9. Sins Of The Father 8

Steve stood outside the brownstone, his hands in his pockets. Beside him, Phil stood calmly, waiting for his lead.

“I can’t believe Howard bought the whole building.”

Phil tipped his head in acknowledgment. “He really did expect to find you fairly quickly.”

“He had no reason to expect I’d be alive,” Steve said, squinting behind his sunglasses.

“Howard understood Erskine’s work better than anyone else; I consider it a failure on our part not to have paid more attention to the fact that he did expect you to turn up alive. That was a massive clue that we simply dismissed.”

Steve smiled at him. “Everyone just thought he was being a crazy eccentric.”

“Yes. Not unlike his son, in that regard.”

Steve shook his head. “I hope you know better, now.”

“Yes, now I know know the Starks are crazy eccentrics,” Phil said, nodding seriously. Steve laughed. Then he looked up at the house, his home through most of the late 1930s and until he joined the Army. His military pay had helped him hold on to the place, which he had done as insurance against being washed out of basic training. Afterward, when he left on tour, he paid his landlord irregularly but always got generous promises that his stuff was safe, the flat was still his, and it would be waiting for the Great Captain America when he came home from defeating Hitler.

The irony was more than a little painful.

The front door opened and a startled, small woman looked straight at Steve, squeaked, and then ran back inside.

Phil smiled. “I think you’ve been made.”

“I think so. Let’s go see what the director can show us.”

As they traipsed up the stairs, a different woman appeared at the door. She was short and a little frumpy, but dressed in a slacks and a stylish blouse in dark blue. Her hair was salt and pepper gray, a great mass of tangled curls held back, as far as Steve could tell, by magic.

“Captain Rogers!” She sounded familiar, like Brooklyn and his childhood, and Steve instinctively smiled at her as he held out his hand.

“Director Fulton?”

She shook his hand firmly, her grip strong despite her long, soft fingers. “Please call me Brenda.”

“And you can call me Steve. Thanks for opening the museum up on your day off. This is Agent Coulson, he is here in an official capacity.”

Phil raised his eyebrows subtly at that but took off his sunglasses and shook Brenda’s hand. “A pleasure to meet you. I haven’t been here in several years.”

Sighing in frustration, Steve turned to Brenda. “As I said in my email, I was completely unaware that this museum even existed, despite the fact that everyone else I know seems to have been here.”

Brenda nodded, her eyes soft. Steve upped his assumption about her age to around 50, based on the crow’s feet around her eyes. She carried herself well, and while she wasn’t beautiful she radiated kindness and intelligence.

“Come on in. I assure you, I'm glad to come in for a personal tour, it's worth losing my usual weekend. I figure you want to see Rogers’…uh, I mean, your apartment first?” She cringed at the mistake, but it made Steve smile.

“Yeah, I would.”

The small, rail-thin woman who had spotted them from the front door dashed in and stood in front of Steve. She was even shorter than the director, and a little younger, and dressed in an ill-fitting sweater and skirt that almost matched. “Captain!”

“Hi.” Steve held out his hand. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Brenda looking exasperated.

“I’m…I’m so happy!” The woman shook his hand vigorously with a fierce grip.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Captain Steve Rogers.”

She flushed, pleased and embarrassed. “I know!”

“Sally, please let go of Captain America’s hand.”

Sally dropped his hand. “You’re here!”

“Yes, I am.” Steve smiled at Sally, figuring out that maybe she was somewhat challenged in some way and worried about hurting her feelings.

Brenda stepped forward. “Sally helps us a lot around here. She’s a huge fan.” She turned to Sally. “Maybe later when I’m done showing him around, Captain America will sign your new comic book for you?”

Sally grinned so widely that Steve worried she would hurt herself. She gave him a teary-eyed look and then dashed off again. Brenda looked over at Steve. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Some people like to make fun of Sally’s obsession with you. She’s got a heart of gold and she worships you, but she’s easily hurt. She’s great for answering emails and doing research, but I usually try to shield her from our patrons. There was really no way I could in good conscience not let her know you were coming in today. She's mostly doing some filing in my office, though.”

Steve stared at the director for a moment before answering. “I’m honored that you have her working here with you, in my former home.”

Brenda studied him in turn. “You mean that, don’t you?” She turned to Phil. “Is he really like this?”

Phil nodded solemnly, and Steve felt like he was a third wheel in the conversation all of a sudden.

“He is. It’s quite an honor.”

