Chapter Text
Dr. Abraham Erskine had heard of America’s favorite inventor, the enigmatic and charming Howard Stark. He’d also heard of the Stark Expo. The Future, as everyone dreamed it’d be, shining and full of flying cars. When he found himself there, doing his job, recruiting the bright young men of America to a war that would likely end many of their own futures, he couldn’t help but himself a bit, if only for the necessity of their deaths and the role he’d played in the creation of their villains. Now, as he wandered down the hallway leading to the recruitment pavilion, he saw an… unusual sight, to say the least.
There, in front of the reflector booth that showed young men a glorified version of the war, stood a small man. He looked more like a child than anything, with bony shoulders and a bruise coming up on his cheek. His friend, dressed in sergeant's uniform, towered over him by nearly a foot. They were arguing, and Dr. Erskine stopped within earshot of them. The two boys, for they are truly too young for him to think of them as men, nevermind that one of them is going off to war soon, judging by his uniform, don’t appear to register anyone around them, caught in each other's gravity.
“You really gonna do this?” the taller of the two asks, eyeing the recruitment signs with distaste.
“It’s a fair. I guess I’ll try my luck, Bucky,” says the smaller boy.
“As who? Steve from… Ohio? What if they catch you, or take you? That’d be worse,” says the taller one, Bucky, Erskine supposes. “You can’t even win a fight with a guy in an alley, Steve. I can’t just let you get hurt by a bunch of guys with guns!”
“Am I supposed to collect scraps in a little red wagon, Buck? Sit in a factory like some girl? There are men laying down their lives…” He continues on, but Dr. Erskine has lost interest in their conversation. He’s more interested in the way they interact, even in an argument. Yes, caught in each other's gravity as if nothing else matters. The people around them, the girls lingering just outside of range and watching Bucky, none of it matters. Somehow, in the midst of the crowded fair, noise and lights and people all around them, they’ve created their own little bubble. He tunes back into their conversation just as it’s ending, only soon enough to catch their last remarks to each other.
“Don’t do anything stupid ‘till I get back.”
“I can’t. You’re taking all of the stupid with you.”
“Punk.” It’s said with so much affection that the tall man may have called his friend ‘sweetheart’ just as easily. Bucky, who had been walking away from Steven, comes back to give him a hug. It’s probably meant to look like a manly embrace between two good friends, but they turn into each other just a little too much for Dr. Erskine to miss, Steven tucking his chin into the crook of Bucky’s neck and Bucky leaning down, covering him as if in protection from everyone around them. It’s not likely that anyone else noticed, but Dr. Erskine did.
“Jerk.” The tone doesn’t change. They pull apart, and Bucky goes striding off to meet the girls who had been lingering nearby.
“Don’t win the war ‘till I get there.” Steven calls, prompting Bucky to turn around for one last wave. Dr. Erskine turns and follows Steve’s small frame back to the recruitment area. He’ll give the kid what he wants, if only to right a wrong from years ago. If it gives him a better chance at surviving and staying with his… ‘friend’ in the future, all the better.
****
By the time Dr. Erskine makes his way into the small room where Steven’s supposed to be having his examination, it’s clear that the kid is having second thoughts. He’s sitting on a chair in the corner, shaking hands trying (and failing) to tie his shoes. Obviously, the soldier that let Dr. Erskine into the room frightened him. That’s okay, Erskine thinks, he’s more likely to be truthful if he’s afraid.
“So, you want to go overseas. Kill some Nazis.” Even now, he places a bit of extra emphasis on the last word, the familiarity of the language that created the term making it slide out of his mouth with particular relish. The kid flinches.
“Excuse me?” The dim lighting and his nervousness makes Steve look particularly sickly.
“Dr. Abraham Erskine. Strategic Scientific Reserve.” The kid nods, as if the words mean anything to him. Dr. Erskine knows they don’t, to anyone outside of the reserve the words mean nothing.
“Steve Rogers. Where are you from?” This kid. No tact, Dr. Erskine thinks. It’s not exactly as if he can blame him though. His country is at war, and here is a man speaking to him in the same accent as that of a soldier on the opposing side.
“Queens.” He rattles off his address. Perhaps not the most wise, in ordinary circumstances, but it should be fine here. After all, why would Steve Rogers care? “Before that, Germany. Does it bother you?”
After a moment of consideration Steven shakes his head. Dr. Erskine has to admit, the little one has heart. He leafs through the folder in his hand. Five tries, five rejections. He has a reason to fight, apparently, and he’s refusing to back down. His friend, Bucky, a perfect grounding wire, only makes him a better candidate. The perfect candidate. He’ll do anything to get out there, it seems, but he probably wouldn’t go rogue and attempt to take over the world once he gets there. Their conversation continues. By the time Dr. Erskine stamps Steven’s papers (the ones from Brooklyn, not Ohio) he’s convinced that he’s found the guy who will turn the tides of the war. Oh, how his former colleagues would laugh if they saw him now, ready to enhance a boy who looks like one good kick to the chest would crumple him. Steven walks off, shoulders squared as if he’s already an intimidating figure and not a man who looks to be a boy. Dr. Erskine hopes Steven gets to see his own boy before he ships out to the front.
