Fic: Lab Rats and Tin Soldiers (Xmen First Class/Captain America, NC-17, 1/2)
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1944
It is so quiet in the isolation ward of the Hydra factory that Steve can hear everything. He can hear his own footsteps, Bucky's heavy breathing, and the fabric of their clothes rustling. It's so still that he can hear the way his heart is pounding out of his chest with relief that Bucky's right here, alive, leaning against him warm and *breathing* when minutes ago, he was supposed to be dead. But good men are fighting and dying outside, so he knows it shouldn't be this quiet.
He takes the extra time in the quiet to make sure Bucky can hold himself up. He's not going to lose him again, not after everything, and it's in that extra moment of recoup time that he hears it. Too high, too thin to be coming from the throat of a fully grown man, what he hears is the echo of a mix between a sob and a cry of almost animal fury. It is the most hopeless thing Steve has ever heard.
Bucky blinks up at him, still clearly baffled by that, by looking up instead of down to meet his gaze, then around. "Steve, you hear that or am I-" He waves a bruised hand at his temple asking a silent question.
"No, I definitely heard it."
There's another unending stretch of quiet where Bucky steadies himself against Steve. He reaches out to grip his upper arm this time before catching Steve's gaze. There's no conversation. They don't need one. Twenty years in close quarters and knowing each other almost too well.
Steve can't leave someone to suffer like that, and Bucky… There's something dark and wounded in his eyes, something that has to go hand in hand with the table Steve just pulled him off of. Steve wants to ask, and he will, later, when there's time, when they're safe. Now Bucky just nods before they take off out of the room together, searching for the source of the sound before even a way out.
They talk on the way down the hall because there's nothing else to do. It's been months. Steve's so damn different, and Bucky is too; besides, it helps. It helps to think about answering his questions rather than imagining what they could find as the source of the sound.
Of all the possibilities, a kid isn't what Steve was expecting to find. He draws up short when he finds the right room and the source: a boy who could barely be called a teenager tied to a table similar to the that Bucky had been, only this is made of wood. He's straining and tensing against the fabric bonds. Shirtless and bruised, he's not screaming now, but snarling instead, words in German that Steve can't even begin to understand.
Bucky slams into him bodily, and stumbles, his hand catching Steve's hip for a split second before he glances around Steve's shoulder at the boy. "Holy Mary, mother of God," Bucky whispers. He lets go of Steve to cross himself, which is good because now Steve doesn’t have to pull free of his grip to let the kid up.
He doesn't bother finding the spots where the restraints tying the boy to the table connect like he did with Bucky. Steve just rips, pulls them so hard that the whole table bends as the fabric and wood creak and crack as the restraints give way. Then Steve scoops him up. He's probably even lighter than Steve was before Erskine changed him. "Hey, calm down, kid. We've got you. We're not going to hurt you. You're okay."
The kid struggles, twists like a fish on a hook, but he can't break Steve's grip. There are tears on his face, but he sounds like he's cursing at him. Steve doesn't speak German but he knows the tone.
"Hey, buddy, this is great but we’ve gotta go." Bucky jerks his head out at the door. "Now. We've gotta go now."
Steve nods. The boy isn't fighting him anymore, but Steve doesn’t let go. They don't have time to put him down and find out if he's okay to walk, if he could be trusted to get himself somewhere safe. He just holds tighter and takes off with Bucky at his heels until they end up face to face with Schmidt over a damned lake of fire.
"Kid." He sets the boy's feet on the ground, not even looking back to check that Bucky will help him. He knows he will. "Stay here alright?" He holds his hands out in what he hopes is calming gesture. "Stay. Stay. Please." He knows the language is wrong but he has to try.
The boy might not understand but he recognizes Schmidt and his lackey across the way. He doesn't leave Bucky's side, the two of them propping each other up leaving Steve free to fight Schmidt right up until the guy pulls his own face off.
"I see you took our pet, Erik. Pity he'll die with you, Captain. Like you and I, the boy has left humanity behind. I embrace it proudly and one day, he would have as well with the proper training. No fear."
"Then how come you're running?" Steve calls back. Yeah, his comeback for that is less than stellar but he's never been in a situation like this before. He's just glad he's managed all that he has so far, getting Bucky and the kid, Erik, out of those nightmare rooms.
Of course, with Schmidt and the bridge gone, there's only one way out, across a girder that looks even less stable as the rest of the quickly burning building.
They run up, Steve taking the battered Erik back up against him as they climb towards the only crossing left. It's a worse prospect once they get there but it’s their only option.
"Let's go," Steve says, holding up a finger towards Erik as he speaks. Bucky's already over the railing as he points and says. "One at a time."
Erik nods as Bucky inches across the girder. Steve doesn't breathe once the whole time because if Bucky dies now, after everything, after finding him again - Steve stops because he refuses to think that. It's not an option. Bucky will get across alive. He'll get across, out of the fire, then back to base, through the war, and home to Brooklyn. He will.
He makes it across in one piece by some miracle, and then it's Erik's turn. He crawls most of the way, legs shaky and entire body trembling with what Steve is sure must be a hellish mix of fear, exhaustion and pain. He gets all but a foot away from the other side when the girder gives. Bucky's hand catches Erik's shirt just in time to haul him over the rail but it’s a close call, and the girder is history. Great.
Even from the distance between them, Steve can see the panic on Bucky's face. "There's gotta be a rope or something."
Steve shakes his head because this is okay. Really, it is. He can live with this ending to his story if the two of them get out alright. He waves an arm. "Just go. Get out of here!"
"No, not without you!" Bucky calls back and oh yeah, this is good. Just wonderful.
He takes a couple of steps back, a hopeless move towards a flying leap that there's almost no chance he'll make and stops. The girder is rising out of the fire, trembling and shaking, of its own volition until it comes to near-stop by the edge of the platform.
Steve stares wide-eyed down at it, then across the way at Erik who has started screaming between clenched teeth because it's him. It has to be him doing whatever magic he's managed. Steve sure couldn't do something like that, and neither could Bucky, but it's happening all the same.
He takes a hesitant step onto the floating beam and it holds. It’s a miracle, but it holds, and he runs across it, not sure how long Erik can maintain his hold. Not too long because once Steve makes it across, the kid crumples, eyes rolling back in his head and his knees collapsing beneath him. Steve catches him before he hits the deck and, from there, it is easy to just pick him up and run.
~*~*~
A black man, Gabriel Jones, sits between Erik and the man who says his name is Steve, but whom everyone calls Captain, playing telephone. His German is mediocre, but Erik took French in school every year, before he was no longer allowed to go to school, and between the two languages and what little English he knows from Hollywood movies, they get by. There is an interpreter, but Jones is the only man in the camp that both can communicate with Erik and that the Captain Steve seems to trust.
"Cap says I should ask you again, please, where's your family? He wants to get you home." Jones says. Or rather, he tries, but the grammar is so bad that Erik would laugh if he didn't feel like a freshly gutted fish. So he just gives Jones and Captain Steve a thin smile and says nothing.
What is there to say? There is no family. His parents, his sister, his cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, classmates, the boys in his Hebrew class who were training to be bar mitzvahed with him, his teachers, the little old man who cleaned the synagogue along with the building he cared for - all gone. He's as good as a ghost now, a number in skin and on ledger paper. He doesn’t think Jones has the vocabulary in German or French to understand or relate that.
"Erik," the Captain says, reaching out and touching his hand. His hand is huge, powerful. Erik is used to being afraid of the hands of men but not this one. This hand is gentle. "We just want you to get where you need to be, to be safe. Let us help you. Let me help you."
Jones is translating as Steve speaks but Erik watches the man's face, not his translator's, and he can see the truth there. He's something that Erik didn't think existed in this world anymore. He is a good man.
Erik swallows hard and says without breaking Steve's gaze, "Ask him if he's heard what's happening to the Jews here in Europe."
Jones repeats the question in English and Steve's face falls like a rock. He knows. Erik catches the word "senator," which he knows from the Jimmy Stewart movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It was the last he got to see before Jews were forbidden from entering the theater and realizes that Steve must know one, overheard one speaking of the death camps. He wonders how many Americans know. If it is normal men and women, or if only senators and statesmen are aware. He wonders why, if they do know, if any of them know, they haven't done anything. Then he stops himself because he will not be weak in front of the men who saved him.
"Cap says -" Jones begins, then stops, staring at Steve with wide eyes. Then he turns to look at Erik, his dark eyes full of that same horror, only now it's mixed with pity. "Jesus, I am so sorry."
"Then he knows that there's nowhere for me to go." He rolls up his sleeve, so that the hint of his tattoo peeks out to prove this point. He's marked. They're behind enemy lines, and if he gets caught unawares, someone could see where Herr Doktor had him before handing him off to his comrade Johann Schimdtt for more testing, more "training" that was nothing so much as it was torture.
Steve gives the hand he's still holding a squeeze, which is so odd. Erik can't remember the last time he was touched in kindness. In the cattle car, when his mother wrapped her arms around him and promised things would be fine, he thinks. He's not sure. He can barely remember.
"Then you'll stay here," Steve declares. "With us. We know you've got a gift, Erik. It's scary, but it's amazing, and you could help win the war. No one's got more cause to fight than you, right?" He waits for the lag time it takes for Jones to relay the question, and Erik finds himself nodding.
He likes that idea. Hydra is one more arm of the Nazi's monstrous Reich, and he wants to bring them down. He wants to bring them all down. He wants to tear their precious machines apart with the metal that sings to him and skewer them on the pieces. He wants to flay them with blades sharpened by his thoughts and his will.
"Ja. Das hört sich gut an." He tries again before Jones can translate. "Yes. Yes, is good."
Steve beams at him and finally lets go of his hand. Erik feels relieved and disappointed all at once. "Great. I'll talk to the Colonel about getting you settled in with a place on the platoon, but first things first, kid. We gotta get you sprechen zu English."
Erik nods. He can do that. After all, Herr Doktor was always telling him was a quick study.