Brenda blushed. “I imagine it is.” She turned back to Steve. “Well. Uhm. Let’s go.” She abruptly turned and headed to the stairs. In the main room Steve saw hints of exhibits about Brooklyn, which he was anxious to see, but he followed the director upstairs towards his apartment.

It really was pretty much the same. The room could only be accessed by the front door, but it was roped off inside. He stood in the middle of the room, looking around. Over his bed were dozens of his practice drawings, just as he had left them tacked to the wall when he headed off to basic training in 1943, but they looked odd. Brenda caught his gaze.

“They are copies. When the museum was created, the director found the originals yellowing and crumbling. They preserved what they could and re-created them. We replace them every five years so they don’t yellow. The flat is meant to look like you just walked out.”

Phil cleared his throat. “Two drawings actually made it onto the private market. One was purchased by Howard Stark in 1973 and donated back to the museum; the other was last seen on auction by Christie’s, bought by an anonymous collector in 1999 for $68,000.”

Steve choked. “Sixty eight thousand dollars?”

Brenda shrugged. “Your notebook from the USO tour went for $218,000 in 2003. Sotheby’s.”

“Again, anonymous collector. Assumed to be the same person; most people suspect a wealthy Bahrainian comic book connoisseur.” Phil sighed, as if genuinely disappointed that he wasn’t the lucky man.

Steve stared at them, remembering Tony's off-hand comment about 'the war sketchbooks' and realizing what he had meant. He had seen one of his sketchbooks, water damaged and slightly ripped up, on display at the Smithsonian, but he had not thought it more than curiosity at the time. Steve knew that in the two years he tramped through Europe, he had filled up half a dozen sketchbooks, and he wondered how many were still floating around, with collectors paying tens of thousands of dollars for sketchbooks Steve had bought for a quarter and filled up with silly cartoons of the Commandos and half-assed sketches of landscapes. “You’ve got to be joking.”

“No. That’s why the originals are heavily insured and under lock and key now. We learned our lesson the hard way.” Brenda glared at the copies on the wall. “Everyone wants a piece of Captain America.”

“That’s ME.” Steve pointed at himself, and both Brenda and Phil looked at him in surprise. “This? Is me!” He pointed at the room. “That’s my hairbrush! Are you telling me someone would try to sell that?”

Brenda gave Phil a sheepish look before answering. “That’s why it’s a replica too. I, uh, I can show you your actual hairbrush, if you want, it’s down in the vault in the basement—”

“Oh my God.” Steve looked at the bed, his blood going cold. He stepped over the cord barricade and walked up to the frame. “This is real.” He let the fragile green silk run through his fingers.

Brenda nodded. “Yes. We don’t know the significance, of course; most scholars think it was just decorative…uh.” Her voice trailed off as Steve gently went to his knees, holding the silk to his face. It was too late to cry for the kid who died, too late to do anything about it more than what he and Bucky had done. Their first mission together, and Steve hadn’t even known that much at the time.

The silk had not aged well, going dull and delicate from all the years hanging listlessly off the frame of the bed.

Steve realized his eyes were closed when he felt Phil’s hand on his shoulder. “Captain Rogers?”

Steve let the silk fall from his hands, and stood up. Phil looked up at him, worried.

“I’m not sure the world is ready for that story, even now.”

Phil and Brenda exchanged looks. She took a breath before speaking. “You’re under no obligation, Captain. This tour is for you. This was your home, and I’m sorry if we seem a little cavalier about that. We don’t mean to be. This is, in so many ways, like a shrine to so many of us.”

Steve looked at her, wondering yet again how people really saw him. So much history had passed by him, and much of it was complex and contradictory. He had read all the debriefings, and the history books that Stark downloaded onto his tablet. He knew so much, and yet suddenly the most important things were mysteries to him. Just as, for so many people, he was a mystery to them.

The question was whether it was right to take the mystery away from them. There in his old room, a place that had become a pilgrimage for thousands of people over the years, he didn't think it was.

He turned to Phil. “What would make you lose faith in Captain America?”

“Nothing.” Phil’s answer was instantaneous.

“Not even if he witnessed a murder, and did nothing about it?”

Phil frowned. “That…you wouldn’t do that.”

“You’re right. I did do something about it.” Steve ran his fingers over the silk again, ignoring the genuinely shocked looks from Phil and Brenda. Taking a deep breath, he moved away from the bed, from the memories of Bucky spread out there, from the years Steve spent wondering what his future would hold.

“My comics survived. Some of my other drawings survived, obviously. I’d like to know what else.”

