnes when he started speaking to her.

“Gin. Gin! Look at me, hey!” He said, advancing towards her slowly like she was a wild animal. She was certain she looked like one, at the very least. “It’s okay. Give me the scalpel.” Barnes reached out a hand towards where she was still clutching the instrument. Ginny hesitated for a second, looking between Hodge and Barnes. She felt like a cornered animal with no escape route.

Slowly, Barnes crept toward her until his hand was on hers and had taken the scalpel from her grip. As soon as her hands were empty, she felt them start to tremble. Barnes tucked the scalpel away in his pocket and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Alright, you’re okay. What happened?”

“I told you, she—”

“I wasn’t asking you!” Barnes snapped. When he turned back to Ginny, his eyes were just as calm as they had ever been. “Gin?”

“He…uh. Hodge, he—he tried…” Ginny could barely get the words out before choking on a cough. Barnes took stock of her appearance; her hair was mussed up in the back of her head, her clothes rent askew, and the beginnings of a bruise forming around her neck. She didn’t even need to say anything else.

Barnes was on Hodge in a flash, hauling the man off the ground by his shirt. He shoved him back against one of the supports of the tent and brought his face mere inches from Hodge’s. There was ice in his tone as he muttered to Hodge, “If I ever see you near her again—hell, if I even catch you so much as looking in her direction, I’ll string you up the flagpole by your balls and let you hang there until they come to court-martial your ass, understood?” Hodge didn’t answer; he was still gasping in pain from the harsh movement on his leg.

Not satisfied with Hodge’s response, Barnes reached a hand down a pressed a finger into the wound Ginny had made. “Did I make myself clear, Hodge?” Barnes asked again, his tone terrifyingly steady.

“Yes!” Hodge cried out, biting his lip against the pain. Just as quick as he had grabbed him, Barnes released the man and walked over to one of the supply boxes near Ginny. He fished around for a moment before pulling out a suturing kit and tossing it towards Hodge, who had crumpled back to the ground.

“Fix yourself. And the next time you need medical attention, you find anyone else. You don’t bother her ever again.” Hodge nodded and took the suturing kit as he limped out of the med tent into the dark.

As soon as he was gone, Ginny fell in on herself, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she felt herself start to slip into that back corner of her mind again. Barnes was at her side in a moment with a hand hovering over her back, like he was afraid if he touched her she’d fall apart. He gave her a look, one that silently asked for permission. Rather than say anything, Ginny simply fell into him and tried to regain control of her breathing. Barnes wrapped a gentle arm around her and let her sit there for what felt like hours. The whole time, his hand was tracing patterns on her back. Just like Ma.

“Are you hurt, Gin?” Barnes finally asked. She could feel his voice rumbling from where her head was pressed against his chest. She shook her head but said nothing. Apparently, this wasn’t good enough of answer, because Barnes pushed Ginny off of him and gave her a once over himself.

“Fucker’s lucky you didn’t kill him,” he murmured, tilting her chin up to examine the bruising along her throat.

“Me?” Ginny asked in a rasping voice.

“Yeah. You can’t tell me you missed his femoral artery on accident. I know you.”

Ginny smirked at the comment. “Surprised you have that much faith in my aim, Barnes.”

He laughed and let her chin drop. “You’ve rung my bell enough times to give me a healthy fear of your skill,” he admitted. Ginny laughed at that, which quickly turned into a cough. The smile from Barnes’s face was gone immediately and replaced with concern again. Steve face.

“You sure you’re okay?” He asked. Ginny nodded.

“I will be.”

“Good, because Steve would absolutely annihilate me if I let you get hurt out here,” Barnes joked. After another minute or two, Ginny rose on shaky legs and did her best to smooth out her appearance. Barnes stood along with her, still watching her carefully, and offered his arm to her. Ginny gave him a confused look.

“No way in hell I’m letting you walk back to the barracks alone. It’s either this, or I carry your ass there,” Barnes explained, earning him an eye roll from Ginny. She took his arm nonetheless, and allowed him to escort her back to the female officer’s barracks.

Under the single light atop the front door, Barnes looked painfully similar to how he did when they were teenagers. When he’d stop by after working a shift at the docks and bring dinner for her and Steve, when he spun her around the living room in a desperate attempt to cheer her up after burying her mother. None of them had any idea what they were going to get into. A part of her missed that innocence, that naiveté.

Even though he still had that furrow in his brow, a signature of the Steve face, Barnes somehow looked younger in the orange glow of the lamp light.

It reminded her of a late-night a few years prior, when some schmuck had ditched her for a prettier, older woman at the bar, and left Ginny wandering home in the cold with only half her senses and not even a nickel for a cab. Somehow, some way, Barnes had found her; gave her his jacket and wrapped an arm around her waist, guiding her home through her half-drunken rambling and helping her into her bed amidst a panic-ridden Steve.

She couldn’t remember the name of the guy she’d originally been out with, or the name of the bar he’d ditched her at, not even really what month it had been. But she remembered Barnes: his brow furrowed underneath an orange-glowing streetlamp, his arm warm around her, and his voice kind and quiet as he guided her home. She remembered watching him from her tiny bedroom window, not turning away from their tenement until she’d turned off the light.

I can’t rely on that, on him. He won’t always be there, Ginny told herself.

But even still, as she hung her torn coat up in her wardrobe and let her hair down, she caught a glimpse out one of the barrack windows.

James Buchanan Barnes stood there, hands in his pockets, furrow in his brow, and only turned away towards his tent when she turned off the light.

By some miracle, Ginny finally slept.