****
Weeks later, when he sees Steven again, Dr. Erskine knows he’s made the right decision. If he needs to fight Colonel Phillips for it, then so be it. Dr. Erskine is particularly entertained when, aiming to prove that his favorite big bad bully of a soldier is the right choice for his experiment, instead proves Dr. Erskine’s choice to be the best one. Rodgers, sweating in the hot sun and wheezing slightly due to his asthmatic lungs, flings himself on top of the training grenade without pause, while the rest of the recruits do the foolish thing and hide behind various pieces of machinery like cowards. Erskine remains unsurprised. The Colonel looks resigned. Nearly as resigned as Steven looks when Dr. Erskine goes to him later that evening.
It’s not as if he’s regretting his decision, Erskine knows, but the terror of playing guinea pig for a mystery drug that keeps him up well into the night. They have a good conversation, he thinks. Dr. Erskine can’t help but wonder what’s going through his head, what fears he must have, as they talk. His tale of the last person who tried to become something great must not be particularly comforting, but his own confidence in the success of such a mad science experiment should balance it out some.
He wonders what Steve Rogers reads in between the lines of his words. Does he take ‘not a perfect soldier,’ to mean that he will retain his rebellious spirit, or that he will retain some weakness? Or, does he take it even further than that and read into it as a veiled reference to his friend, out on the front lines? Furthermore, what does he think of the bit about being a good man? Erskine may never know what’s going on inside his head (indeed, he’s not sure he wants to, if the guy’s crazy enough to volunteer for the army under a false enlistment form so many times) but he hopes that he made his own intentions clear enough. Whatever may be between Steven and his friend, it does not matter to Dr. Erskine. Indeed, he hopes they make it through the war together.
“To the little guys.” Steven says, and while Erskine appreciates his joke, he also finds it at least a little funny that, by the next day, nothing about Steve Rogers will be small. They go to drink before Dr. Erskine remembers himself and pulls Steven’s glass of schnaps away from him. It’s good liquor, and he’d hate for it to go to waste. Maybe he’ll save some for Steven after the procedure, though he doubts it will have any effect on him with a metabolism that moves approximately four times faster than the average human’s. Oh well.
****
Despite the fact that Steven had seemed slightly more settled after their little chat in the middle of the night, it seems the morning has brought all of his nerves back in full force. The pinched expression on Agent Carter’s face as they enter tells him that a nervous Steven is a rambling Steven. Also, he seems to be absolutely amazed by the wonders of modern technology. They quickly learn that a nervous Steven is also a joking Steven, luckily for all of them. Nobody wants to listen to a man having a panic attack just before the most important moment of half of their careers. It brings down morale!
“You ever get that Cadillac in the air?” Steven asks Stark.
“For a whole three minutes.”
“Then what happened?”
“We landed… technically.”
All gotta start somewhere, Dr. Erskine thinks to himself. Besides, flying a car for three minutes before ‘landing’ is far better than any of Dr. Erskine’s failures (most notably allowing a madman to turn himself into a super soldier, but that’s beside the point). The procedure goes on as planned, and poor Agent Carter seems to have developed a certain fondness for Steven. Truly unfortunate, for all parties involved, not in the least because Steven remains so oblivious to it.
Everything is going smoothly, or at least as smoothly as can be expected, until Steven starts screaming. Erskine is glad he had the foresight to attach speakers to the injection pod. Just as he nods to Stark to stop the reaction, he hears Steven’s voice, that damnably stubborn boy. No doubt he’s going to get himself in trouble for it, one day.
“No… don’t. I can do it.” The words are strained, and the lights throughout the room nearly blinding, but Erskine nods to Stark to keep going. Stubborn, but with heart, he thinks. Exactly why he picked Steven for his experiment. Lights and circuits all around the room spark, but when the light finally dies and the chrysalis opens, Dr. Erskine breathes a sigh of relief and exhilaration. All of his experimentation and struggles have paid off, if only once, to create the perfect man.
Stronger, taller, and still of a good heart. In that moment, as dozens of important men flood into the operating theater to get a close-up view of the U.S. Army’s brand new super-soldier, Dr. Erskine forgets all about the fact that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, Germany is looking for a way to steal the serum.
It all stops the moment he sees one of the men pull out a lighter. Everything slows down, all eyes in the room are magnetically drawn to the small, insignificant, mundane action of flicking a lighter. The resulting boom from the observation room lays them all flat and allows the goddamned spy to get away with the final unused bottle of serum, but not before he manages to stop all other progress towards more American supersoldiers by burying several bullets in Dr. Erskine’s chest.
Dr. Erskine crumpled. He’s sad, of course, that this is the end of the road. All men die desperately after all, gasping for one final breath. Even so, he thinks that he’s proud. He got to see the fruits of his labors pay off in such a tangible way. He’s proud of picking a man with such heart. Even as his heart stops, as the world fades, he taps Steven’s chest. The beating, living heart above him. He hopes Steven knows he’s telling him not to waste it. Everything goes black, and in his final moments Dr. Erskine finds himself wishing that he’d at least gotten a chance to see his old allies, damned traitors to science and discovery, fall. He knows Steven will help make them pay. With that, Dr. Abraham Erskine dies, and takes the knowledge of how to make the serum with him