FROSTBITE | S. Rogers/B. Barnes (FINISHED)

Goosebumps

The entire school had obviously heard about what happened. People would sometimes stare at her during lectures (which is precisely why she preferred to sit all the way in the back) or in the hallways, but she chose to ignore their stares and focus her energy on recovery, because walking around with crutches was hard enough as it were, both mentally and physically, even without all the curious gazes and judgmental looks.

Seasons changed while Janie continued to see her physical therapist, a handsome man in his late 40s who always told her she would one day be able to run a marathon (she was never able to run a marathon, even before the incident). He would stretch her limbs and massage her muscles (often until they ached and protested beneath his strong grip) and would make her either swim laps until she felt her lungs were going to burst or would he tell her to walk on the treadmill on a fairly steep incline until she nearly fell down the damn thing.

The dreams she suffered while in the hospital had slowly dissipated as she settled into her new apartment, but she would still sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with the faint smell of mold, rusty power tools, and gunpowder invading her nostrils. On those nights, she would turn on the light on top of her bedside table and watch it until her eyes burned or until she'd fall asleep again.

When she woke up the next morning, she couldn't remember a thing.

Weeks turned into months without a single word from Steve and by the time winter rolled around, Janie had nearly forgotten all about him. Of course, she had never given him her number or vice versa, but she always held onto the idea that he would contact the hospital if he really wanted to reach her. Men like him had a way of charming even those hardest to persuade.

She still couldn't remember what had happened in that basement. The only thing her memory allowed her to remember was that smell of rust and gunfire, but there was one other thing she just couldn't shake.

It wasn't exactly a thing as much as it was a person. Not just any person either, but a logo.  A bright, white star. A beacon of hope in the dark. She'd seen that logo before, but where? She didn't watch the news (in fact, Janie didn't even own a TV anymore after her last one broke in the Incident'). She used her laptop to watch movies and shows on various streaming services. She didn't read the paper either (did anyone read the paper anymore?).

It was December, coming up to Christmas break when Janie found herself walking even slower than usual.

She intended to go to the grocery store on foot. At least, she wanted to get there on foot without the use of crutches. Never mind actually getting back home, she'd order an Uber or hail a cab. Wearing heels would be something she could kiss goodbye to after everything that happened. Her physical therapist always called them walking death sentences. He wasn't wrong. 

It was a Saturday afternoon, so there was no school, which meant the streets of New York City were busy as usual. Tourism never seized there, even after the first snowfall of the year had covered the city in a blanket of white powder and grey sludge. 

Classic yellow cabs flocked with out of town businessmen and under dressed tourists soared past the young woman while she had to focus completely and utterly on not falling flat on her ass or pulling a muscle. 

Janie wore a thick coat and a long, maroon-colored plaid scarf to keep the cold at bay. Thank God she decided to wear her tennis shoes (the soles had extra grip). One misstep and she would be sent tumbling toward the ground. Although the cotton candy-like layer that covered the sidewalk seemed to be soft, the concrete beneath it was anything but.

It took Janie nearly twice as long to get to the corner store supermarket and with twice the effort as it would have before the Incident, but once she finally made it inside the warmth of the shop, she felt like she could breathe again. Definitely not going to walk back, she thought to herself. She was definitely getting an Uber. 

Despite it being a Saturday afternoon, there weren't very many people inside the store. From where Janie stood, she could see right down the first aisle into the frozen food section, the fresh meats, and fish that lined the back of the store. An elderly woman stood hovering over one of the display cases near the entrance with new flavors of hot chocolate (gingerbread, peppermint, and extra dark), short, grey curls bopping up and down as she picked up one of the tins for closer inspection. 

Janie grabbed a cart. She leaned down on the handlebars as she pushed the cart forward, glad to be leaning on something after the journey she just had. 

She slowly shuffled around the store, placing several items inside her cart while humming along to the soft sounds of the radio that sounded over the speakers on the ceiling. She remembered suddenly she had a toxicology exam next week and would need to study for the rest of the weekend, a notion that made her groan in frustration.

She grabbed several frozen pizzas, toilet paper, some fruit, and two bags of chips - all of which she barely managed to hoist into the cart - before making her way down to the register.

There was only one till. The clerk looked to be a Hispanic man in his late forties, with a mustache that had several grey hairs protruding from it. He wore a black t-shirt with the store's logo on it, and a red checkered flannel on top to keep himself warm.

The two of them shortly greeted each other, before Janie began to slowly load the groceries onto the conveyor belt. 

Behind the man's head, several feet up in the air, hung a television. It was one of those old ones, a brick. The thing barely showed any color at all. The imagery was very pixelated and grainy, but Janie could vaguely make out a white star. This grabbed her attention.

She could see a news reporter, a woman in a matching two-piece suit looking at the camera, talking away. The volume had been turned down (or maybe the store didn't have speakers hooked up to it) so she couldn't hear what was being said, but the white star turned into a shield with red and blue rings.

The clerk continued to slowly scan her items while Janie stared at the TV, wishing she could just hear what the news anchor was talking about. She tried desperately to read her lips, but could only make out one word before the shaky camera footage shot out of a helicopter turned to face Captain America. 

Her heart stopped in her chest, both bags of chips slipping from her grasp as she stared motionless at the TV. They fell to the ground with a soft rustle, but the ringing in Janie's ears completely overtook all sound. There, in pixelated shades of muted red, white, and blue, stood none other than Steve, the man who'd visited her in the hospital, carrying his shield in his right hand as he walked confidently towards a high-tech airplane. 

She barely recalled paying for her stuff. Barely recalled walking back home. Barely felt the dull throb in her chest from carrying two bags full of stuff. Memories of seeing him in that basement, wearing that exact same outfit bombarded her and overtook any sense of rational thought. She hadn't recognized him without the damn suit on, but seeing him there, that mop of blond hair, those striking blue eyes, she knew without a doubt it was him. 

Janie was fucking pissed.