Chapter Text
Steve wakes up with a taste like rancid butter in his mouth, and an ache in his neck like he slept on a bed of elbows.
Nope, he thinks. Just his couch again.
“Why do I even own a bed?” He asks the inside of his eyelids. He manages the monumental task of staggering out from under his jacket, kicking over no less than four bottles with various levels of beer still inside, and finding his phone without even opening them. He’d had quite a bit of practice navigating the minefield of his apartment since he moved to DC.
Despite the chaos of his evenings, Steve still keeps to a meticulous schedule between 0900 and 1700. If he winds up in dereliction again the director would hear about it, so the general would hear about it, and then Steve would hear about it, and Steve had been pretty much done hearing about it, so he keeps to his routine, does his job, and saves his messes for off-duty hours. How he manages to wake up without a hangover every morning is anyone’s guess.
He oftentimes feels like he sleepwalks through all of it, so maybe it’s the repetition and a lifetime of training that gets him through the worst of his nightly mistakes. Today is no different. Up. Shower. Shave. Breakfast. Clean shorts, clean uniform slacks, clean uniform shirt, uniform service cap, uniform necktie in a crisp Windsor knot. He makes sure all the bling—the Joint Chiefs of Staff badge, rank, bars, blue infantry service rope and nameplate—are all perfectly aligned with a small ruler on his freshly pressed uniform jacket.
Steve’s fingers linger on the purple bar with gold edges in particular, and he doesn't think about Sakhalin.
Steve is greeted at the gate (and reception, and the elevator, and main entry to the J-5 offices,) with a perfect salute. He always has a perfect salute in return, a cheerful laugh or a question about families or sports or Game of Thrones. Not everyone has time to say much when they're on duty at the Pentagon, but Steve always makes an effort to be personable, to prove to whomever was watching that he was, of all things, content.
“Good morning, sir,” greets Private Lorraine at the desk near his office. She’s particularly bubbly this morning, and since she’s one of the most bubbly people he’s ever met that’s saying something.
“Good morning, private,” he answers back, effortlessly matching her cheerful tone. “What has you in such a good mood today?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, sir,” she says, with a knowing wink. He blushes just about every time she smiles at him and she always blushes back. It’d be inappropriate if it were real, but it’s just a game they've played since she was assigned his secretary. Steve isn't sure how it started or how he could possibly have the nerve. He suspects her teasing makes her feel a bit more human too, since they spend so much of their lives trapped in uniforms. “Director Fury is in your office and I think he has good news about your cat initiative.”
“Well,” Steve beamed. “That’s good for all of us then, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” She agrees in a tone that suggests what Steve just said was adorable. She might not actually see the value in creating special programs for feline veterans, but it doesn’t get in the way of her job. He could be the only person in the whole directorate—or the entire Joint Staff for that matter—that actually thinks combat cats deserve a second shot at life. He’d be damned if that managed to discourage him after everything he’d gone through to get his proposal in front of the president.
The Joint Chiefs public affairs offices are located on the second floor of the D ring of the concentric circles of the Pentagon building. Steve’s own office is appropriately nestled between them and the rest of the J-5, the Strategic Plans and Policy directorate where his father managed to invent a whole new occupation that kept Steve both too busy to make trouble and too disillusioned to care. Steve could say a lot about his arrogant, stubborn, alcoholic father, but not that he isn't a master tactician.
Most of the time Steve just has to worry about the President’s military “optics,” which is just a fancy term for social media status. Unlike the Press Secretary, his role is to manage how the public views the President when it comes to being Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces, in particular. It’s not quite a public affairs role, not quite a military role, and not quite an intelligence role, but somehow it manages to contain the busywork and infuriating politics of all three. Steve meets with so many different departments on a regular basis that he sometimes thinks the rest of the Joint Staff forgets about him. Probably just what his father had in mind when he recommended him for the post.
When Steve had traded in his fatigues for dress blues he had felt like an utter failure as a soldier. He didn't have much choice at the time; it was either caving to his father’s offer or face a dishonorable discharge. Steve still sometimes wonders if the discharge would have at least made his life simpler. Despite that fantasy, Steve knows he’d have no idea what he'd do with himself outside of the military, so he puts on the monkey suit and dances to the beat of his father’s drum.
Steve takes a breath, runs his fingers quickly through his bangs to make sure his hair is behaving, then tucks his service cap smartly under one arm. If his initiative is approved by the Director of the Joint Staff it all might actually be worth it.
