Small, complete fic
Title: Trust
Author: Rosieknight
Rating: Everyone!
Fandom: Captain America: The First Avenger
Characters: Steve Rogers aka Captain America
Disclaimer: I don't own Captain America, obviously. I just enjoyed writing about the character for fun.
Words: 794
He wants to trust them, he really does. But every time he starts to relax and think that he can trust them, he flashes back to the room he woke up and he can’t anymore. Steve doesn’t trust them enough to point out all of their mistakes in making that room; that set. Not when he might be trapped within their “gentle” illusion again.
Steve doesn’t tell them that he knew the room was wrong from the moment he first woke up, before he even opened his eyes.
The sounds were wrong. Not just the “radio broadcast” of a game he’d attended in person, but the lack of noise. If he’d supposedly been out in the country, Steve could’ve understood the near silence.
Instead, they claimed he was in a recovery room in New York City. (A literal truth, though he didn’t know it then.)
What kind of recovery room would lack the sounds of other patients, of doctors and nurses on their rounds, or candy-stripers and friends and family visiting the ill and injured? Where in New York would be so silent, with no sounds of vehicles or people or life? There weren’t any sounds of traffic or kids playing or music spilling out of an open window.
They had his file. They had to know about his serum-enhanced senses. Did they really think that he’d believe he was home without even the faintest murmur of outside noise?
The smells were wrong, too. The set lacked the familiar and hard to describe “hospital smell” Steve remembers from far too much of his childhood. The scent of disinfectant barely masking the odors of illness and death and fear that seems to linger in all hospitals, even field ones.
Also missing was the pervasive aroma of tobacco smoke, meaning no doctors making their rounds with a cigarette in their lips. No visitors or patients lighting up as they chat. And that might happen at a private place, but there’d still be a hint of smoke through the open windows.
(It’s a stupid thing, but Steve finds he misses the smell of smoke sometimes. He understands why places are smoke-free. He does. But there are times when it’s just another reminder of how much things have changed around and without him.)
Opening his eyes just made things worse. The room looks right, but the views from the windows are wrong. The buildings are flat and fake to his eyes, in that way only paintings and photographs have. And when he looked, Steve couldn’t see any details. No slightly crumbling brick, bird droppings in inaccessible places, or laundry hanging out to dry met his gaze. Not even a glimpse of traffic at a distance only someone like him would be able to see, just a blur of an image that has been enlarged too much for its resolution.
The shadows and lighting were all wrong too. Looking out of one window, the light was coming from the left and the shadows where on the right. But the other had the light on the right and the shadows to the left. And to make things even more confusing the actual light visible from the windows didn’t match with either set of shadows.
(Steve suspects that only an artist would notice that and that there aren’t many artists working for S.H.I.EL.D. It’s the kind of mistake first year art students learned to avoid making by the end of their first semesters, back when he attended art school.)
Then there was not-Peggy.
Steve doesn’t know the name of the female agent who impersonated Peggy Carter and he’s not sure he wants to find out. She might resemble the woman he left behind, but she doesn’t react like Peggy.
It’s not her accent. Steve had felt a certain amount of relief that her accent was American and not English. He can even guess why they thought she was American. The photograph of her in his compass was in an American Army uniform, and not the SAS uniform she’d never let herself be photographed in lest the image ruin her cover on missions.
(Having Peggy, the real Peggy, in the faked room would’ve hurt more because she would’ve been in on it too.)
Her fear of him when he confronts her about the “ballgame” on the radio further separates the agent from Peggy. Agent Carter would’ve slugged him or drawn her weapon again, if he’d scared her. The agent backed away, called for security, and didn’t bother to actually explain.
Steve knows he should probably tell Colonel Fury and Agent Coulson about all the things that were wrong with the room. It’s his duty to Captain America, after all, and he respects both men.
He’s just not sure he can trust them.
End.
Author: Rosieknight
Rating: Everyone!
Fandom: Captain America: The First Avenger
Characters: Steve Rogers aka Captain America
Disclaimer: I don't own Captain America, obviously. I just enjoyed writing about the character for fun.
Words: 794
He wants to trust them, he really does. But every time he starts to relax and think that he can trust them, he flashes back to the room he woke up and he can’t anymore. Steve doesn’t trust them enough to point out all of their mistakes in making that room; that set. Not when he might be trapped within their “gentle” illusion again.
Steve doesn’t tell them that he knew the room was wrong from the moment he first woke up, before he even opened his eyes.
The sounds were wrong. Not just the “radio broadcast” of a game he’d attended in person, but the lack of noise. If he’d supposedly been out in the country, Steve could’ve understood the near silence.
Instead, they claimed he was in a recovery room in New York City. (A literal truth, though he didn’t know it then.)
What kind of recovery room would lack the sounds of other patients, of doctors and nurses on their rounds, or candy-stripers and friends and family visiting the ill and injured? Where in New York would be so silent, with no sounds of vehicles or people or life? There weren’t any sounds of traffic or kids playing or music spilling out of an open window.
They had his file. They had to know about his serum-enhanced senses. Did they really think that he’d believe he was home without even the faintest murmur of outside noise?
The smells were wrong, too. The set lacked the familiar and hard to describe “hospital smell” Steve remembers from far too much of his childhood. The scent of disinfectant barely masking the odors of illness and death and fear that seems to linger in all hospitals, even field ones.
Also missing was the pervasive aroma of tobacco smoke, meaning no doctors making their rounds with a cigarette in their lips. No visitors or patients lighting up as they chat. And that might happen at a private place, but there’d still be a hint of smoke through the open windows.
(It’s a stupid thing, but Steve finds he misses the smell of smoke sometimes. He understands why places are smoke-free. He does. But there are times when it’s just another reminder of how much things have changed around and without him.)
Opening his eyes just made things worse. The room looks right, but the views from the windows are wrong. The buildings are flat and fake to his eyes, in that way only paintings and photographs have. And when he looked, Steve couldn’t see any details. No slightly crumbling brick, bird droppings in inaccessible places, or laundry hanging out to dry met his gaze. Not even a glimpse of traffic at a distance only someone like him would be able to see, just a blur of an image that has been enlarged too much for its resolution.
The shadows and lighting were all wrong too. Looking out of one window, the light was coming from the left and the shadows where on the right. But the other had the light on the right and the shadows to the left. And to make things even more confusing the actual light visible from the windows didn’t match with either set of shadows.
(Steve suspects that only an artist would notice that and that there aren’t many artists working for S.H.I.EL.D. It’s the kind of mistake first year art students learned to avoid making by the end of their first semesters, back when he attended art school.)
Then there was not-Peggy.
Steve doesn’t know the name of the female agent who impersonated Peggy Carter and he’s not sure he wants to find out. She might resemble the woman he left behind, but she doesn’t react like Peggy.
It’s not her accent. Steve had felt a certain amount of relief that her accent was American and not English. He can even guess why they thought she was American. The photograph of her in his compass was in an American Army uniform, and not the SAS uniform she’d never let herself be photographed in lest the image ruin her cover on missions.
(Having Peggy, the real Peggy, in the faked room would’ve hurt more because she would’ve been in on it too.)
Her fear of him when he confronts her about the “ballgame” on the radio further separates the agent from Peggy. Agent Carter would’ve slugged him or drawn her weapon again, if he’d scared her. The agent backed away, called for security, and didn’t bother to actually explain.
Steve knows he should probably tell Colonel Fury and Agent Coulson about all the things that were wrong with the room. It’s his duty to Captain America, after all, and he respects both men.
He’s just not sure he can trust them.
End.