~*~*~
The first thing Steve considers doing, after the kid's got food in his stomach and clean clothes on his back, is telling Colonel Phillips what Erik can do. After all, Phillips is the head of SSR, and what Erik did with metal makes Steve's modified talents look small and sad by comparison. Howard Stark, Dr. Erskine and the US Army put a lot of time, money and energy (both figurative and literal, if the way the power blew in that bunker was any indication) into making him what he is now. Erik, on the other hand, is fourteen and fragile and almost certainly a natural when it comes to his power.
So it's a no-go on the Colonel. He's a decent man. Steve believes that, he does. He trusts him - to a point. It's just that Bucky had pulled him aside after he left Erik sleeping fitfully that first night and said "Hey, think for a second will you?"
Steve tried, but he wasn't sure what it was he was supposed to be thinking of. Bucky's hand on his arm was pretty damn distracting. Touching him like that kept most of Steve's thought processes focused on how he could take care of the bruises on Bucky's knuckles. Not the most coherent line of thought. He was going to need a clue here. "About?"
"About what we just pulled the kid out of. Technically, Hydra's the Nazi's answer to your precious SSR." He tapped Steve's forehead with the ring and forefingers of his other hand. "Use your brain."
Steve rubbed his forehead. "Why'd you poke me?"
"Use your brain."
"Why'd you poke me?"
"He's- damn it, he can pull tricks that'd've made Houdini jealous and you want to hand him over to the Army? Come on man. We can't trust them not to put him right where Hydra did."
"We're not the Nazis. We're Americans."
"Yeah, Cap." He gave Steve a meaningful look that started at the top of his head, tracked down to his boots and then back up again. "We are."
He didn't like it when Bucky called him Cap. It was like he was pushing Steve away without even moving a muscle. It was swell coming from Dum Dum or Gabe or Jacques, a point of pride even.
Only he didn't want to be Captain America to Bucky when it was just the two of them. He wanted to be Steve. This time, only the third or fourth time it's ever happened, Steve realized what Bucky's doing. He's trying to get his attention, make him see and, all at once, he did. "We can't do nothing though, can we?"
Bucky didn't reply to that. He didn't have to because they both know the answer.
Steve goes to Carter instead. She knows people, knows the Army, knows how to get around obstacles other people would balk at. She's the one who tells him to trust Stark.
"Are you sure he won't- I don’t know…" Steve trails off. He's not sure what he's worried about exactly, only that he is worried.
"He owes me a favor," she says and, okay, Steve doesn't think he really wants to know. It's probably a fondue thing between the two of them. He's certainly no expert on the subject.
However, he trusts her almost as much as he trusts Bucky. So if she says to talk to Stark, then that's what he'll do. After they get back to England.
For the moment, he spends all his time with Jones or Phillips' translator and Erik trying to parcel out as much German as he can while the kid does the same with English. His progress is amazing. Erik is so much smarter than Steve could ever hope to be, and he was never stupid. The word “brilliant” comes to mind. It's only been a few weeks, and the amount of English Erik understands seems to have quintupled while his vocabulary has at least tripled. Gabe says it’s a total language immersion thing mixed with the rapid learning curve of a young brain.
There are a few weeks of boredom in which the company just sits, camped out in the same place, waiting for orders. Steve practices, usually gathering a small crowd even though he tries to keep his abilities contained, but the days still seem to drag on.
Erik has a bedroll on the floor of Carter's tent. He's young enough that the Colonel thinks he needs a nurturing presence, so that’s where he stays. Before lights out though, he stays in the USO tent Steve's now sharing with Bucky, Dum Dum and Jones. Bucky says it's because he feels safe with them. Steve is just glad that Erik’s starting to feel safe at all.
"You are different as well?" Erik asks him in careful, heavily accented English. He's sitting on Bucky's cot across from Steve. The rest of the men are outside, sitting around the fire drinking and trying to one up each other with stories of conquest that Erik's not ready for and that Steve can't add to. The boy seems content to watch Steve draw.
Steve glances up from the sketch he's doing of Erik's sharp features. He's moved, and Steve doesn’t know how to ask him to move back. Oh well. He'll make do. "Different?"
"Ja." Erik holds up his hand. The buckle of Steve's belt, hanging over the side of his cot and trailing the ground, trembles just a little bit. Enough to make it clear that the boy is the one making it jingle. "Different."
"Um," Steve rubs the side of his neck with the eraser of his pencil. He isn't sure how to answer that. "Yes? No? Erik, I can't-" He hates the language barrier. He wants to explain that he asked for this, fought for his power, that it isn't remotely the same. "Nien right worte, Erik. I'm sorry. I want to explain."
Erik waves his hand. The belt buckle sways, just the littlest bit, with the gesture. He doesn't have much control, but the thing with the girder tells Steve he could. He could be terrifying. Instead, he looks at Steve with huge blue eyes, questioning and patient. "Try?"
"When Jones comes back?" Steve offers instead. He doesn't want to mess this up. A heaviness in his chest tells him that how he answers, because he will have to at some point, will make a lasting impression on Erik.
Only when Jones does come back, he's half drunk and laughing at some conquest story with Dum Dum. He's in no position to be translating deep and meaningful conversations with impressionable youths. Steve walks Erik back to Carter's tent and reaches out to ruffle his hair, the way his mom always did to him before he went to bed. He stops halfway and shoves his hands into the pockets of his uniform pants instead.
"Gute nacht, Erik," he tries in terribly accented German. "We'll talk more in the morning?"
"Good night, Captain," Erik replies. He gives Steve a long look, then ducks inside the tent.
Steve wakes the next morning to Bucky kicking the frame of his bed over and over. Bucky has been using this tactic to wake him up since they were about ten because he knows Steve hates it. Only it’s a little less effective now than it was when he was all of 90 pounds and the whole bed rattled. Even so, the sensation is unpleasant. "Lord, Bucky, what?"
"SSR and the 107th are moving out at oh-nine-hundred. So you've got about thirty to be up, dressed and on the transport, or the Colonel will go to London without you."
Steve scrambles to his feet, tripping over himself in his rush to get his boots on. Erik is already on another transport, one that left with Carter at oh-seven-hundred. Steve feels the urge to drop his head in his hands when he realizes because, now, there's no time to talk. He just hopes that he can make that time up later, when they're no longer behind enemy lines.
~*~*~
Peggy Carter is kind, powerfully assertive, terrifyingly intelligent and passable at German. However, she doesn't let him get away with speaking it unless he absolutely cannot find the correct English word. He learns more talking to her than anyone else because of that.
She always addresses him like he's a man, not a little boy which most of the other military personnel do. When they are alone, seated beside each other, she will reach out and run her short-cut fingernails through his hair or wrap a casually comforting arm around his shoulder without question or hesitation. The first time she did it, he jumped, but now, there are times when it takes everything Erik has not to melt into her and cry because he misses his mother.
Peggy is younger than his mother was when Herr Doktor murdered her, but she touches him the same way. Confident and gentle. He could love her. More importantly, he is starting to think that he can trust her. The one time he wept in front of her was their secret. He had awoken from a nightmare in which he was strapped to a table in the camp, praying that this time the torture will end with him never having to wake up again. She had briskly handed him a handkerchief, stroked his hair a few times, and then gone back to her own pallet. She never brings it up again, not with him, and he is certain not with Steve or his friends.
So when she leads him by the shoulders into a laboratory, he doesn't offer any resistance. She leads him past men in white coats to a small office where a man with black hair and a thin moustache who looks a little like Clark Gable stands over a desk. "Erik," she says. "This is Mr. Stark. Howard, this is the young man we told you about."
Stark looks up from the desk, looks Erik appraisingly up and down. "You look a little young for a soldier. We’re so desperate we're pulling kids out of school for this, Peg?"
"Oh, you're very funny."
"Glad you think so. So, Lehnsherr right? Peggy here tells me you've got something of an eye for alloys."
"An eye?" Erik asks, confused - another turn of phrase he doesn't quite get. Peggy translates in brief and oh, yes, that makes sense. It's nowhere near what he really has. Even so he nods in agreement.
"Well then you'll be right at home down here," Stark says with a distracted smile. "I imagine they're going to treat this like a glorified daycare for you, but hey. Most everything's metal. Anything you want to see, go ahead. Just ask before you touch anything. I'll probably let you; just let me know first, all right?"
Erik nods and feels a little uneasy. He wants it though. The lab has a quiet call that is nothing like the one in Hydra's factory or Herr Doktor's nightmare office.
Peggy squeezes his shoulder again and leads him out of the office. "Are you feeling well?"
"Yes. It's all just…" He pauses, looking for the right word in English. "New."
"I've got a meeting with Phillips in a quarter of an hour. Will you be all right on your own?"
He's not tied up, strapped down, or in pain. They don't understand that as long as he is none of those things, everything is all right. He just nods because he doesn’t want her to look at him with pity. She never has, but he doesn't want her to start.
~*~*~
The first week, he drifts around Stark's lab, quiet and wide-eyed. He has no desire to reach out and touch until about ten days in, when he finds it. Howard's been working on it off and on in the subbasement lab that no one is supposed to know about. Howard gave him access to all the levels and, on day ten, he stumbles across the shield.
It's imperfect, but it sings to him, perfect and gleaming. He's never encountered metal like it before. He reaches out and stops before his hand can caress the slick metal with his skin. There is no one around to ask, and he refuses to risk what he's found here.
The shield doesn’t agree. As if it can sense how much Erik wants to touch, the shield trembles, and then jumps to his palm, spinning like a top against the ball of his hand.
"Now, that is neat." Erik's focus shatters, and the shield clatters to the ground. He spins around, his heart beating in his throat. Howard Stark stands leaned against the wall, smirking at him. "Can you do it again?"
"Do what?" He can feel his fear making his eyes wide. He can't- not again. Not after last time. He's not strong enough to be found out yet.
Stark points his finger at him. "You made the shield come to you."
"Nein. I mean, no, Herr Stark. I did not."
"Yes, you did. I don’t know how you did it, but you did. It flew to you, like you were a living magnet or something. I've never seen anything like it. Cap tried to tell me, but I didn’t get it."
"Herr Stark, please."