“The pin-up drawings you did for friends of Sergeant Barnes.” Brenda frowned, thinking, and looked at Phil, who picked up the thread.

“Only seven of those are known to exist. None of your original work for Treat ‘Em Right Publishing remains, only the printed versions.”

“Thank God for that,” Steve said with genuine gratitude. He figured Tijuana bibles would be one step too far for most anyone. Phil continued frowning, although his expression changed to one of intense scrutiny.

Brenda stepped forward, tipping her chin up.“Captain, to be blunt: are you saying that scarf has something to do with a murder? That you witnessed a murder?”

Steve held his breath for a second. “I’m not comfortable saying anything else about that. Just…make sure nothing ever happens to that scarf. Please, ma’am: it’s important to me.” Steve knew it was a low blow to put it to her like that, but it had the desired effect. She straightened up and nodded like a soldier who had just been given orders.

He looked over at the trunk next to his bed, then set about clearing off the top of it to open it up. Picking up one of the blankets, which he had never owned, he turned back to Brenda. “Did Howard go through here before he donated the building?”

She gave him a confused expression for a moment before it cleared. “Oh, you mean Howard Stark. Honestly, I don’t know. If he did take anything, he did not make a record of it. What you see here is what we, or rather my predecessor, found. Why? Are things missing?”

Steve gazed down at where all of his very incriminating pre-war sketchbooks had been stored. They represented years of drawings from the drag shows at Little Buck’s, the gay world of the cafeterias, and Everard bathhouse where Steve sketched ideas for the bibles. Pages and pages of Bucky, sitting and laughing and nude. Anything that might have ever sullied the honorable name of Captain America was gone. Steve put the musty blankets back where he found them and replaced everything on the trunk as they had been. He looked over at the green scarf again, figuring that Howard had not taken it simply because he did not know its significance.

“I think I’ve seen enough. Why don’t you show me the museum section?” Steve lead the way out of the room, imagining closing the door behind as he went.

Brenda took them through the standard tour, although Steve held them up a lot by pointing out where things used to be, like the telephone that had been placed awkwardly in the front parlor. Most traces of the familiar were gone, though, because other than his flat, a slightly larger flat that had been the home of the five McLeod brothers, and the water closet, every room in the place had been stripped down to the brick and repurposed for museum exhibits. Brenda asked Steve a lot of questions about the McLeod's, because apparently other than their names there was nothing left in their two-room flat when they all went to war.

Steve was impressed by the museum, and learned a lot about the history of Brooklyn himself. He said as much to Brenda, saying that he had just been born and raised there, not written a thesis on the place. Even Phil laughed at that.

But on the other hand, it was also exhausting. All the photographs of food lines and hungry families and factory workers of the Depression were black and white, while Steve's memories were in technicolor. The old, battered examples of dry good groceries were the same brands he had stuffed into his mesh shopping bag at Cecilia's father's store, but the labels were yellowed and the cans rusty. There was a small display about the Prohibition with a photograph of a glamorous speakeasy, but there was nothing about the dirty neighborhood bars or the brothels or the fairies who hooked by the docks. It was everything he remembered, but nothing like he remembered it.

"What do you know about Bucky?" Steve turned to Phil as they were stopped in front of the Prohibition exhibit.

"There is only one biography on Bucky Barnes. I've read it, of course, but I have to admit it leaves a lot out because there simply isn't much left in the written records. His parents died young, like yours, and like you he was taken in by family rather than sent to an orphanage. We know he did some carpentry work, possibly as an apprentice, before he joined the Army." Phil shrugged. "There are a lot of holes there. Most of what we know comes from statements you made about him to the press, his role as a Howling Commando, and the three surviving letters you wrote him prior to your joining the Army."

Brenda was nodding along until she looked at Steve. "Oh my God, Captain, do you need to sit down?"

Phil stepped up but Steve pushed him away, air tight in his lungs. "My surviving letters?"

"V-Mail that you sent to Barnes in early 1943," Phil clarified slowly.

Brenda nodded again. "They were found with…oh, with Sergeant Barnes' belongings. Stark — Howard Stark — had Barnes' trunk shipped here. You were listed as his only living relative, but you…oh." She looked helplessly at Phil.

"You went into the ice just days after he died, Steve. Stark grabbed everything of yours, including Barnes' trunk, and sent it stateside. Most of that was eventually part of the foundation gift to the Smithsonian. I believe that's where the letters are."

