In 1943 Steven Grant Rogers was enlisted to the United States Army.
Everyone knows the righteous, patriotic Captain America and his story. People might have heard of his mother, Sara, who was a nurse and died of tuberculosis. Perhaps some have even...
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Days bled into weeks, and the soldiers were whipped into shape. there were days when Will would go to bathroom, ball his hands into fists and bite down on his own knuckles to keep the choked sob from escaping the walls of the haunting bathroom. He was overwhelmed, it all was sometimes a little bit too much. After the fear came rage. He was angry at Steve and angry at Bucky, for sometimes he blamed them for the stupid decisions he had came up with.
Will cried out his anger in the darkness of the night in the bathroom, cursing his two brothers for leaving him alone. When they had left, the last pieces of his home were gone with them. How stupid he had been.
But eventually, William calmed down and tried to focus on the good things. At least he was starting to turn into a man. He still sometimes bent closer to the bathroom mirror, searching for the small hints of a growing beard, but there never was any.
Some days they were left in the forest, split into teams and given instructors what to do. He had been in the losing team once, they were left outside the building for the whole night, forced to clean the pathway clean from water. It had been raining heavily. But William had gritted his teeth, locked his jaw and kept brushing the water off the pathway, ignoring the wetness of his clothes and the way they stuck to his skin, the cold wind had made him shiver. He had been ready to bash Adamsons face in, and William had never been a violent person. An older gentleman who had been in his team had tried to calm the boy down. Explained to him that it was to teach discipline.
No matter the command, a soldier complies.
He still laughed on dining table, trying to make friends along the way. None of them really stuck around though, but he didn't mind. At least Lance allowed him to take part of their card games as long as he could make fun of William. Who, of course, laughed along awkwardly.
Ruben didn't get any more social than Will had hoped, if anything, things seemed to have gotten worse for the short man. He was constantly behind the group, being called away by Adamson more than anyone else. Whenever he'd come back, his face would be white, nearly green and he would ignore William, no matter how much the boy annoyed him.
Being woken before sunrise, being lined up from the slight slumber and being constantly given smaller and smaller portions of food was starting to turn into normalcy. The punishments that made his calves hurt, made his fingertips calloused and gave him blisters didn't push down the liveliness that again and again forced itself out of the boys heart. He also found his way back to his old habits.
Stealing.
It thrived him, especially in the middle of the night after one of his sacred melt downs, he felt alive in those moments. Sneaking in the shadows, sneaking around the guards who walked in groups, whose job was to catch rebellious trainees like William, yet they never saw him. Not once. And that boosted his confidence even more, to steal from the kitchen and sometimes he even found himself in Adamsons office, going through his things out of boredom.