"Calm down, son. You look like I'm going to chop you up with an axe."
He can't move a muscle from the terror. Erik hates himself for freezing. This is what killed her, his mother. This is what allowed Herr Doktor to break him. He needs more practice, more experience. He needs to know how to stop this from happening. He has to.
"All right, bad word choice. What I meant is that he and Peg, they tried to tell me that you were special, and I thought they just meant because you survived what you did. But you're not. You're something else, Erik." He reaches out, moving slowly to pick up the shield. He sets it back on the table with a clatter then moves away again. "You can do it again if you want."
"I can't." He whispers, fighting the memory of Herr Doktor's office. He doesn't want to think of his hard face, encouraging and patient and cold all at once. He doesn't want to remember that moment even though he still has the coin heavy and solid in his pocket. "Please, Herr Stark, I am sorry, I can't."
Suddenly there are hands on his upper arms, giving him a gentle shake. "Hey, hey. Erik, it's all right." Stark gives his arm a firm squeeze. "You don't have to. I just thought you'd want to. You looked like you liked it."
Erik had liked it, is the thing. Nothing ever felt as right as the metal of the shield moving in response to his desire. Given more time, he could love it like nothing else.
"Erik? Son, are you with me?" He shakes his head, nods, shakes it, then nods again. Stark frowns. "Right. I'm going to get you upstairs to Peggy or Cap."
"I am sorry, Herr Stark." Erik repeats. He doesn't know what else to say.
"Don't be sorry. You can be down here. I already said. I'll set up a corner down here for you to practice in private if you want." He lets go and holds up both hands. "No pressure."
Erik doesn't really understand that expression. He nods in agreement anyway and let's Stark lead him out of the subbasement. He glances over his shoulder as they leave together. There is an empty corner, no desk, no scraps, nothing.
He can see himself learning there. It's something he couldn't have imagined before now. It makes him feel something between his rib cage, bright and a little scary. He's not sure what it is, but he likes it. More than that, he wants it. It's the first time he's wanted anything but his mother back and Herr Doktor dead since the SS men dragged him out of that horror-filled office. It gives him what he thinks might be hope.
~*~*~
"Absolutely not."
Steve thought he'd made a damn good argument. He'd drafted Bucky into helping him craft all his talking points and everything. Apparently not. "But Colonel-"
"Don't you 'but Colonel' me, Rogers. I have given you more leeway than you had any right to ask me for, but this is a line, and I'm not crossing it. You are not taking that boy," Phillips points at Erik with no hesitation or shame. "Into the field."
"He's an asset." Phillips knows what Erik could do now, what he's learning at any rate.
They had all discussed it - him, Bucky, Peggy and Stark, when Erik was practicing his English with Jones. In the end, they decided that hiding Erik wasn't going to work once they started deploying, especially if he lost control again. Stark lead the conversation with Phillips about Erik, threatening to pull his weapons and his money out of the war effort if the military touched one hair on Erik's head.
Steve had been in the room for that conversation and had to admit he'd been impressed. He didn't think a vein could throb like the one in Phillips head did and not explode.
"Do you know what the Army could do with a hundred soldiers with that kind of power?" Phillips demanded.
"More than they could do with a hundred Captain Americas, I'd bet." Howard says. "Thing is, Colonel, they're not going to get it. He's got a natural talent. There's no formula for what he can do. If there were, the Nazis and Hydra would've found away to rip it out of him. If they couldn't get that sort of thing out of him, then it's likely we won't either."
"You don't know that, Stark." Phillips glower melted lesser men.
Howard didn't even blink. "I do. I know that. They're further ahead than we are on the weapons front, so we've got to assume the rest of their science is that far ahead too. All we've got going for us with Erik is he's going to grow into his ability one day, and the last thing we need is to make an enemy of him."
Phillips' frown lines deepen. "He is fourteen years old."
"He turned fifteen last week." Steve had felt compelled to point out, even though he feels terribly awkward talking about Erik like he's not here, but there isn't another option. Phillips won't listen when Erik tries to speak for himself. "And he's a deeply traumatized fifteen-year-old."
Howard cast Erik a sidelong glance, then nodded. "I don't know what they did to him in there but I read Roger's report of what he found. Tell me something, Colonel, what do you think he's going to do to the men who hurt him when he's thirty and can control more than just a few ball bearings or a file cabinet drawer?"
Phillips stood glaring at them both for over a minute. Steve wasn't really good with protracted silences, so he fidgeted, but Howard stared right back. Steve wondered at the time if it was being richer than God that gave you that kind of chutzpah, or if Stark was just born with it.
"Fine," Phillips finally said. "The information regarding the abilities of Erik Lensherr doesn't leave this room for now, and when the time's right, I'll make sure he stays in the SSR where I can keep an eye on him. Just make sure he keeps practicing. If he's going to be on our side, then we need him to be of some use at some point." He'd left room without looking back, leaving Steve and Stark alone.
"That could've gone better," Stark had remarked, dropping into a chair. He put his feet up on the small table that filled most of the space in the room to make himself more comfortable.
"It could've gone a lot worse." Steve countered.
Stark shook his head and looked down at his hands. "I'd've gotten him out of England and out to L.A. if I thought that were going to happen."
Steve believed he could do it too. The man was a pilot and a millionaire and a genius. He didn’t need much more than that to smuggle one teenager out of one small country.
Now though, after all the work they did to protect him, Steve is arguing to let Erik be the weapon they'd tried to protect him from being. Not the same, of course. Erik had asked to be on Steve's team, had come as close to begging as his intense pride could allow. Steve had promised to fight for him. Of course, the way Phillips is looking at him and Erik tells Steve that he's losing pretty badly.
"You cannot be serious."
"They murdered my family, my friends, everyone I ever knew." Erik's voice does not waver or shake. He states this fact like he is just a radio announcer reading the news. "I want to fight."
Phillips eyes flick to Erik, then zero back in on Steve, so that it's clear who he's talking to. "I gave you everyone else you wanted for that team, but this is absurd. His balls haven’t even dropped yet."
"Colonel, I can do this," Erik argues. It's pretty impressive. Steve still can't really stand up to Phillips half the time, not with a raised chin and a defiant set to his shoulders like Erik has now. "I am not too young to fight."
Phillips' expression is a nearly perfect mirror of the one he cast on Steve during basic. Speculative, annoyed, disbelieving. The difference being, of course, that Erik still has time to grow and Phillips can see that too.
"Young man, I don't doubt that you want to take down the bastards that killed your people. That's a sane response. I respect it. So when you're old enough, if you still want to serve in this man's Army, then we'll be more than happy for you to fight. However, at the moment, you are a minor child legally in the care of myself and the United States Army. That means that you're under my command, so when I say 'you will not' you say 'sir, yes, sir' like the order it is."
Erik scowls at him. He mutters something in his mother tongue that would probably make a German sailor blush.
"What was that, young man?"
"Sir, yes, sir."
"There's a good boy. You want to make a difference in this war, you help Stark with anything he needs. Come see me when you're old enough, and we'll get you into the field. Hell, keep up the good work, and you'll be in special operations before you need to shave. That's a promise."
"Can I get that in writing?" Erik asks. It takes Steve aback, but Phillips just laughs.
"I'll have a copy to you by tomorrow morning." He claps Erik on the shoulder as he passes out of the room. He clearly doesn't notice the way Erik flinches.
Steve sees it though because he can't look away from the grim expression on Erik's face. When they are alone, Steve looks down at his hands. They're still a little too big for him. Like puberty all over again, only successful this time. He fists them before he speaks. "I'm sorry, Erik."
"It is fine."
"It's not." Steve says with a sigh. "I promised you could fight."
"Obviously, it was not your place to promise me that, Captain." Erik meets his gaze. He doesn't look disappointed or angry or anything. He just looks…closed. This is the first time that Steve has ever seen that expression on him. He doesn't like it. "Something to work on."
"Sometimes I think you're a bit too old for your age, kid." Erik doesn't laugh or smirk or respond at all. He just holds Steve's gaze, waiting. "I think it might be time for us to talk finally." There's been a war going on, getting in the way ever since they left Italy.
"Since you leave in a few days," Erik agrees. "That would be good."
Steve stays seated at the table. He gestures for Erik to join him, but he remains standing. Right-o then. Steve takes a deep breath. "So, your gifts, they're not like mine."
"Yes. I know that." I'm not stupid, is the underlying tone. That's pure teenager right there. Oddly enough that comforts Steve. Maybe Erik is normalizing, at least a little.
"What I mean is that I asked for what I can do. So, I have a responsibility. I was given a gift that I wanted, so I'm responsible for helping people with it in exchange. I have to go back out there."
"And I do not?" Erik hisses. "You don't know what was done. To me, to my family, my people."
"No, I don't."
To be perfectly honest, he doesn't want to know. It's a terrifying prospect. The longer he's in Europe, the more he's realizing that here lies the kind of horror he doesn't really want to know. He just wants to take the bastards down and make it stop. He's glad he can't see into Erik's head in this moment. He doesn't want to know what's in there. What little he can imagine is bad enough.
"But you're not the Nazis' prisoner anymore. You're free, and your power is something you seem to have been born with, so your responsibilities are different than mine. Right now, today, your main choice isn't how you're going to fight, but what you're going to become, what kind of man you're going to be."
He realizes that Dr. Erskine's words are coming out of his mouth. It makes him wish Erskine was here. His tactic worked as well as any. Better than most, probably.
"You have to decide if you're going to be a good man, Erik. That's what you can do to fight back right now."
Erik glowers at him. "That is not enough."
"For now, it has to be. Patience can be powerful too, you know?" He gives Erik what he hopes is a winning smile.
Erik doesn't smile back. "I do not understand what you just said."
"Oh, um." Steve frowns. "I can try to use different words-"
"No, I understand the words. You just make no sense."
That's not actually much better. Steve isn't sure he'll make more sense the second time around but he'll try. "It's like with the girder in the factory, remember? You were able to do this amazing thing and lift it, but you passed out right after. So you know you'll be able to do things like that at some point; you're just not ready yet. If you can be patient and practice, I'm pretty sure your ability and everything else will just follow."
