Steve Rogers

It's a good few hours after their release from the lockdown. Steve has been busy dealing with several things - Hyde, to start with, but also checking in with the doctors, and with a few others. Molly, Lady Grantham and Lwaxana were a priority, since they were the more at-risk, but they weren't the only ones.

He also takes the time to grab a shower and a change of clothes.

Then he hopes she's in her quarters, and walks over to Sharon's door to knock.

Steve lets a whole day pass, ever since he saw Rae and Logan right out of quarantine, then only does he track down Logan. He's pretty satisfied to find him in one of the sparring rooms, and he grabs some tape to wind around his hands.

"Don't even think about storming off," he tells Logan, and there's that steely look in his eyes that says he means it.

He doesn't exactly expect Logan to be fine with this, but then again, Steve doesn't mind if he doesn't get to finish taping up before they lay into each other.

Steve is very aware that Sharon would probably have hated him for this, even if he hadn't done it on his birthday. But he's been toying with the idea for days, because it's been a few weeks since they last talked about this, and there's giving her space and then there's just letting nothing happen. So for once, he's thankful for something about the Proserpina: the fact that they are now getting warned for people's birthdays.

It's the trigger he's been waiting for to put his plan in motion. Well, plan. It's a big word for it, when all it is really is mostly a hope that Sharon won't stalk right out of the schoolroom, but still. He spends a lot of time in front of the replicator in his room, until he has decent popcorn. He spends even longer in the schoolroom, until he's loaded a decent movie on the computer that's on the wall. The decent movie, in this case, is better than decent; it's Casablanca.

And then finally, when it's time and he figures she's had dinner already (popcorn is no proper meal), he goes and warms up the popcorn in the kitchen, sends everybody but Sharon an e-mail that he rereads three times to make sure the phone's auto-correction feature isn't messing with him, asking people to stay out of this schoolroom tonight, and then only rereads the text he's about to send Sharon. This one he actually rereads five times, just in case. Thinking fo the coke debacle still makes him blush.

The text just says, "Level 3 schoolroom. Emergency."

He's hoping that she won't stop to think about the fact that if this were an emergency, the last thing he would do is take the time to text anyone.

Eventually, Steve is done answering questions, and he's seen the people he wanted to see, and he can head over to Sharon's quarters. He hasn't even really thought over what he wanted to say, because he wants to say what he feels, and that's clear enough in his heart, even if he's never put it into words. He doesn't pause to think he's going to have trouble doing that, because if he pauses to think he might talk himself into believing that Sharon doesn't want him to stop by.

But she asked him, right before they were teleported back, and he's going to answer her.

He gets to her door, and it doesn't open automatically, so he knocks on it, a steady rhythm that should hint at who it is well enough.

There are times on the station when it's impossible to know where Steve could be. They're the times he just walks around, making the rounds on the common areas and sometimes stopping by to see someone specific, to check in with or check up on them, sometimes - often, if not always - both. Who he is might not mean anything to most people on board, it doesn't mean that he feels any less responsible for everybody's safety and well-being. As much as safety and well-being are possible to achieve in this place.

And then there are times when it's all too easy to find him. Early each morning, he jogs through the station. Then he stops by the kitchen to have breakfast. Most of the time, nobody shows up, but he likes to have his breakfast somewhere people could show up rather than in his room. Even his Manhattan apartment was bigger than his quarters here.

After breakfast, he stops by his quarters to pick up his shield, then heads over to one of the sparring rooms. He doesn't practice throwing it around anymore; he tried that once, and there is still a dent in the station wall. But he does practice everything else with it, every day, because it is heavy, now, in an uncomfortable way, and he needs to be comfortable with it again.

Maybe if he'd been more comfortable with it, he would have fought better down on the spaceship, things would have turned out differently, and Amy and Shepard wouldn't have died.

So right at that moment, he's holding his shield with one arm, and going at a punching bag with the other. It's clearly not anywhere near the beginning of his work-out, since sweat has drawn a wet pattern on the back of his t-shirt, and he can feel the strain in his shield-bearing arm.

"There," Abed says, and Steve narrows his eyes, as if against the glare of the sun, to try and get them to focus on the communicator Abed has set up on a chair, apparently aimed at him. "Just press the button I showed you when you're done."

Abed presses a button, and leaves, the last of the party. He looks back at Steve with a small smile, and Steve thinks it's a sad little smile, and that makes him even more sad than he originally is. Something inside him catches, and he stares at the closed door for a few seconds before he tries to focus his eyes on the communicator again.

"Hi, Peggy." There's something in his throat, and he clears it, tries again. "Hi." His smile is strained, and he isn't sure why he smiled at all. "This wasn't my idea." His speech is slightly slurred with alcohol, but he doesn't notice, he just notices that his mouth is dry and he looks over at the nearby table, tries to find enough energy and motivation to stand up and reach for a bottle. He ends up looking at his hands, before he looks up at the communicator, and he can't seem to stop talking for a while. "That kid Abed. He's an odd one, but you'd like him. I think he'd throw himself on a grenade, too. He said I should leave you a message, even if you never get it. Sharon's here." There seems to be no link, but his brain doesn't need transitions in its current state, apparently. "Sometimes she smiles just like you. She's strong, but I think I said something the other day. She left, and I tried to find her and apologize, but I don't know where her quarters are."

That's when he realizes that he's rambling about everything but what matters, and it's that word, apologize, he has to apologize. "I'm sorry," he tells her, and his throat feels tight, so tight. "People think it was hard, adapting to the 2010s, but that wasn't it. I wanted to make it. Our date. Dancing. We should've gotten to dance. I don't wanna let go of you." His eyes are brimming with tears, and he wipes them away roughly, before they can overflow. "And this is worse. You're not anywhere here. I'd do it again, and it would kill me again, and we should've gotten to dance."

There is rough determination in his voice, and barely disguised anger; none of it is fair, and if it was in his power to make a different choice, he wouldn't. Rough determination, barely disguised anger, and underneath that, anguished pain. He reaches over, almost falls down in between the bed and the chair, and grabs the communicator, fumbles with it before he manages to stop the recording. But he's too tired and drunk to figure out how to erase it, so he leaves that off until the morning.

He wakes up in his clothes, curled up on top of his bed, cradling his communicator. He has no idea why, and wouldn't even know where to go looking for the video if he did.

"Welcome, Captain."

Steve zeroes in on the skinny figure in the middle of those ranges upon ranges of shelves; it's that weird kid, Abed. "What is this place?" he asks him, voice echoing in the vast hall as he walks closer to the kid.

"A storage room," Abed answers, and he is carrying a pair of pyjamas in his hands. "For the belongings they took from us when they teleported us into quarantine. I've already located your things, come with me."

Steve frowns, and follows the kid down and across a couple ranges of shelves, where Abed indicates a box. There's a number on the shelf, and Steve briefly wonders if it was the number he found inside his regulation clothes when he woke up in quarantine. But it doesn't matter for now. Steve pulls the box down, finding it heavier than it rightly should be; the shield will be more difficult to maneuver with his diminished strength, but his heart is thudding more heavily in his chest at the thought of getting it back. When he pulls the lid off of the box and sees what's inside, he can't help but smile at the sight of the shield, and his full uniform.

"Thank you, Abed," he tells the kid with that same genuine smile.

Abed nods in answer, once, briefly. "You can't take out anything but your own stuff. I already tried. Sorry. You have a good evening now."

"You too, kid," Steve tells him with a nod, and watches him walk away before he picks up his box and heads out after him.