“Wish me luck,” he tells Private Lorraine.
“Wish us luck, sir,” she corrects, holding up two fingers, loyally crossed.
Steve opens his door and finds DJS Fury waiting at his desk with another man standing beside him. “Director Fury,” Steve says, and snaps a formal salute.
“Captain,” Fury replies, saluting him in return. He isn’t smiling, but the director never smiles, and his shaven head and black eyepatch cut a relatively severe figure even for the battle hardened lieutenant general. The man next to Fury is wearing a nondescript grey suit and has a tablet tucked under one arm. He’s also wearing an expression of neutral pleasantness that is hard to be offended by but easy to forget; so in all likelihood the man is a spook. Odd how spooks always look like spooks, simply by the virtue of them trying to not look like spooks. “This is Director Coulson of,” Fury pauses, looks annoyed that he has to ask. “What was it again?”
“Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics Division,” the man rattles off proudly, like a patriotic poem. Cute, Steve thinks. It spells the word shield . “Don’t worry, it’s a bit of a mouthful. I just wanted to introduce myself, since it looks like our two departments might be working together soon.”
“Nice to meet you, Director Coulson,” Steve says, shaking the man’s hand. “We will?”
Fury passes Steve a blue folder, stamped on the front with the Presidential Seal. Inside was a cover sheet prepared by the Chief of Staff approving Steve’s initiative, with the freshly inked signature of the President of the United States in the bottom right hand corner.
It's what Steve has been hoping for, but somehow he’s still shocked. A little thrill of energy lights up some long forgotten sense of ambition and without expecting it Steve is suddenly excited. “Thank you sir! I am really looking forward to this opportunity to— Hang on,” Steve interrupts his own chatter, reining himself in. It’d been so long since he’s been enthusiastic about something he isn’t really sure what to do with it at first. “Why don’t we all take a seat, sir?”
“Not so fast,” Director Fury says, and remains standing. “I just came here to give you a heads up. The approval for your pet project is conditional. Your little campaign to show America how much this administration cares about the military’s discharged feline combatants is going to get a lot of attention from certain activist groups. That’s what Director Coulson is here for.”
Steve’s eyes narrow and he feels all the energy drain out of his brand new sense of professional pride, before he even has a chance to get used to the feeling. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Coulson flips his tablet’s protective cover back, and hands it to Steve. It’s a slideshow of images from some recent rallies throughout major cities in the United States, mostly showing scenes of overturned cars, looted storefront windows, and police in riot gear. It’s not pretty. It’s also nothing new.
“Captain Rogers, we’re sure you’re aware of the recent,” Coulson tilts his expression to the side as he visibly rethinks what he is going to say, “public acts of aggression committed by some extremists.”
“Hmm,” Steve says with a vague nod, tabbing quickly through the images. He pauses on one picture of a paddy wagon, where half a dozen tranquilized cats are literally stacked in a pile in the middle of the vehicle’s steel floor.
“We’re particularly concerned about one humanoid feline, in particular,” Coulson says. Steve wonders if he had rehearsed this speech ahead of time when a picture of the feline wearing a black mask appears in the slideshow, right on queue. Even from the blurry phone pictures and some surveillance screen captures, Steve could tell the feline has dark skin, and his sleek ears and tail of glossy black obsidian. “The Black Panther’s movement seems to be picking up some steam in the feral cat community. Queens and kept cats seem to know better, but the toms are predictably a bit more belligerent.”
Steve continues flipping through the slideshow, and it’s not lost on him that at least one third of the images are of Black Panther. The mask he wears is more like a helmet, covering the top of his head in a hard shell, while leaving gaps for his ears. The front of it was molded in the likeness of a mundane cat, eyes narrowed in a fearsome snarl, and ventilation holes across a flat mouth guard, almost like a paintball mask. It’s the perfect disguise for an activist leader, wholly concealing the feline’s identity while also appearing distinctive and very fierce.
Steve wonders if the media gave the Black Panther his nickname or the intelligence community. Considering how he regularly sees the two intersect at his own job, he supposes there isn’t much of a distinction. Clearly, they are more “concerned” about him than Coulson was letting on.
“I’ve heard of him,” Steve neutrally admits. “Hardly an Osama Bin Laden type.”
Though it was obvious he was expected to think so, with all the images of violence lined up conveniently next to the Panther’s striking form. Despite his fearsome image, the tone of his rallies tend to focus more towards feline dignity and community. Steve had quietly attended a few back in New York; he still isn’t sure if his father had ever found out about them, so this Coulson person probably didn’t know Steve could easily tell the scenes apart.