"I didn't see them there." Steve wrapped his arms around himself, trying to remember what the letters said. It was V-Mail so there was no way he wrote anything incriminating, but it was private nonetheless. He did not even know why Bucky had held on to those three letters for two years. He must have been carting them around with him the whole time he was with the Commandos.

"The Captain America exhibit rotates items from its…from your collection," Brenda explained, gently putting one hand on his arm. "It's possible you were there when more of the military items were on display?"

Steve nodded. His letters.

"Bucky boxed, in the clubs. For money. Before they repealed Prohibition we was a runner for one of the gangsters." Steve stared the photo of the speakeasy, a bright and shiny picture of people partying. He didn't recognize the place, but that did not surprise him, most of the big ones had closed down quickly after the repeal. His personal haunts had been the local bar with Bucky…and Greenwich Village. "Bucky had a life. A whole life, with me, we grew up together. But it's not like he's even here." He waved one arm around to indicate the museum.

Brenda patted his arm again. "This is all a little overwhelming, I think. Would you like some fresh air?"

"Yes, please."

Somehow Brenda got Sally to appear out of nowhere, and she led him through the exhibits and the back offices out to the small alleyway in the back that seemed to be the one thing other than his own flat that had not changed much. Although it did not smell too rank, the way it used to stink of trash and urine and sex, so Steve sat down on the wooden steps and looked up at the sliver of sky above him.

"Are you okay?" Sally asked slowly. "Ms. Fulton looked worried. They're talking about you, you know."

"I know. That's okay. I think I upset them."

"You wouldn't do that. You're Steve Rogers."

He looked over at her, then patted the space next to him. She smiled and plopped down. He could not really figure her age. She acted very young, but there were tell-tale signs of age around her face. He supposed it didn't really matter. "I would never upset them on purpose. But…you know I used to live here?"

She rolled her eyes. "That's why I work here! You're my hero!"

Steve smiled. "Thank you."

"So why does that upset you?"

"Because, well, because everything's changed."

"Things change all the time, though. The grocery by me stopped selling my favorite yogurt." She huffed in annoyance. "It was blueberry. It's popular! Why would they stop selling my blueberry yogurt?"

"I really don't know."

"Me either. So there it is. Things change."

Steve nodded. "I suppose. There are a lot of things I don't miss, like the Depression. That was pretty horrible. But I miss my…I miss Bucky."

"I love Bucky! He's so handsome!" She gave a little swoon, then smiled at him mischievously.

"More handsome than I am?" Steve smiled back at her.

She studied him closely, then nodded. "Yes."

"I always thought so too!" He laughed, pleased with her honesty.

She shrugged. "But you're Steve Rogers. You're Captain America! So that makes you better."

Steve sighed. "You know why I really got upset in there?"

"You were sad?"

"Right. But not because I miss the past. I do, a little. I miss feeling like I belong. But I was upset because for all that everyone seems to know everything about me, they got an awful lot wrong. And I don't know what to do about that."

"People are wrong a lot. They think I'm stupid, and I'm not. Things are just harder for me. But they make fun of me and laugh at me—" She stopped, clutching her hands together. "But they laughed at you too, they said skinny Steve Rogers would never amount to anything. You fought back! You showed them that you're strong, and good. I try to remember that, every day."

Steve felt like he was one step from breaking down in tears. "That…that was the serum, Sally."

"No!" She looked surprised. "No, you were like that before the treatment. Everyone says so! Dr. Erskine's notes about you are very, very clear: 'a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows compassion.' Small or big, you were always a good man. No matter what anyone said about you. You always stood up for the underdog. You always treated everyone equally. You were always a gentleman. That's why you're Captain America." She patted his leg. "That's why you'll always be Captain America, no matter what anyone says about you."

Steve reached out and pulled her into a short, tight hug. She patted his back awkwardly before pushing him away and standing up. "Have you seen the school room exhibit? It looks awful, I wouldn't want to go to school in the 1930s."

Steve followed her lead, standing up. "On the flip side, I graduated high school right before my fifteenth birthday." He opened the door to let her back into the building.

She peered up at him. "Lucky!"

Steve almost laughed. "Trust me, I thought so to."

He apologized to Brenda and Phil when he found them in her office. They both treated him like glass for the rest of the visit, which Steve found annoying, but he was able to appreciate the museum without incident. Before he left, he promised Brenda that he would attend the big anniversary party in the fall.

He knew that was going to be the last time he ever returned to the Rogers' House Museum.