Erik's expression doesn't change but he doesn't argue. That's…not much, really, but it's something. Steve will take it.
~*~*~
Erik spends most of his time in the lab once Steve and his team leave on assignment. "Call me Howard, Erik, please." Stark insists as he drops a box of ball bearings in front of Erik the first day of Erik's "training".
He seems to take personal pleasure in setting up little challenges for Erik. "I'm interested because it's a mystery," Howard tells him when Erik asks why. "I love unraveling a good mystery. It's how I got into this in the first place," he says waving at the lab with his large hands. "Well, that and the money. And the women. Women, Erik. When you're older, ask me about women because there's a mystery for you that never gets old and never gets solved."
He talks faster than the actors on the radio and moves just as quickly. Most of the time Erik just nods and follows him from station to station around the lab, trying to keep up. The parts in all of Stark's machines hum and whisper as they move. Erik takes to sleeping down there, where the sensation of metalwork clicking together perfectly works like white noise, soothing the nerves he won't admit to having enough that he can relax. Everything in the SSR labs could be a weapon if he could get control.
"Concentrate." Howard says, again and again. "You can do this if you just focus. Come on, Erik."
His calm tone reminds Erik enough of Herr Doktor that he can pull anger out of his gut and throw it into the nearest alloy. It's unstable though, violent and precarious. He plateaus with his old hurt and fury until the afternoon when he loses himself so deep in that old ugly memory of his mother's collapsing body that he sends half the gears shooting out of an impressive looking contraption like so much shrapnel. The momentum of his will is so strong that it embeds them in the stone walls. Erik counts himself lucky that no one was hurt or killed.
He will admit, though, that if he could've done this a mere year ago, maybe his life would be different at this moment. Maybe his mother wouldn't be ash in the air over Poland.
Howard kicks everyone out of the lab at that point. He beckons Erik to the wall, his mouth set in a grim line beneath his pencil moustache. "I thought you wanted control."
"I do."
"Yeah? That's not control. That's-" He shakes a head. "That's being out of control if I've ever seen it. You want to tell me what's got you all twisted up in knots?"
"Nothing." Erik replied. He doesn’t mean to be petulant. He doesn't. But he can feel his lower lip pushing out just a little.
"Kiddo, you are just the worst liar I've ever met, and I've met a lot of liars."
"I will get better." At lying and at his control.
"Yeah, I know. I won't josh you, that scares me a little. Hell, you scare me a little. I mean, I've never seen you smile."
Erik stares back at him. He doesn't see how that's remotely relevant.
"Look, cool your heels a little. The anger thing seems to come pretty easy to you. Rightly so, but how about going the other way for a change? Maybe think about something a little more cheerful while you're trying to get my property out of the wall. I don’t know, Peggy Carter's stems are the first things that come to mind. I always find those to be a good motivator."
"Stems?"
"Her legs? Gorgeous, but if you're not a leg man, think about the black market steak we're going to have tonight for dinner. Alls I'm saying is that you should give it a try with a little less anger next time."
It doesn't work without the anger. "It has to be there." Erik says.
He watches as Howard goes through the completely unnecessary gesture of smoothing his moustache three times before speaking. The gesture is slightly hypnotic."Try and temper it then. Think of happy things and all that. If it made Wendy Darling fly, I don’t see why it can't work for you. " He grins and smoothes his moustache yet again. " At this point, that's my only idea."
"I do not know what you're talking about," Erik says with a heavy sigh. The words all make sense now. His English has gotten good enough that it’s more how people speak than what they say that confuses him.
Howard waves it off with a careless hand. He puts Erik back to work, this time excavating the gears from the wall, and heads off to do whatever it is that a scientist does during war time.
When he returns to his makeshift bunk, which had belonged to Steve, Bucky, Jones and the man with the bowler hat, Dum Dum they called him, before they were sent back behind enemy lines, Peggy is waiting for him. She holds up a battered copy of a book with the words "Peter and Wendy" on the cover.
"I've been informed that your education of Scottish literature is incomplete." She hands him the book. "I replied that perhaps the characters just had different names in the German translation but he insisted that you have this. Apparently, it's your homework assignment."
He opens the book and flips through a few pages. Every so often, there are drawings inside. "It's a children's story."
"It is," Peggy agrees. "Read it anyway. There will be a test."
"A test."
"Yes. Possibly in essay form to see how your vocabulary's progressing. You've a very sharp mind, Erik. I'd hate to see that deteriorate just because you're spending so much time in the basements under Mr. Stark's questionable influence."
Her tone is firm but clearly a gentle teasing rather than a criticism of a man who is trying his hardest to help Erik reach his potential. It takes Erik a moment to respond because Peggy Carter is radiant to the point of distraction. He doesn't even need to glance at her stems to be reminded of that. He would take any test she set in front of him and fight for every question just for her approval. "Yes, ma'am."
"I've been informed by Colonel Phillips that you've expressed an interest in combat in the future. In that case, you'll begin hand-to-hand training tomorrow at oh-six-hundred. I expect you to be there on time."
"Thank you."
"Yes, well, we'll see if you're thanking me tomorrow, won't we?" She gives him a bright smile. "Have a good night, Erik. I'll see you in the morning."
Erik gets there at a five-thirty, and she is already waiting for him. She runs him ragged until eighteen-hundred. He runs laps round the five square blocks that make up their blitz-ravaged neighborhood until the sun is high enough that it manages to push through the London haze. When his legs feel like the jam his aunt used to make every spring, Peggy calls him inside to teach him basic technique. She even manages to get a heavy bag from somewhere and leaves him to beat on it with his new skills until he nearly splits his hands open on it.
He is so tired by the time she excuses him for dinner that he barely has the energy to lift a fork to his mouth. The rest of the small mess hall might as well not be there in this state. He just wants to be left alone with his food.
Naturally, Howard drops down across the table from him. He watches Erik attempt to eat for a moment then says, "Grab your food and come with me."
Erik glares at him but does as he's told. He's too exhausted to do anything else. Howard helps, picking up the tin utensils and cup, leading the way down into his lab. He sits it down on his desk and gestures for Erik to take the chair behind it. He remembers days, weeks without food, just out of reach on Herr Doktor's porcelain plates, as he was pushed to perform. Fear hits him for a heartbeat before he reminds himself that Howard Stark is not one of his Nazi tormentors. He's not.
"So, I've been thinking."
"Good. It's what made you rich, isn't it?"
That makes Howard laugh. It's a confident sound. "Yes, it is. But this probably won’t have too big a payoff, not in greenbacks anyway. No, I was thinking about this gift of yours. It's natural. It's not some lab juice we mixed up. It's just you." Erik nods. "So, maybe that's the trick. Just… do something you want, something you need." He points at the fork. "You're hungry. Peggy wore you out. Go the easy way and do what comes naturally to your body. I think you should try to pick up the fork and get yourself a bite using your gift."
He nearly died of starvation the last time Herr Doktor used this tactic. "Control yourself or go hungry," he'd said. "The choice is yours, Erik."
What Howard says seems to come out of nowhere and is nothing like the Doktor. "You get to the bit in the book with the happy thoughts yet, Erik?"
Erik just nods. He hadn't been able to sleep very much the night before, excited by the idea of combat training. He wasn't sure how he felt about the story, of a boy who stubbornly refused to grow up when Erik hadn't had a choice to do anything else. He rather liked Wendy Darling. She reminded him of Peggy Carter -he read her with the agent's voice in his mind- and a little, in her generous spirit, of Captain Rogers.
"That was always one of my favorite parts, but you're not me. I keep forgetting that most folks aren't like me. I expect everyone to be running on the same tracks. They almost never are, but that's neither here nor there. The point is I still think the idea I had's got merit; only yesterday, I may have missed the point, which is to think differently. Maybe, this time, instead of going with anger or desperation, just don't think anything at all. Just let yourself be tired and go with whatever instinct tells you is the easiest."
Thinking of nothing is a concept that Erik can't really grasp until he remembers the way his mind went quiet earlier this afternoon, fists slamming into old leather over and over. He could slip back there easily now, as exhausted as he is. He had wanted to before, but Howard had interrupted.
"And if instinct tells me to cut off my feet like the girl with the red shoes?" It's a petty dig for interrupting him, but that's where his instinct is directing him at the moment.
"Andersen, huh? Figures. I bet you're a big fan of Grimm too. Every Kraut I've ever met seems to be. Kid, if you feel like amputating yourself, tell me first, and we'll discuss it."
Then he makes a show of sliding the blunt butter knife off the desk and into his pocket. It's a terrible joke, but Erik smiles anyway. He's too tired to help himself.
It generates a grin out of Howard in return. "Damn, kid, be careful! Don't sneeze, or your face'll freeze like that. How can you be impressive and scary if you're stuck smiling all the time?"
"It could be a deranged smile."
"Ah. How silly of me. Of course it could. I'll leave you to your dinner. I'm going to get some chow myself. After that, if you need me, I'll be in Weapons with Smith. We're this close to figuring out those Hydra energy weapons." He pinches his fingers together. "Today's the day. I'm sure of it."
He says this last with his eyes locked on Erik. He claps him on the shoulder once, and then leaves his office. It doesn’t escape Erik how much trust that places on him, to be alone in Howard Stark's personal office with no supervision. He doesn't care about causing trouble or ruffling through papers though. He just wants to eat, then sleep for ten hours or so before starting all over again with Peggy tomorrow.
That thought is curling lazily and fluidly through his mind when he realizes his fork is floating towards him with a piece of chicken on it. He stares at like it might do the biting then opens his mouth thinking, oh, how did I do that as it hovers between his teeth and waits. He removes the morsel with a clean bite and when he goes for another forkful, moving the utensil feels less like forcing his will and more like the simple process of lifting his hand. It's just another part of him moving the space around him, like his feet walking or his fingers gripping.
Alone in Howard's office, Erik laughs, loud and long for the first time since before he and his family were herded out of their homes and into the train station. Then he eats his dinner with his fingers laced behind his head while his fork and spoon seem to dance on his plate.
