Fic: Something to Lose, Captain America gen
Title: Something to Lose
Author: harmonyangel
Disclaimer: Marvel owns it all!
Comic: Captain America
Spoilers: One of the many conflicting versions of Cap’s backstory, with my own fanon thrown in. So nothing really spoilery.
Pairing/Characters: Steve Rogers, Joseph and Sarah Rogers
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 700
Summary: Steve’s parents did the best they could.
Author's Note: Originally written for the "Write about something you've lost" prompt at theatrical_muse
Joseph Rogers wasn’t a bad man. He was kind and quiet and principled, and he worked long hours at the factory to bring home the money that kept his family fed and clothed and housed in a cramped apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He taught his son how to put on a necktie and skip rocks over the harbor, and he ran his fingers through his wife’s hair after dinner every evening as she read on the sofa, leaning her fair head on his shoulder. But Joseph Rogers was also a man with an addiction, and nothing his wife and son could say or do could change that fact.
Steve tried. Even at four, he could tell when his father was not like himself. Always a light sleeper, Steve would awaken when his father stumbled home at late hours from the neighborhood speakeasies, bumping into tables and chairs on his way through the kitchen. Padding out of his bedroom, Steve would make his innocent plea, like a child in a temperance play singing “Father, Come Home.” But in this case it was “Father, Stay Home,” a tiny creased brow and jutted chin emphasizing each word.
Joseph promised he would. “Tomorrow,” he’d say, or “next week.” But weeks turned into months turned into years, and when Steve was six, his father’s skin became a ghastly yellow. By the end of 1927, Steve found himself in a suit with too-short trousers, clutching his mother’s hand and laying flowers on a stone carved with words that he’d only just learned how to read.
~*~
Laundry work always carried a risk. Every day, on their way to the boiling tub, sheets and aprons and handkerchiefs spotted with blood and phlegm and disease passed through the laundress’ bare hands, and eventually something was bound to catch. But Sarah Rogers didn’t have many marketable skills, and she was going to do whatever it took to keep her son fed and happy in their new, tiny Brooklyn home.
Sarah was a young woman, but the work made her old, cramping her blistered red hands and filling her forehead with wrinkles. When she smiled, though, those wrinkles faded away, and the full vitality of a woman who had once dreamed of dancing with the professional ballet shone through. Her smile was wide and bright and infrequent, and it came most readily when she was with her son, playing cards or looking at his drawings or listening to his stories of the day’s events.
Steve tried to ease her burden. He did what he could, when he wasn’t at school - selling newspapers, doing odd jobs. Every night he took his mother’s arthritic hands in his own and tried his best to work out the tension, and on Sundays, when they came home from church, he forced her to use the remainder of the day for rest, as God had intended. But the laundry still brought in the largest part of their income, and one day, succumbing to inevitability, Sarah Rogers started coughing.
She might have survived. They had the medicine. But then Steve started coughing, too, and money for two bottles of pills was a pipe dream. Steve was fourteen, gangly and malnourished but still facing a whole lifetime of possibilities. And so Sarah stopped taking the pills. Steve pleaded with her, but to no avail; his mother’s conviction was as strong as his father’s addiction ever was. So he took the pills, and gradually stopped coughing, and in the fall of 1935 Steve sat beside his mother’s bed and held her blistered hand as her smile faded for the last time.
~*~
“You’re going to become a symbol,” they said, frank as could be, in one of the first sessions. “When we give you this serum, Steve Rogers will cease to exist as anything but a cover. If there’s anything or anyone you’re attached to - any family, any connections you need to keep - this isn’t the program for you.”
It was 1940. Steve Rogers was nineteen years old, and he hadn’t had a real, stable home in five years. He nodded, and accepted the condition without hesitation.
It had been a long time since he’d had anything to lose.
Author: harmonyangel
Disclaimer: Marvel owns it all!
Comic: Captain America
Spoilers: One of the many conflicting versions of Cap’s backstory, with my own fanon thrown in. So nothing really spoilery.
Pairing/Characters: Steve Rogers, Joseph and Sarah Rogers
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 700
Summary: Steve’s parents did the best they could.
Author's Note: Originally written for the "Write about something you've lost" prompt at theatrical_muse
Joseph Rogers wasn’t a bad man. He was kind and quiet and principled, and he worked long hours at the factory to bring home the money that kept his family fed and clothed and housed in a cramped apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. He taught his son how to put on a necktie and skip rocks over the harbor, and he ran his fingers through his wife’s hair after dinner every evening as she read on the sofa, leaning her fair head on his shoulder. But Joseph Rogers was also a man with an addiction, and nothing his wife and son could say or do could change that fact.
Steve tried. Even at four, he could tell when his father was not like himself. Always a light sleeper, Steve would awaken when his father stumbled home at late hours from the neighborhood speakeasies, bumping into tables and chairs on his way through the kitchen. Padding out of his bedroom, Steve would make his innocent plea, like a child in a temperance play singing “Father, Come Home.” But in this case it was “Father, Stay Home,” a tiny creased brow and jutted chin emphasizing each word.
Joseph promised he would. “Tomorrow,” he’d say, or “next week.” But weeks turned into months turned into years, and when Steve was six, his father’s skin became a ghastly yellow. By the end of 1927, Steve found himself in a suit with too-short trousers, clutching his mother’s hand and laying flowers on a stone carved with words that he’d only just learned how to read.
~*~
Laundry work always carried a risk. Every day, on their way to the boiling tub, sheets and aprons and handkerchiefs spotted with blood and phlegm and disease passed through the laundress’ bare hands, and eventually something was bound to catch. But Sarah Rogers didn’t have many marketable skills, and she was going to do whatever it took to keep her son fed and happy in their new, tiny Brooklyn home.
Sarah was a young woman, but the work made her old, cramping her blistered red hands and filling her forehead with wrinkles. When she smiled, though, those wrinkles faded away, and the full vitality of a woman who had once dreamed of dancing with the professional ballet shone through. Her smile was wide and bright and infrequent, and it came most readily when she was with her son, playing cards or looking at his drawings or listening to his stories of the day’s events.
Steve tried to ease her burden. He did what he could, when he wasn’t at school - selling newspapers, doing odd jobs. Every night he took his mother’s arthritic hands in his own and tried his best to work out the tension, and on Sundays, when they came home from church, he forced her to use the remainder of the day for rest, as God had intended. But the laundry still brought in the largest part of their income, and one day, succumbing to inevitability, Sarah Rogers started coughing.
She might have survived. They had the medicine. But then Steve started coughing, too, and money for two bottles of pills was a pipe dream. Steve was fourteen, gangly and malnourished but still facing a whole lifetime of possibilities. And so Sarah stopped taking the pills. Steve pleaded with her, but to no avail; his mother’s conviction was as strong as his father’s addiction ever was. So he took the pills, and gradually stopped coughing, and in the fall of 1935 Steve sat beside his mother’s bed and held her blistered hand as her smile faded for the last time.
~*~
“You’re going to become a symbol,” they said, frank as could be, in one of the first sessions. “When we give you this serum, Steve Rogers will cease to exist as anything but a cover. If there’s anything or anyone you’re attached to - any family, any connections you need to keep - this isn’t the program for you.”
It was 1940. Steve Rogers was nineteen years old, and he hadn’t had a real, stable home in five years. He nodded, and accepted the condition without hesitation.
It had been a long time since he’d had anything to lose.