Never Forgotten, Never Defeated

“Everyone knew he wanted to get with her granddaughter.  What most didn’t know though, is that he did get with her.  Often.  When Buck couldn’t get a date, she was his fall back.” Which wasn’t often if he thought about it, but still.  He always had some girl on his arm.  Meanwhile Steve, was the tag along.  Always.  

“Of course you did.  You always looked amazing.  In anything you wore.”  Just because they didn’t have much growing up, didn’t mean she didn’t always look good.  To him anyway.  He had always thought she was a goddess.  But he was the skinny kid.  And she never would have gone out with him then.  So he never bothered.  Hearing her, he looked back at her.  “Oh yeah?  How nice we talkin’?”

Bex would like to point out that half the shit they did (and that he and Buck did) was his idea. Like getting into fights with people twice his size. So if he almost got killed on their adventures, it was more than likely because he proposed an adventure bound to almost kill them. Buck was usually more the...sneaking into Dodgers Stadium type. Which, she had to admit, was always a lot of fun.

“You think she would have learned. Told him to get lost. Or call her when he wanted to treat her to a proper date.” Yeah right. Not many girls ever told her brother no. It was kind of annoying. Especially as he’d often end up with an extra girl that he wanted Steve to go out with. Something that used to annoy Bex to no end. Steve didn’t need girls to date. Not when...

Not when she had been right there.

“Yeah? You think so?” That was a good sign. Cause while Bex had doubts about one or two of her outfits over the years. The fact that he seemed to love every single one of them...well...it would make this surprise even better.

“He’s awake.” Two words. Two extremely simple words. And yet, they carried with them a power only few could understand – cutting through 70 years of pain and mourning, causing her heart to stop and her breath to catch.

Awake.

She doesn’t answer Maria; it never even occurs to her to do so. She just simply hangs up, heading for Midtown and the coordinates sent to her phone. Somewhere, in the very back of her brain, a tiny voice tells her that there’s something she needs to do, people she needs to call. Like the Commandos. They deserve to know too. And they deserve to find out from her, one of their own.

She’ll feel bad about that later. When the boys relay to her the story of seeing the two of them on the nightly news. But they’ll also understand. Or at least she hopes they will. It’s hard not to have tunnel vision in this moment. He’s awake. All she has to do is go to him. And that is what she’s concentrating on. Getting to him.

*********

The scene in Times Square is not what she’s expecting – helicopters, swat vans, several dozen SHIELD agents all with their weapons at the ready. Was this really the welcome wagon they had rolled out? This was…it wasn’t like the Hulk was destroying Harlem again.

The cab barely comes to a stop before she’s jumping out, tossing a fifty back at the driver and telling him to keep the change. She doesn’t have time to wait. She doesn’t have time to do anything. She just needs to get through the crowd. Which is why her SHIELD ID is already out and at the ready.

She pushes her way through the sea of onlookers and agents, paying no attention to either. She can hear the voices following her. Tourists wondering what is going on, who she is. Wondering if something’s happened or maybe they’ve stumbled onto where someone was filming. Lower level agents watching her in awe, some calling up the line to their supervisors, trying to get word to Fury that she’s made it.

And they must have succeeded. For as she appears behind Fury (just in enough time to hear him say something about being asleep for 70 years), he steps aside to reveal her. As if he’s had it planned the whole time. She wants to be angry with him for that. But she can’t.

She can’t be angry about anything right now. Because there he is. Not even ten feet from her. All it would take was a few steps and she could touch him.

He felt comfortable with her.  He always had.  And even now, after all the time they had spent apart, he still felt the same.  Even if things were different, he was always able to be himself around her.  He wasn’t Captain America, he was just Steve.  She didn’t see him as this big hero that the media did.  That the rest of the world did.  She saw him as that guy from Brooklyn.  The shy, short, tiny guy that had a crush on her from the time they were kids.  

The one that still did.

“You remember old lady Shaw?  That woman that used to throw shoes at Buck every time he was within five feet of her door?  Just because he stepped on her flowers once?”  That woman had it in for Bucky.  He still had to wonder if she knew that he kept stealing her flowers every time he had a date.  Probably.  She seemed to know everything that happened in the neighbourhood.  “She used to hate Buck so much.  Even though he was as nice as pie to her.”  

As her legs stretched across his lap, his hands rested across them automatically.  The comforts of knowing someone so long, he supposed.  Glancing at her toes, he smiled at her, a breath out.  “Someone is in the mood for Halloween, I see.  Have a costume all picked out yet?  Or were you going to wait until the last minute again, and cut holes in your sheets like you did in what… the eighth grade?”

That was just how Brooklyn used to be -- everyone knowing everything about everyone else. Neighbours having very few secrets from one another. Back then, every little old lady on the block knew that Bex and Steve had it bad for one another -- even though the two of them remained oblivious (and were still kind of oblivious to this day). There would be several Italian and Irish grandmothers high-fiving on the other side once the two of them finally figured it out.

“How could I forget? But let’s be clear. It wasn’t just because Buck stepped on her flowers once. Yes, he was nice to her...but he was nice to her because he was trying to get with her granddaughter.” Not a reason to throw shoes at him, but still...

“You’d be surprised what I kept...or, well, Howard kept. He was the one that packed up the old apartment for me.” After the war, Bex had struggled. She had lost not just her brother but her best friend (and the boy she was in love with) as well. It made the idea of coming home, back to the apartment they once shared, unbearable.

And so Howard had agreed to have his people pack her up. And put the stuff in storage while she remained in England with the Falsworths. Two years she stayed there. Growing even closer to Jack’s children and just...trying to put the war behind her. But she couldn’t hide there forever and so eventually she returned home. To a new apartment and all her stuff.

“Seriously?” Bex rolled her eyes a bit, even as she smiled at the blonde. Though Sharon and Peggy and Steve and all the Commandos had told her she looked amazing, she still felt huge. And sore. And tired. And just all around bleh. 

He had to admit, he was a little confused as to who Jason and Freddy were.  He just hoped that they weren’t weird.  He couldn’t handle anymore strange people.  He had spent way too much time with Tony lately, and that was more than enough for him.  Though, he didn’t want to ask either, knowing it would make him sound naive.

When he arrived, he found her waiting for him, wearing comfortable pants.  Slipping inside, he slid off his jacket and hung it up, before moving to sit next to her on the couch.  “I thought I was going to be late.  There was an accident a few blocks from here.  But turned out it was just some older lady yelling at a cab driver.”  He shrugged, looking back at her.  “So, you look cute.”

She liked the way Steve moved in her apartment, the way he obviously felt at home there. She kept trying to hint that it could just be home...that he could let go of his lease and move in with her. After all, it wasn’t like it would be the first time; they had all lived together before the wall -- her, Buck, and him. And then during the war it had been extremely close quarters. So you know...