Part 2
1944
It is so quiet in the isolation ward of the Hydra factory that Steve can hear everything. He can hear his own footsteps, Bucky's heavy breathing, and the fabric of their clothes rustling. It's so still that he can hear the way his heart is pounding out of his chest with relief that Bucky's right here, alive, leaning against him warm and *breathing* when minutes ago, he was supposed to be dead. But good men are fighting and dying outside, so he knows it shouldn't be this quiet.
He takes the extra time in the quiet to make sure Bucky can hold himself up. He's not going to lose him again, not after everything, and it's in that extra moment of recoup time that he hears it. Too high, too thin to be coming from the throat of a fully grown man, what he hears is the echo of a mix between a sob and a cry of almost animal fury. It is the most hopeless thing Steve has ever heard.
Bucky blinks up at him, still clearly baffled by that, by looking up instead of down to meet his gaze, then around. "Steve, you hear that or am I-" He waves a bruised hand at his temple asking a silent question.
"No, I definitely heard it."
There's another unending stretch of quiet where Bucky steadies himself against Steve. He reaches out to grip his upper arm this time before catching Steve's gaze. There's no conversation. They don't need one. Twenty years in close quarters and knowing each other almost too well.
Steve can't leave someone to suffer like that, and Bucky… There's something dark and wounded in his eyes, something that has to go hand in hand with the table Steve just pulled him off of. Steve wants to ask, and he will, later, when there's time, when they're safe. Now Bucky just nods before they take off out of the room together, searching for the source of the sound before even a way out.
They talk on the way down the hall because there's nothing else to do. It's been months. Steve's so damn different, and Bucky is too; besides, it helps. It helps to think about answering his questions rather than imagining what they could find as the source of the sound.
Of all the possibilities, a kid isn't what Steve was expecting to find. He draws up short when he finds the right room and the source: a boy who could barely be called a teenager tied to a table similar to the that Bucky had been, only this is made of wood. He's straining and tensing against the fabric bonds. Shirtless and bruised, he's not screaming now, but snarling instead, words in German that Steve can't even begin to understand.
Bucky slams into him bodily, and stumbles, his hand catching Steve's hip for a split second before he glances around Steve's shoulder at the boy. "Holy Mary, mother of God," Bucky whispers. He lets go of Steve to cross himself, which is good because now Steve doesn’t have to pull free of his grip to let the kid up.
He doesn't bother finding the spots where the restraints tying the boy to the table connect like he did with Bucky. Steve just rips, pulls them so hard that the whole table bends as the fabric and wood creak and crack as the restraints give way. Then Steve scoops him up. He's probably even lighter than Steve was before Erskine changed him. "Hey, calm down, kid. We've got you. We're not going to hurt you. You're okay."
The kid struggles, twists like a fish on a hook, but he can't break Steve's grip. There are tears on his face, but he sounds like he's cursing at him. Steve doesn't speak German but he knows the tone.
"Hey, buddy, this is great but we’ve gotta go." Bucky jerks his head out at the door. "Now. We've gotta go now."
Steve nods. The boy isn't fighting him anymore, but Steve doesn’t let go. They don't have time to put him down and find out if he's okay to walk, if he could be trusted to get himself somewhere safe. He just holds tighter and takes off with Bucky at his heels until they end up face to face with Schmidt over a damned lake of fire.
"Kid." He sets the boy's feet on the ground, not even looking back to check that Bucky will help him. He knows he will. "Stay here alright?" He holds his hands out in what he hopes is calming gesture. "Stay. Stay. Please." He knows the language is wrong but he has to try.
The boy might not understand but he recognizes Schmidt and his lackey across the way. He doesn't leave Bucky's side, the two of them propping each other up leaving Steve free to fight Schmidt right up until the guy pulls his own face off.
"I see you took our pet, Erik. Pity he'll die with you, Captain. Like you and I, the boy has left humanity behind. I embrace it proudly and one day, he would have as well with the proper training. No fear."
"Then how come you're running?" Steve calls back. Yeah, his comeback for that is less than stellar but he's never been in a situation like this before. He's just glad he's managed all that he has so far, getting Bucky and the kid, Erik, out of those nightmare rooms.
Of course, with Schmidt and the bridge gone, there's only one way out, across a girder that looks even less stable as the rest of the quickly burning building.
They run up, Steve taking the battered Erik back up against him as they climb towards the only crossing left. It's a worse prospect once they get there but it’s their only option.
"Let's go," Steve says, holding up a finger towards Erik as he speaks. Bucky's already over the railing as he points and says. "One at a time."
Erik nods as Bucky inches across the girder. Steve doesn't breathe once the whole time because if Bucky dies now, after everything, after finding him again - Steve stops because he refuses to think that. It's not an option. Bucky will get across alive. He'll get across, out of the fire, then back to base, through the war, and home to Brooklyn. He will.
He makes it across in one piece by some miracle, and then it's Erik's turn. He crawls most of the way, legs shaky and entire body trembling with what Steve is sure must be a hellish mix of fear, exhaustion and pain. He gets all but a foot away from the other side when the girder gives. Bucky's hand catches Erik's shirt just in time to haul him over the rail but it’s a close call, and the girder is history. Great.
Even from the distance between them, Steve can see the panic on Bucky's face. "There's gotta be a rope or something."
Steve shakes his head because this is okay. Really, it is. He can live with this ending to his story if the two of them get out alright. He waves an arm. "Just go. Get out of here!"
"No, not without you!" Bucky calls back and oh yeah, this is good. Just wonderful.
He takes a couple of steps back, a hopeless move towards a flying leap that there's almost no chance he'll make and stops. The girder is rising out of the fire, trembling and shaking, of its own volition until it comes to near-stop by the edge of the platform.
Steve stares wide-eyed down at it, then across the way at Erik who has started screaming between clenched teeth because it's him. It has to be him doing whatever magic he's managed. Steve sure couldn't do something like that, and neither could Bucky, but it's happening all the same.
He takes a hesitant step onto the floating beam and it holds. It’s a miracle, but it holds, and he runs across it, not sure how long Erik can maintain his hold. Not too long because once Steve makes it across, the kid crumples, eyes rolling back in his head and his knees collapsing beneath him. Steve catches him before he hits the deck and, from there, it is easy to just pick him up and run.
~*~*~
A black man, Gabriel Jones, sits between Erik and the man who says his name is Steve, but whom everyone calls Captain, playing telephone. His German is mediocre, but Erik took French in school every year, before he was no longer allowed to go to school, and between the two languages and what little English he knows from Hollywood movies, they get by. There is an interpreter, but Jones is the only man in the camp that both can communicate with Erik and that the Captain Steve seems to trust.
"Cap says I should ask you again, please, where's your family? He wants to get you home." Jones says. Or rather, he tries, but the grammar is so bad that Erik would laugh if he didn't feel like a freshly gutted fish. So he just gives Jones and Captain Steve a thin smile and says nothing.
What is there to say? There is no family. His parents, his sister, his cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, classmates, the boys in his Hebrew class who were training to be bar mitzvahed with him, his teachers, the little old man who cleaned the synagogue along with the building he cared for - all gone. He's as good as a ghost now, a number in skin and on ledger paper. He doesn’t think Jones has the vocabulary in German or French to understand or relate that.
"Erik," the Captain says, reaching out and touching his hand. His hand is huge, powerful. Erik is used to being afraid of the hands of men but not this one. This hand is gentle. "We just want you to get where you need to be, to be safe. Let us help you. Let me help you."
Jones is translating as Steve speaks but Erik watches the man's face, not his translator's, and he can see the truth there. He's something that Erik didn't think existed in this world anymore. He is a good man.
Erik swallows hard and says without breaking Steve's gaze, "Ask him if he's heard what's happening to the Jews here in Europe."
Jones repeats the question in English and Steve's face falls like a rock. He knows. Erik catches the word "senator," which he knows from the Jimmy Stewart movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It was the last he got to see before Jews were forbidden from entering the theater and realizes that Steve must know one, overheard one speaking of the death camps. He wonders how many Americans know. If it is normal men and women, or if only senators and statesmen are aware. He wonders why, if they do know, if any of them know, they haven't done anything. Then he stops himself because he will not be weak in front of the men who saved him.
"Cap says -" Jones begins, then stops, staring at Steve with wide eyes. Then he turns to look at Erik, his dark eyes full of that same horror, only now it's mixed with pity. "Jesus, I am so sorry."
"Then he knows that there's nowhere for me to go." He rolls up his sleeve, so that the hint of his tattoo peeks out to prove this point. He's marked. They're behind enemy lines, and if he gets caught unawares, someone could see where Herr Doktor had him before handing him off to his comrade Johann Schimdtt for more testing, more "training" that was nothing so much as it was torture.
Steve gives the hand he's still holding a squeeze, which is so odd. Erik can't remember the last time he was touched in kindness. In the cattle car, when his mother wrapped her arms around him and promised things would be fine, he thinks. He's not sure. He can barely remember.
"Then you'll stay here," Steve declares. "With us. We know you've got a gift, Erik. It's scary, but it's amazing, and you could help win the war. No one's got more cause to fight than you, right?" He waits for the lag time it takes for Jones to relay the question, and Erik finds himself nodding.
He likes that idea. Hydra is one more arm of the Nazi's monstrous Reich, and he wants to bring them down. He wants to bring them all down. He wants to tear their precious machines apart with the metal that sings to him and skewer them on the pieces. He wants to flay them with blades sharpened by his thoughts and his will.
"Ja. Das hört sich gut an." He tries again before Jones can translate. "Yes. Yes, is good."
Steve beams at him and finally lets go of his hand. Erik feels relieved and disappointed all at once. "Great. I'll talk to the Colonel about getting you settled in with a place on the platoon, but first things first, kid. We gotta get you sprechen zu English."
Erik nods. He can do that. After all, Herr Doktor was always telling him was a quick study.
