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Stark Industries Building, New York City, 1950
Peg had called them all to come with her before they headed off to help with the conflict in Korea.
‘What’s going on?’ Dum Dum asked James in a whisper as they followed a fuming Peg up into the Stark Industries office building where Howard worked out of.
‘No idea,’ James whispered back. ‘She hasn’t explained it.’ He’d asked several times, and he’d gotten nothing.
Peg strode up to the lift and coralled them all in. James winced as he watched her. Peg had been fighting against her superiors in the SSR for as long as he’d been back (perhaps longer). Her tendency to just go and do whatever without reporting it and without clearing it had annoyed several people. She seemed determined that they were blocking her because she was a woman.
James was more inclined to think it was her methods they didn’t like.
There was a strange need in her to control every situation...even the actions of other people, which was something he’d only observed beforehand in Stevie. Now, she was dragging them all up to Howard’s office. She seemed to know her way around the building too. She led them through the offices and straight to the office with the tag “H. Stark. CEO” on the door. Then she didn’t even knock. She just marched them right in.
The girl in the outer office looked up, alarmed. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, somewhat unsure.
‘Is Howard in?’ Peg asked.
The girl seemed taken aback. Then the door to Howard’s actual office opened and Howard leaned on the doorframe. ‘It’s all right, Miss. Brookshanks. She’s just coming in to make demands.’ He gave Peg a hard look. ‘You have thirty minutes until my next meeting.’ He stepped back inside.
Peg stormed into the office, gesturing for the Howlies to follow her. James breifly stopped to apologise to the girl outside Howard’s office. She grinned nervously. When James stepped into the office, he saw Howard was sitting at his desk. He was sipping from a mug of coffee and looking up at Peg in mild interest as she stormed over and slammed her hands on the other side of his desk.
‘Howard, there is another war starting!’ she snapped.
‘Really?’ Howard affected a tone of mock surprise. ‘I wondered why they wanted so many of my weapons in Korea. Who’d have thought there’d be a war on?’
Peg ignored him. ‘Why haven’t you revived Steve’s legacy yet! You’re the one in charge of it!’
Oh, so that was it. She wanted the Captain America legend revived and she wanted Howard to do it. Why bring the Howlies for it, though? The six of them looked around at each other in confusion. It occurred to James that there was only one reason Peg would bring them for this: she wanted to intimidate Howard into acquiescing to her demands.
And she was using the Howlies to try and do it.
Howard sat back, unconcerned. ‘Because the vast majority of Americans don’t consider Korea to be a war. You think we should just whip the Cap out everytime there’s an armed conflict?’ He shrugged. ‘Besides, people aren’t interested in it. They don’t want to hear it and they don’t want their kids exposed to a figure like Cap.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Peg demanded indignantly. ‘Steve is an excellent role model for children!’
‘He’s really not,’ Howard said calmly. It was amusing, but Bucky assumed he must’ve heard this from some of his employees because, despite being a childless bachelor, Howard was talking in the matter-of-fact way that a parent would on the matter.
Peg’s jaw dropped slight and her eyes blazed in outrage.
‘Why not?’ Dum Dum asked before she could say anything.
‘Two good reasons,’ Howard said. ‘One: kids imitate their role models. Do you really want little kids, who don’t understand the concept of mortality, trying to imitate Steve’s feats of enhanced strength?’ He regarded her critically.
Peg opened and closed her mouth a few times.
Even if she’d wanted to respond, he didn’t give her the chance. ‘The second is the main reason kids are given role models. Role models are people for kids to aspire to be like. Captain America is a propaganda icon from World War Two and he is presented as the perfect soldier. He is strong, a tactical genius, and he never makes mistakes. And that last point there would be poison in a little kid’s mind.’
Peg opened her mouth, no doubt to argue her point.
James decided enough was enough. ‘He’s right.’ Peg whirled around, looking like he’d betrayed her. He ignored it. ‘If Steve was a role model, with the image he has, kids would become scared to make mistakes. They’d think making mistakes, even innocent ones, was wrong and they shouldn’t do it. Steve made plenty of mistakes – he had plenty of flaws – but they don’t show those.’
Peg glared at him. ‘Example?’
If looks could kill, huh? ‘He was extremely self-centred. Remember how he tried to enlist five times before Erskine found him?’
From the look on her face, Peg thought she had this. ‘That just showed his determination to serve,’ she stated firmly.
James frowned at her. Did she really have no idea? ‘Are you aware that his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 18?’
There was a moment of stunned silence.
Obviously not.
Then Howard let loose a string of expletives that had them all leaving the office with the impression of “my ears are burning”.
James was asked to drop by Howard’s mansion that evening. He knew what the conversation would be about. Sure enough, when Jarvis showed him into the room, Howard was standing at the window with a brandy and looking out to the city below.
‘He could have infected us all,’ Howard said. ‘If that TB went active, we all could have died.’
‘I know,’ James said.
‘Did he?’
James wasn’t sure where Howard had learned the truth about Stevie – the un-whitewashed version of him – but he had learned it and he knew precisely who Steve Rogers was. ‘He would’ve. His mom was a nurse. I think he just chose not to think about it. Steve could be blind to anything if he wanted to be.’
‘Because he wanted to be a soldier.’ Howard nodded and turned around. ‘It should have been something he’d never considered, yet he chased it like it was a boyhood dream. Why?’
‘His dad died in the first War,’ James said. ‘His mom used to always tell him what a hero his father had been.’
Howard pressed his lips together. ‘That explains that. So, why did no one make it clear that this wasn’t a viable option for him? Let’s be honest, Erskine spotting and deciding on him was nothing more than a fluke.’
That was true. Steve had just been in the right place at the right time to be spotted and picked by the German scientist. And it was a reasonable question. James sighed and sat down opposite him, running a hand through his hair. ‘I’ll be honest: Steve was easy to pity over anything else – and he had the dejected look down-pat.’
‘So you looked the other way?’ Howard asked.
James paused and considered it. ‘I...don’t think it’d be fair to say we – me and his mom – looked the other way. We told him off or called him out but...we never really enforced what we were saying. I suppose...’ He paused, considering. ‘...I suppose we enabled him.’
Howard nodded. ‘So I guess we were lucky he went under the ice when he did.’ There was something in his expression, but he said nothing. ‘We really know nothing about how that serum worked. Only Erskine knew that. What if it didn’t recognise the latent TB in his body as a harmful disease and it activated later? Can you imagine that?’
James winced. That would have meant that the rest of the world would have been devastated by a version of the disease that they couldn’t hope to survive. It didn’t bear thinking about – yet it had to be thought about. That was what they’d done. By giving him the “yes, but you shouldn’t have tried fighting them” shtick, by enabling Steve in the way they had – the way that most of Brooklyn had – they’d endangered the entire world.
Of course, Steve wasn’t blameless – not at all. But he became that way because everyone was too afraid to set down any discipline on him. Some of the teachers had tried, of course, but at the end of the day Steve had refused to acknowledge that he was wrong. It was an attitude that had been enabled, and Howard was right to be upset about it.
Bucky sighed. ‘Did...did Erskine see his medical file?’
‘He would’ve, yes,’ Howard said. ‘I called Philips earlier, and he confirmed what you said. Erskine just decided to ignore it.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows? At the end of the day...we just have to count our lucky stars. He didn’t develop TB and he didn’t spread it.’
But he easily could have.