Baca Barnes

1939

I lay in bed staring at the celling. White tiles shone above me, glinting in the yellow light.
My shoulder hurt again. Why wasn’t this getting any better? My skin was extremely itchy too. I had a cough that wasn’t going away, and my chest hurt.
I reached out my arm to get my sketchbook and started drawing. It hurt a fair bit, but it relaxed me and drew my attention away from the blindingly white walls. If I ever got out of this, I swore I would never make the walls of my house white again.
Someone knocked on the door. I silently sighed, not wanting to rate my pain to a doctor again.
“Come in “I grumbled
The (silver) door handle turned. It was one of the only things in the room that was not white, also the lights were more yellowish in my opinion, and the curtains were a dark blue. Pretty much everything else was that dreary colour though.
A man wearing a suit came in. He had blonde hair that was beginning to look browner at this point and heavy blue eyes that looked as if the man had been through more than anyone should. He was clean shaven which was odd for a man and looked about
“Hey, Hitler” he sadly said, what was making him feel grief?
The voice and nickname triggered a memory. Back when I was 9 years old, I took a summer vacation to visit my brother. He had befriended a boy named Steven Grant Rogers. We played many games together over summer break, one of which where I was Hitler, and Bucky and Steve would beat me up. After that, Steve called me Hitler to annoy me. I started calling him Grant back.
“Hey, Grant” I said back and coughed again a few more times. Flipping cancer just would not give up “Lucky you, you came just in time to see me die.”
“Nah” Steve smiled “Unless you want to”
I looked tired at him “At this point, it would be a welcome release” to prove my point I had another coughing fit “What do you even mean though?”
“OK, so... 2023...” then he launched into the most absurd lecture I had ever heard
The future? Seeing my brother again? That would be awesome but... it sounded way too good to be true. By the end I decided Steve was either very impressive and a superhero, or just on drugs. Honestly, the second one seemed the more likely possibility by the end of his talk.
Avengers? Winter Soldier? Loki and Thor from the myths? Assassins? Thanos? Half the world gone poof? Pym Particles? Super Soldier Serum? (By the way, who makes this super cool thing that makes you a superhuman and then call it the super soldier serum?!!!).
“Fine” I said at the end, may as well since I was going to die anyway “What year is it anyway though?” To be honest, I had lost track of the days that had gone by in the hospital after a couple months, for all I know it could be 1936 or 1945
“Right now...” Steve thought about it “1939, Hitler, why?”
I shrugged “So I'm 18 then?” On one hand I felt super old, like I could be 27 or something, but on the other hand I still felt 15 or 16. But, I was born June 30, 1921, so that’s how the math worked out
A few minutes later I was holding a red vial full of something apparently called Pym Particles and I had a metal wristband it slid into. Steve had taken it out of the suit because a) the suit wouldn’t fit a 5’ girl when it was made for a 6’ 6” man, and b) I was in too much pain to actually put the suit on.
“One last thing, Hitler” Steve said and pushed 2 cards into my pockets, I could see they said Sam and Bucky on them “Give these to your brother and a man named Sam Wilson. You'll probably black out from the time travel and all, so these will tell people to take you to Wakanda.”
I nodded and clicked the button. It flashed red for a second before I got extremely dizzy and jerked down.