~*~*~
The first thing Steve considers doing, after the kid's got food in his stomach and clean clothes on his back, is telling Colonel Phillips what Erik can do. After all, Phillips is the head of SSR, and what Erik did with metal makes Steve's modified talents look small and sad by comparison. Howard Stark, Dr. Erskine and the US Army put a lot of time, money and energy (both figurative and literal, if the way the power blew in that bunker was any indication) into making him what he is now. Erik, on the other hand, is fourteen and fragile and almost certainly a natural when it comes to his power.
So it's a no-go on the Colonel. He's a decent man. Steve believes that, he does. He trusts him - to a point. It's just that Bucky had pulled him aside after he left Erik sleeping fitfully that first night and said "Hey, think for a second will you?"
Steve tried, but he wasn't sure what it was he was supposed to be thinking of. Bucky's hand on his arm was pretty damn distracting. Touching him like that kept most of Steve's thought processes focused on how he could take care of the bruises on Bucky's knuckles. Not the most coherent line of thought. He was going to need a clue here. "About?"
"About what we just pulled the kid out of. Technically, Hydra's the Nazi's answer to your precious SSR." He tapped Steve's forehead with the ring and forefingers of his other hand. "Use your brain."
Steve rubbed his forehead. "Why'd you poke me?"
"Use your brain."
"Why'd you poke me?"
"He's- damn it, he can pull tricks that'd've made Houdini jealous and you want to hand him over to the Army? Come on man. We can't trust them not to put him right where Hydra did."
"We're not the Nazis. We're Americans."
"Yeah, Cap." He gave Steve a meaningful look that started at the top of his head, tracked down to his boots and then back up again. "We are."
He didn't like it when Bucky called him Cap. It was like he was pushing Steve away without even moving a muscle. It was swell coming from Dum Dum or Gabe or Jacques, a point of pride even.
Only he didn't want to be Captain America to Bucky when it was just the two of them. He wanted to be Steve. This time, only the third or fourth time it's ever happened, Steve realized what Bucky's doing. He's trying to get his attention, make him see and, all at once, he did. "We can't do nothing though, can we?"
Bucky didn't reply to that. He didn't have to because they both know the answer.
Steve goes to Carter instead. She knows people, knows the Army, knows how to get around obstacles other people would balk at. She's the one who tells him to trust Stark.
"Are you sure he won't- I don’t know…" Steve trails off. He's not sure what he's worried about exactly, only that he is worried.
"He owes me a favor," she says and, okay, Steve doesn't think he really wants to know. It's probably a fondue thing between the two of them. He's certainly no expert on the subject.
However, he trusts her almost as much as he trusts Bucky. So if she says to talk to Stark, then that's what he'll do. After they get back to England.
For the moment, he spends all his time with Jones or Phillips' translator and Erik trying to parcel out as much German as he can while the kid does the same with English. His progress is amazing. Erik is so much smarter than Steve could ever hope to be, and he was never stupid. The word “brilliant” comes to mind. It's only been a few weeks, and the amount of English Erik understands seems to have quintupled while his vocabulary has at least tripled. Gabe says it’s a total language immersion thing mixed with the rapid learning curve of a young brain.
There are a few weeks of boredom in which the company just sits, camped out in the same place, waiting for orders. Steve practices, usually gathering a small crowd even though he tries to keep his abilities contained, but the days still seem to drag on.
Erik has a bedroll on the floor of Carter's tent. He's young enough that the Colonel thinks he needs a nurturing presence, so that’s where he stays. Before lights out though, he stays in the USO tent Steve's now sharing with Bucky, Dum Dum and Jones. Bucky says it's because he feels safe with them. Steve is just glad that Erik’s starting to feel safe at all.
"You are different as well?" Erik asks him in careful, heavily accented English. He's sitting on Bucky's cot across from Steve. The rest of the men are outside, sitting around the fire drinking and trying to one up each other with stories of conquest that Erik's not ready for and that Steve can't add to. The boy seems content to watch Steve draw.
Steve glances up from the sketch he's doing of Erik's sharp features. He's moved, and Steve doesn’t know how to ask him to move back. Oh well. He'll make do. "Different?"
"Ja." Erik holds up his hand. The buckle of Steve's belt, hanging over the side of his cot and trailing the ground, trembles just a little bit. Enough to make it clear that the boy is the one making it jingle. "Different."
"Um," Steve rubs the side of his neck with the eraser of his pencil. He isn't sure how to answer that. "Yes? No? Erik, I can't-" He hates the language barrier. He wants to explain that he asked for this, fought for his power, that it isn't remotely the same. "Nien right worte, Erik. I'm sorry. I want to explain."
Erik waves his hand. The belt buckle sways, just the littlest bit, with the gesture. He doesn't have much control, but the thing with the girder tells Steve he could. He could be terrifying. Instead, he looks at Steve with huge blue eyes, questioning and patient. "Try?"
"When Jones comes back?" Steve offers instead. He doesn't want to mess this up. A heaviness in his chest tells him that how he answers, because he will have to at some point, will make a lasting impression on Erik.
Only when Jones does come back, he's half drunk and laughing at some conquest story with Dum Dum. He's in no position to be translating deep and meaningful conversations with impressionable youths. Steve walks Erik back to Carter's tent and reaches out to ruffle his hair, the way his mom always did to him before he went to bed. He stops halfway and shoves his hands into the pockets of his uniform pants instead.
"Gute nacht, Erik," he tries in terribly accented German. "We'll talk more in the morning?"
"Good night, Captain," Erik replies. He gives Steve a long look, then ducks inside the tent.
Steve wakes the next morning to Bucky kicking the frame of his bed over and over. Bucky has been using this tactic to wake him up since they were about ten because he knows Steve hates it. Only it’s a little less effective now than it was when he was all of 90 pounds and the whole bed rattled. Even so, the sensation is unpleasant. "Lord, Bucky, what?"
"SSR and the 107th are moving out at oh-nine-hundred. So you've got about thirty to be up, dressed and on the transport, or the Colonel will go to London without you."
Steve scrambles to his feet, tripping over himself in his rush to get his boots on. Erik is already on another transport, one that left with Carter at oh-seven-hundred. Steve feels the urge to drop his head in his hands when he realizes because, now, there's no time to talk. He just hopes that he can make that time up later, when they're no longer behind enemy lines.
~*~*~
Peggy Carter is kind, powerfully assertive, terrifyingly intelligent and passable at German. However, she doesn't let him get away with speaking it unless he absolutely cannot find the correct English word. He learns more talking to her than anyone else because of that.
She always addresses him like he's a man, not a little boy which most of the other military personnel do. When they are alone, seated beside each other, she will reach out and run her short-cut fingernails through his hair or wrap a casually comforting arm around his shoulder without question or hesitation. The first time she did it, he jumped, but now, there are times when it takes everything Erik has not to melt into her and cry because he misses his mother.
Peggy is younger than his mother was when Herr Doktor murdered her, but she touches him the same way. Confident and gentle. He could love her. More importantly, he is starting to think that he can trust her. The one time he wept in front of her was their secret. He had awoken from a nightmare in which he was strapped to a table in the camp, praying that this time the torture will end with him never having to wake up again. She had briskly handed him a handkerchief, stroked his hair a few times, and then gone back to her own pallet. She never brings it up again, not with him, and he is certain not with Steve or his friends.
So when she leads him by the shoulders into a laboratory, he doesn't offer any resistance. She leads him past men in white coats to a small office where a man with black hair and a thin moustache who looks a little like Clark Gable stands over a desk. "Erik," she says. "This is Mr. Stark. Howard, this is the young man we told you about."
Stark looks up from the desk, looks Erik appraisingly up and down. "You look a little young for a soldier. We’re so desperate we're pulling kids out of school for this, Peg?"
"Oh, you're very funny."
"Glad you think so. So, Lehnsherr right? Peggy here tells me you've got something of an eye for alloys."
"An eye?" Erik asks, confused - another turn of phrase he doesn't quite get. Peggy translates in brief and oh, yes, that makes sense. It's nowhere near what he really has. Even so he nods in agreement.
"Well then you'll be right at home down here," Stark says with a distracted smile. "I imagine they're going to treat this like a glorified daycare for you, but hey. Most everything's metal. Anything you want to see, go ahead. Just ask before you touch anything. I'll probably let you; just let me know first, all right?"
Erik nods and feels a little uneasy. He wants it though. The lab has a quiet call that is nothing like the one in Hydra's factory or Herr Doktor's nightmare office.
Peggy squeezes his shoulder again and leads him out of the office. "Are you feeling well?"
"Yes. It's all just…" He pauses, looking for the right word in English. "New."
"I've got a meeting with Phillips in a quarter of an hour. Will you be all right on your own?"
He's not tied up, strapped down, or in pain. They don't understand that as long as he is none of those things, everything is all right. He just nods because he doesn’t want her to look at him with pity. She never has, but he doesn't want her to start.
~*~*~
The first week, he drifts around Stark's lab, quiet and wide-eyed. He has no desire to reach out and touch until about ten days in, when he finds it. Howard's been working on it off and on in the subbasement lab that no one is supposed to know about. Howard gave him access to all the levels and, on day ten, he stumbles across the shield.
It's imperfect, but it sings to him, perfect and gleaming. He's never encountered metal like it before. He reaches out and stops before his hand can caress the slick metal with his skin. There is no one around to ask, and he refuses to risk what he's found here.
The shield doesn’t agree. As if it can sense how much Erik wants to touch, the shield trembles, and then jumps to his palm, spinning like a top against the ball of his hand.
"Now, that is neat." Erik's focus shatters, and the shield clatters to the ground. He spins around, his heart beating in his throat. Howard Stark stands leaned against the wall, smirking at him. "Can you do it again?"
"Do what?" He can feel his fear making his eyes wide. He can't- not again. Not after last time. He's not strong enough to be found out yet.
Stark points his finger at him. "You made the shield come to you."
"Nein. I mean, no, Herr Stark. I did not."
"Yes, you did. I don’t know how you did it, but you did. It flew to you, like you were a living magnet or something. I've never seen anything like it. Cap tried to tell me, but I didn’t get it."
"Herr Stark, please."
"Calm down, son. You look like I'm going to chop you up with an axe."
