Private Liberty

1 | An Old Friend

Welcome to my new story! I really hope you guys like this!

•••

"Director, we've got something that might interest you," Phil's voice came through the comm in Fury's ear.

"What is it, Coulson?" Fury asked, bored, and slightly irritated that his tesseract had been stolen by a power-hungry God of mischief.

"Remember how we found the Captain in ice?"

***

"Private Jessica Liberty," Fury said, observing the unconscious girl on the hospital bed in their secret lab. "How are you still alive?"

"Just because she's alive doesn't mean she'll wake up," Coulson said, trying to contain his excitement. Private Liberty - Captain America's own sidekick - was right in front of him. "Should we tell Cap?"

Fury clasped his hands behind his back, still looking at the sleeping brunette. "No."

Coulson's eyes widened. "What? Why not? She's his best friend, his sidekick, almost. He has a right to know!"

"You said it yourself, Coulson. She might not wake up. We don't want to get his hopes up. He's been over the loss of his friends for a while. If he loses her again, he might snap. We'll tell him if she wakes up. He needs to focus on defeating Loki and retrieving the tesseract." With that, Fury left Phil to his own thoughts.

Phil looked down at the girl, frozen at nineteen. He was almost as big of a fan of her than he was of Captain America. A female soldier was unheard of in World War Two, she was kind of an idol for women back then.

He looked up at the heart monitor attached to Jessica, seeing it was normal. He sighed, picking up some papers and filing them away.

He went to leave the room, and turned back to look at her. "Wake up, Private," he whispered. "For Cap's sake."

With that, he turned and walked out of the room, the metal door sliding shut behind him.

For Cap's sake.

•••

Steve sat in a bookstore café, staring aimlessly at the books and magazines around him.

He sighed as two nerds a couple of shelves away from his table continued to bicker back and forth over some comics.

"Hawkeye doesn't have any super powers, either! He's one of the best!"

"Yeah, but she's a girl without any special abilities! She's not even a good sidekick!"

Nerd Number One gasped, and Steve heard the click and wheeze of an inhaler. "You take that back! Private Liberty was and is the bet sidekick any superhero could ever have! She was the first woman in the army, and she actually fought with the men! She can kick ass better than your precious Black Widow!"

The bickering faded away, and Steve assumed they had left.

He felt a pang in his chest as he stood from his table, tossing his napkin and empty coffee cup in the garbage bin.

He walked in the direction the two voices had been arguing.

He found himself standing in front of racks of comic books.

One caught his eye.

The Adventures of Captain and Liberty.

A comic book drawing of him and Private Jessica Liberty adorned the cover.

He picked it up and flipped through the pages, just looking the pictures.

The last picture was of him and Jessica in a collapsing army base, his arms wrapped tightly around her as they kiss, their faces and uniforms covered in dirt and soot.

To Be Continued was written at the bottom of the page.

Steve ran his hand over his face, chuckling a bit. To be continued. Life didn't really have that option when it was already over.

If Jessica saw this, she would have laughed.

He walked out of the store with some new reading material.

"Whatcha got there, Cap?" Tony asked, walking into the sitting room on the top floor of his tower, seeing Cap reclining on the sofa with a comic book.

After being recruited for the Avengers Initiative, Steve moved into Stark Tower under Fury's orders.

Steve blushed pink, closing it and sitting up. "Uh, nothing."

Tony smirked. "You find the porn stash?"

Steve went bright red. "No! No, uh, just a comic." He rubbed the back of his neck.

Tony raised an eyebrow, pouring himself a glass of wine. "Didn't peg you for the type to read that crap," he said, sitting on a bar stool.

"It's not crap!" Steve defended himself, fiddling with the comic in his hands.

The billionaire put his hands up in surrender, sipping his wine. "Sorry, sorry. What comic is it? Superman? Spider-Man? Batman?"

Steve shook his head, looking down at the comic. "No, it's, uh, me and an old friend of mine," he said, running his finger over the picture of her.

"Who?"

"A friend from the army, Jessica Liberty."

Tony nearly shot his wine out his nose. "Jessica Liberty? As in Private Liberty? Dude! Every teenage girl ships you two together more than they do Perry and Lewis from that British boyband."

"Ship? I do not understand that term."

"Me neither." Tony stared off into space, before snapping back into it. "What happened to her?"

Steve looked down at his feet. "I don't know. She was captured last I heard, but my plane went down before I could do anything."

Tony was silent. "Sorry, Cap. From what I've heard, she sounded amazing."

Steve smiled, chuckling softly. "She sure was, Stark. She sure was."

•••
A/N:

Sorry it's so short! Just needed a way to start it off.