The Captain, the Sergeant, and the Nurse || B. Barnes

Serum

His first few days in basic training were not exactly what Steve had expected when he left Brooklyn. Nonetheless, he knew that he had to make it through if he was going to be able to fight overseas. He had tried so hard, tried so many times in spite of his sister and best friend's comments, he couldn't let it all be for nothing. There was no way in hell that he would ever let any jerks discourage him from his training.

Every night, as he went to bed, he would remind himself that he could do it. He could be an outstanding soldier. He could make his little sister proud of him. He could be just like his best friend.

One of those nights, as he had been reading a book that he had brought with him, the other men in training had walked into the bunk, load and obnoxious as they had already portrayed themselves to be. Steve didn't care for many of them, not that he had to worry about that for much longer.

Among his belongings, Steve had kept his photographs of Allie and Bucky. One of the pictures was a simple photo of sister. It had been taken on her most recent birthday. She had been sat on the front porch with her present from Bucky, a fresh copy of Much Ado About Nothing, in her lap. As Steve sat and read from a book he had taken from his trunk, he noticed as a hand plucked the picture of Allie from his belongings.

"Hey, who's this? Your girlfriend?" Gilmore Hodge snickered as he took the picture of Allie in his hand.

"She's my sister," Steve's nose had wrinkled in disgust. "Now, could you put that back?"

"Ah, your sister?" Hodge snickered. "But she's so pretty and you're so... puny."

Steve rolled his eyes at the jab. It wasn't anything he wasn't already used to. Their entire lives, Allie had always been just that much taller than him, that much healthier than him, that much more attractive than him. While he knew that she had always been under the impression that they were both disliked and unpopular, he knew better. Allie was well liked, many of the boys back in school talking about how they would want to date her before being intimidated by her friendship with Bucky.

Standing from his seat on his bed, Steve walked over to Hodge. The man that stood much taller than him still had a smirk on his face as he held the picture of Allie. Something in his eye angered Steve. He knew that look that Hodge possessed, and he didn't like it one bit.

"I said, put it back," Steve kept himself calm.

"No," Hodge's jaw had set as he looked down at Steve.

"That's enough," another soldier said as he took the picture out of Hodge's hand and turned to face Steve. "Here. We all know what it's like to be away from our families. We all deserve to know that what little we have of them out here is just for us."

For a moment, Steve almost felt as if he had found a friend at basic training. That changed the next day when the soldier had rejoined the taunting and bullying. Counting down the days, Steve knew he wouldn't have to be around the other men in the bunk for much longer.

As each day passed, he climbed and he crawled. He jumped and he ran. He did more pushups than he had ever thought humanly possible and sweat more than he realized his body could. Breathing felt like hell for him, but he carried on just as he knew he could, should, and would. It was his instinctive action of covering a grenade with his body that changed everything. While it had turned out to be a dummy grenade, Steve had proven himself the perfect soldier.

The week that followed the decision felt as if it were speeding along like a train on the railway at the very same time that it crept along slowly like a tortoise. There constant meetings and check ups, training sessions and observations as Dr. Erskine, the very man that had given Steve the Chance to join the Army to begin with, prepared him for the experiment that he was volunteering in.