He can't move a muscle from the terror. Erik hates himself for freezing. This is what killed her, his mother. This is what allowed Herr Doktor to break him. He needs more practice, more experience. He needs to know how to stop this from happening. He has to.
"All right, bad word choice. What I meant is that he and Peg, they tried to tell me that you were special, and I thought they just meant because you survived what you did. But you're not. You're something else, Erik." He reaches out, moving slowly to pick up the shield. He sets it back on the table with a clatter then moves away again. "You can do it again if you want."
"I can't." He whispers, fighting the memory of Herr Doktor's office. He doesn't want to think of his hard face, encouraging and patient and cold all at once. He doesn't want to remember that moment even though he still has the coin heavy and solid in his pocket. "Please, Herr Stark, I am sorry, I can't."
Suddenly there are hands on his upper arms, giving him a gentle shake. "Hey, hey. Erik, it's all right." Stark gives his arm a firm squeeze. "You don't have to. I just thought you'd want to. You looked like you liked it."
Erik had liked it, is the thing. Nothing ever felt as right as the metal of the shield moving in response to his desire. Given more time, he could love it like nothing else.
"Erik? Son, are you with me?" He shakes his head, nods, shakes it, then nods again. Stark frowns. "Right. I'm going to get you upstairs to Peggy or Cap."
"I am sorry, Herr Stark." Erik repeats. He doesn't know what else to say.
"Don't be sorry. You can be down here. I already said. I'll set up a corner down here for you to practice in private if you want." He lets go and holds up both hands. "No pressure."
Erik doesn't really understand that expression. He nods in agreement anyway and let's Stark lead him out of the subbasement. He glances over his shoulder as they leave together. There is an empty corner, no desk, no scraps, nothing.
He can see himself learning there. It's something he couldn't have imagined before now. It makes him feel something between his rib cage, bright and a little scary. He's not sure what it is, but he likes it. More than that, he wants it. It's the first time he's wanted anything but his mother back and Herr Doktor dead since the SS men dragged him out of that horror-filled office. It gives him what he thinks might be hope.
~*~*~
"Absolutely not."
Steve thought he'd made a damn good argument. He'd drafted Bucky into helping him craft all his talking points and everything. Apparently not. "But Colonel-"
"Don't you 'but Colonel' me, Rogers. I have given you more leeway than you had any right to ask me for, but this is a line, and I'm not crossing it. You are not taking that boy," Phillips points at Erik with no hesitation or shame. "Into the field."
"He's an asset." Phillips knows what Erik could do now, what he's learning at any rate.
They had all discussed it - him, Bucky, Peggy and Stark, when Erik was practicing his English with Jones. In the end, they decided that hiding Erik wasn't going to work once they started deploying, especially if he lost control again. Stark lead the conversation with Phillips about Erik, threatening to pull his weapons and his money out of the war effort if the military touched one hair on Erik's head.
Steve had been in the room for that conversation and had to admit he'd been impressed. He didn't think a vein could throb like the one in Phillips head did and not explode.
"Do you know what the Army could do with a hundred soldiers with that kind of power?" Phillips demanded.
"More than they could do with a hundred Captain Americas, I'd bet." Howard says. "Thing is, Colonel, they're not going to get it. He's got a natural talent. There's no formula for what he can do. If there were, the Nazis and Hydra would've found away to rip it out of him. If they couldn't get that sort of thing out of him, then it's likely we won't either."
"You don't know that, Stark." Phillips glower melted lesser men.
Howard didn't even blink. "I do. I know that. They're further ahead than we are on the weapons front, so we've got to assume the rest of their science is that far ahead too. All we've got going for us with Erik is he's going to grow into his ability one day, and the last thing we need is to make an enemy of him."
Phillips' frown lines deepen. "He is fourteen years old."
"He turned fifteen last week." Steve had felt compelled to point out, even though he feels terribly awkward talking about Erik like he's not here, but there isn't another option. Phillips won't listen when Erik tries to speak for himself. "And he's a deeply traumatized fifteen-year-old."
Howard cast Erik a sidelong glance, then nodded. "I don't know what they did to him in there but I read Roger's report of what he found. Tell me something, Colonel, what do you think he's going to do to the men who hurt him when he's thirty and can control more than just a few ball bearings or a file cabinet drawer?"
Phillips stood glaring at them both for over a minute. Steve wasn't really good with protracted silences, so he fidgeted, but Howard stared right back. Steve wondered at the time if it was being richer than God that gave you that kind of chutzpah, or if Stark was just born with it.
"Fine," Phillips finally said. "The information regarding the abilities of Erik Lensherr doesn't leave this room for now, and when the time's right, I'll make sure he stays in the SSR where I can keep an eye on him. Just make sure he keeps practicing. If he's going to be on our side, then we need him to be of some use at some point." He'd left room without looking back, leaving Steve and Stark alone.
"That could've gone better," Stark had remarked, dropping into a chair. He put his feet up on the small table that filled most of the space in the room to make himself more comfortable.
"It could've gone a lot worse." Steve countered.
Stark shook his head and looked down at his hands. "I'd've gotten him out of England and out to L.A. if I thought that were going to happen."
Steve believed he could do it too. The man was a pilot and a millionaire and a genius. He didn’t need much more than that to smuggle one teenager out of one small country.
Now though, after all the work they did to protect him, Steve is arguing to let Erik be the weapon they'd tried to protect him from being. Not the same, of course. Erik had asked to be on Steve's team, had come as close to begging as his intense pride could allow. Steve had promised to fight for him. Of course, the way Phillips is looking at him and Erik tells Steve that he's losing pretty badly.
"You cannot be serious."
"They murdered my family, my friends, everyone I ever knew." Erik's voice does not waver or shake. He states this fact like he is just a radio announcer reading the news. "I want to fight."
Phillips eyes flick to Erik, then zero back in on Steve, so that it's clear who he's talking to. "I gave you everyone else you wanted for that team, but this is absurd. His balls haven’t even dropped yet."
"Colonel, I can do this," Erik argues. It's pretty impressive. Steve still can't really stand up to Phillips half the time, not with a raised chin and a defiant set to his shoulders like Erik has now. "I am not too young to fight."
Phillips' expression is a nearly perfect mirror of the one he cast on Steve during basic. Speculative, annoyed, disbelieving. The difference being, of course, that Erik still has time to grow and Phillips can see that too.
"Young man, I don't doubt that you want to take down the bastards that killed your people. That's a sane response. I respect it. So when you're old enough, if you still want to serve in this man's Army, then we'll be more than happy for you to fight. However, at the moment, you are a minor child legally in the care of myself and the United States Army. That means that you're under my command, so when I say 'you will not' you say 'sir, yes, sir' like the order it is."
Erik scowls at him. He mutters something in his mother tongue that would probably make a German sailor blush.
"What was that, young man?"
"Sir, yes, sir."
"There's a good boy. You want to make a difference in this war, you help Stark with anything he needs. Come see me when you're old enough, and we'll get you into the field. Hell, keep up the good work, and you'll be in special operations before you need to shave. That's a promise."
"Can I get that in writing?" Erik asks. It takes Steve aback, but Phillips just laughs.
"I'll have a copy to you by tomorrow morning." He claps Erik on the shoulder as he passes out of the room. He clearly doesn't notice the way Erik flinches.
Steve sees it though because he can't look away from the grim expression on Erik's face. When they are alone, Steve looks down at his hands. They're still a little too big for him. Like puberty all over again, only successful this time. He fists them before he speaks. "I'm sorry, Erik."
"It is fine."
"It's not." Steve says with a sigh. "I promised you could fight."
"Obviously, it was not your place to promise me that, Captain." Erik meets his gaze. He doesn't look disappointed or angry or anything. He just looks…closed. This is the first time that Steve has ever seen that expression on him. He doesn't like it. "Something to work on."
"Sometimes I think you're a bit too old for your age, kid." Erik doesn't laugh or smirk or respond at all. He just holds Steve's gaze, waiting. "I think it might be time for us to talk finally." There's been a war going on, getting in the way ever since they left Italy.
"Since you leave in a few days," Erik agrees. "That would be good."
Steve stays seated at the table. He gestures for Erik to join him, but he remains standing. Right-o then. Steve takes a deep breath. "So, your gifts, they're not like mine."
"Yes. I know that." I'm not stupid, is the underlying tone. That's pure teenager right there. Oddly enough that comforts Steve. Maybe Erik is normalizing, at least a little.
"What I mean is that I asked for what I can do. So, I have a responsibility. I was given a gift that I wanted, so I'm responsible for helping people with it in exchange. I have to go back out there."
"And I do not?" Erik hisses. "You don't know what was done. To me, to my family, my people."
"No, I don't."
To be perfectly honest, he doesn't want to know. It's a terrifying prospect. The longer he's in Europe, the more he's realizing that here lies the kind of horror he doesn't really want to know. He just wants to take the bastards down and make it stop. He's glad he can't see into Erik's head in this moment. He doesn't want to know what's in there. What little he can imagine is bad enough.
"But you're not the Nazis' prisoner anymore. You're free, and your power is something you seem to have been born with, so your responsibilities are different than mine. Right now, today, your main choice isn't how you're going to fight, but what you're going to become, what kind of man you're going to be."
He realizes that Dr. Erskine's words are coming out of his mouth. It makes him wish Erskine was here. His tactic worked as well as any. Better than most, probably.
"You have to decide if you're going to be a good man, Erik. That's what you can do to fight back right now."
Erik glowers at him. "That is not enough."
"For now, it has to be. Patience can be powerful too, you know?" He gives Erik what he hopes is a winning smile.
Erik doesn't smile back. "I do not understand what you just said."
"Oh, um." Steve frowns. "I can try to use different words-"
"No, I understand the words. You just make no sense."
That's not actually much better. Steve isn't sure he'll make more sense the second time around but he'll try. "It's like with the girder in the factory, remember? You were able to do this amazing thing and lift it, but you passed out right after. So you know you'll be able to do things like that at some point; you're just not ready yet. If you can be patient and practice, I'm pretty sure your ability and everything else will just follow."
Erik's expression doesn't change but he doesn't argue. That's…not much, really, but it's something. Steve will take it.
~*~*~
Erik spends most of his time in the lab once Steve and his team leave on assignment. "Call me Howard, Erik, please." Stark insists as he drops a box of ball bearings in front of Erik the first day of Erik's "training".
He seems to take personal pleasure in setting up little challenges for Erik. "I'm interested because it's a mystery," Howard tells him when Erik asks why. "I love unraveling a good mystery. It's how I got into this in the first place," he says waving at the lab with his large hands. "Well, that and the money. And the women. Women, Erik. When you're older, ask me about women because there's a mystery for you that never gets old and never gets solved."
He talks faster than the actors on the radio and moves just as quickly. Most of the time Erik just nods and follows him from station to station around the lab, trying to keep up. The parts in all of Stark's machines hum and whisper as they move. Erik takes to sleeping down there, where the sensation of metalwork clicking together perfectly works like white noise, soothing the nerves he won't admit to having enough that he can relax. Everything in the SSR labs could be a weapon if he could get control.
"Concentrate." Howard says, again and again. "You can do this if you just focus. Come on, Erik."
His calm tone reminds Erik enough of Herr Doktor that he can pull anger out of his gut and throw it into the nearest alloy. It's unstable though, violent and precarious. He plateaus with his old hurt and fury until the afternoon when he loses himself so deep in that old ugly memory of his mother's collapsing body that he sends half the gears shooting out of an impressive looking contraption like so much shrapnel. The momentum of his will is so strong that it embeds them in the stone walls. Erik counts himself lucky that no one was hurt or killed.
He will admit, though, that if he could've done this a mere year ago, maybe his life would be different at this moment. Maybe his mother wouldn't be ash in the air over Poland.
Howard kicks everyone out of the lab at that point. He beckons Erik to the wall, his mouth set in a grim line beneath his pencil moustache. "I thought you wanted control."
"I do."
"Yeah? That's not control. That's-" He shakes a head. "That's being out of control if I've ever seen it. You want to tell me what's got you all twisted up in knots?"
"Nothing." Erik replied. He doesn’t mean to be petulant. He doesn't. But he can feel his lower lip pushing out just a little.
"Kiddo, you are just the worst liar I've ever met, and I've met a lot of liars."
"I will get better." At lying and at his control.
"Yeah, I know. I won't josh you, that scares me a little. Hell, you scare me a little. I mean, I've never seen you smile."
Erik stares back at him. He doesn't see how that's remotely relevant.
"Look, cool your heels a little. The anger thing seems to come pretty easy to you. Rightly so, but how about going the other way for a change? Maybe think about something a little more cheerful while you're trying to get my property out of the wall. I don’t know, Peggy Carter's stems are the first things that come to mind. I always find those to be a good motivator."
"Stems?"
"Her legs? Gorgeous, but if you're not a leg man, think about the black market steak we're going to have tonight for dinner. Alls I'm saying is that you should give it a try with a little less anger next time."
It doesn't work without the anger. "It has to be there." Erik says.
He watches as Howard goes through the completely unnecessary gesture of smoothing his moustache three times before speaking. The gesture is slightly hypnotic."Try and temper it then. Think of happy things and all that. If it made Wendy Darling fly, I don’t see why it can't work for you. " He grins and smoothes his moustache yet again. " At this point, that's my only idea."
"I do not know what you're talking about," Erik says with a heavy sigh. The words all make sense now. His English has gotten good enough that it’s more how people speak than what they say that confuses him.
Howard waves it off with a careless hand. He puts Erik back to work, this time excavating the gears from the wall, and heads off to do whatever it is that a scientist does during war time.
When he returns to his makeshift bunk, which had belonged to Steve, Bucky, Jones and the man with the bowler hat, Dum Dum they called him, before they were sent back behind enemy lines, Peggy is waiting for him. She holds up a battered copy of a book with the words "Peter and Wendy" on the cover.
"I've been informed that your education of Scottish literature is incomplete." She hands him the book. "I replied that perhaps the characters just had different names in the German translation but he insisted that you have this. Apparently, it's your homework assignment."
He opens the book and flips through a few pages. Every so often, there are drawings inside. "It's a children's story."
"It is," Peggy agrees. "Read it anyway. There will be a test."
"A test."
"Yes. Possibly in essay form to see how your vocabulary's progressing. You've a very sharp mind, Erik. I'd hate to see that deteriorate just because you're spending so much time in the basements under Mr. Stark's questionable influence."
Her tone is firm but clearly a gentle teasing rather than a criticism of a man who is trying his hardest to help Erik reach his potential. It takes Erik a moment to respond because Peggy Carter is radiant to the point of distraction. He doesn't even need to glance at her stems to be reminded of that. He would take any test she set in front of him and fight for every question just for her approval. "Yes, ma'am."
"I've been informed by Colonel Phillips that you've expressed an interest in combat in the future. In that case, you'll begin hand-to-hand training tomorrow at oh-six-hundred. I expect you to be there on time."
"Thank you."
"Yes, well, we'll see if you're thanking me tomorrow, won't we?" She gives him a bright smile. "Have a good night, Erik. I'll see you in the morning."
Erik gets there at a five-thirty, and she is already waiting for him. She runs him ragged until eighteen-hundred. He runs laps round the five square blocks that make up their blitz-ravaged neighborhood until the sun is high enough that it manages to push through the London haze. When his legs feel like the jam his aunt used to make every spring, Peggy calls him inside to teach him basic technique. She even manages to get a heavy bag from somewhere and leaves him to beat on it with his new skills until he nearly splits his hands open on it.
He is so tired by the time she excuses him for dinner that he barely has the energy to lift a fork to his mouth. The rest of the small mess hall might as well not be there in this state. He just wants to be left alone with his food.
Naturally, Howard drops down across the table from him. He watches Erik attempt to eat for a moment then says, "Grab your food and come with me."
Erik glares at him but does as he's told. He's too exhausted to do anything else. Howard helps, picking up the tin utensils and cup, leading the way down into his lab. He sits it down on his desk and gestures for Erik to take the chair behind it. He remembers days, weeks without food, just out of reach on Herr Doktor's porcelain plates, as he was pushed to perform. Fear hits him for a heartbeat before he reminds himself that Howard Stark is not one of his Nazi tormentors. He's not.
"So, I've been thinking."
"Good. It's what made you rich, isn't it?"
That makes Howard laugh. It's a confident sound. "Yes, it is. But this probably won’t have too big a payoff, not in greenbacks anyway. No, I was thinking about this gift of yours. It's natural. It's not some lab juice we mixed up. It's just you." Erik nods. "So, maybe that's the trick. Just… do something you want, something you need." He points at the fork. "You're hungry. Peggy wore you out. Go the easy way and do what comes naturally to your body. I think you should try to pick up the fork and get yourself a bite using your gift."
He nearly died of starvation the last time Herr Doktor used this tactic. "Control yourself or go hungry," he'd said. "The choice is yours, Erik."
What Howard says seems to come out of nowhere and is nothing like the Doktor. "You get to the bit in the book with the happy thoughts yet, Erik?"
Erik just nods. He hadn't been able to sleep very much the night before, excited by the idea of combat training. He wasn't sure how he felt about the story, of a boy who stubbornly refused to grow up when Erik hadn't had a choice to do anything else. He rather liked Wendy Darling. She reminded him of Peggy Carter -he read her with the agent's voice in his mind- and a little, in her generous spirit, of Captain Rogers.
"That was always one of my favorite parts, but you're not me. I keep forgetting that most folks aren't like me. I expect everyone to be running on the same tracks. They almost never are, but that's neither here nor there. The point is I still think the idea I had's got merit; only yesterday, I may have missed the point, which is to think differently. Maybe, this time, instead of going with anger or desperation, just don't think anything at all. Just let yourself be tired and go with whatever instinct tells you is the easiest."
Thinking of nothing is a concept that Erik can't really grasp until he remembers the way his mind went quiet earlier this afternoon, fists slamming into old leather over and over. He could slip back there easily now, as exhausted as he is. He had wanted to before, but Howard had interrupted.
"And if instinct tells me to cut off my feet like the girl with the red shoes?" It's a petty dig for interrupting him, but that's where his instinct is directing him at the moment.
"Andersen, huh? Figures. I bet you're a big fan of Grimm too. Every Kraut I've ever met seems to be. Kid, if you feel like amputating yourself, tell me first, and we'll discuss it."
Then he makes a show of sliding the blunt butter knife off the desk and into his pocket. It's a terrible joke, but Erik smiles anyway. He's too tired to help himself.
It generates a grin out of Howard in return. "Damn, kid, be careful! Don't sneeze, or your face'll freeze like that. How can you be impressive and scary if you're stuck smiling all the time?"
"It could be a deranged smile."
"Ah. How silly of me. Of course it could. I'll leave you to your dinner. I'm going to get some chow myself. After that, if you need me, I'll be in Weapons with Smith. We're this close to figuring out those Hydra energy weapons." He pinches his fingers together. "Today's the day. I'm sure of it."
He says this last with his eyes locked on Erik. He claps him on the shoulder once, and then leaves his office. It doesn’t escape Erik how much trust that places on him, to be alone in Howard Stark's personal office with no supervision. He doesn't care about causing trouble or ruffling through papers though. He just wants to eat, then sleep for ten hours or so before starting all over again with Peggy tomorrow.
That thought is curling lazily and fluidly through his mind when he realizes his fork is floating towards him with a piece of chicken on it. He stares at like it might do the biting then opens his mouth thinking, oh, how did I do that as it hovers between his teeth and waits. He removes the morsel with a clean bite and when he goes for another forkful, moving the utensil feels less like forcing his will and more like the simple process of lifting his hand. It's just another part of him moving the space around him, like his feet walking or his fingers gripping.
Alone in Howard's office, Erik laughs, loud and long for the first time since before he and his family were herded out of their homes and into the train station. Then he eats his dinner with his fingers laced behind his head while his fork and spoon seem to dance on his plate.
Part 2