“No, but it's his message we’re worried about. His general call for cats to discard their collars and seek freedom from ‘human oppression’ through uniting with one another. After all we do for them…” Coulson trails off with a cynical little click of his tongue. His pleasant tone never falters, but he seems too well scripted, like he had predicted Steve's reaction and planned how to answer in advance, his emotional response only mimicked for effect. He shakes his head, playing at looking disappointed and a little sad. “They all start off as peaceful protesters, don't they?”
“Hmm,” Steve says again. Director Coulson is very good at it but Steve has been faking pleasantry for so long he can spot it from a mile away. He hands the tablet back, and decides to hate him.
“We think the Panther is recruiting toms from the retiring SCFs coming in from Russia and Japan,” Fury explains, and places his cap firmly back on his head. Apparently their meeting is already over, without any expectation that there would even be a discussion about this new directive. “The candidates for your program might have heard from his people, or know how to reach him.”
“So you want to recruit intelligence assets from my candidates?” Steve said, putting the pieces together. “You want to use my program to infiltrate the Black Panther?”
“I’d hardly give it that much credit! Just think of it as a joint operation,” Coulson says, giving Steve a wink that he probably thinks seems reassuring while he tucks his tablet away under his arm. “Cats coming through the program are uniquely situated to assist their government in keeping an eye on a potentially volatile situation. They’ll probably be grateful to have another opportunity to serve. We won’t even need to use MICE.”
Coulson may as well wear a badge with flashing lights and a handheld sign that states he’s a spy after referring—with the world’s tackiest pun—about the CIA’s tactic for developing assets. MICE stands for bribing potential spies with Money , appealing to their Ideology , resorting to Coercion , or stroking their Ego . Instead the cats coming through his program will just be handed new orders and expected to follow them, without question.
“I see, director,” Steve says, when what he thinks is, what a load of shit. “Do I get a say in all this?”
“Not up to the task, Captain?” Fury asks, raising his eyebrow over the eyepatch.
“I didn’t say that, sir.”
“Good, because this order was signed off with the full blessing of the President of the United States, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Fury nods; and that’s that.
“I serve at the pleasure,” Steve says, because just like accepting a desk job at the Pentagon that may as well have his father’s name on it, this decision is well out of his own hands. At least he’s confident his own fake smile looks genuine.
“I look forward to working with you, Captain Rogers,” Coulson says, giving Steve a nod where Fury had giving him a departing salute.
Coulson stops short at the door to Steve’s office, one hand clutching on the frame like he has to physically stop himself from retreating. Definitely not part of his script. “I’m a great admirer of General Rogers,” he blurts out, as if he’d been aching all along to say so from the moment Steve walked in the room. “Amazing things that man accomplished in Moscow. You must be very proud of him.”
“Thank you, director,” Steve says, without admitting anything.
Steve collapses into his chair after they finally leave, and tosses his cap on his desk, irritated. The approval paperwork sits innocuously in front of him, and he glares at it, hating it more than if it had been a flat rejection. He’d been working on this project for months, a new initiative to help change the public appearance of an administration that was putting hundreds of SCFs on the street after the base closures.
With the occupying forces pulling out under the terms of Russia’s new military independence, many SCFs had just been unceremoniously discharged, with very little opportunities outside of the military. Ungelded male cats are rarely allowed in public spaces unless working for some kind of security or physical labor.
Many wound up turning to vandalism and petty crime. Eventually people started to ask why all these tom cats turn up feral in the first place, and the President’s foreign policies were a popular target. Steve’s program would be the perfect way to show a softer side to the otherwise cooly perceived administration, and offer some much needed help to the cats along the way.
Medically licensed gelding programs for adults who want to make that choice, re-education, and retraining were all giving SCFs opportunities to work themselves back into civilian society. The provisional veterans license was the benefit Steve is most proud of, allowing cats without explicit keepers to still be considered legally “kept” and maintain most of their agency as long as they show some initiative in looking for work within the CFC’s placement assistance.
It isn't a perfect program—he had to compromise a lot along the way—but Steve knows it could make a difference. Really, teaming up with the Strategic Homeland Intervention and… whatever the fuck, is just one more little compromise to add to the growing pile.
“Shake it off, Rogers,” he quietly tells himself, and pushes the paperwork aside. The program is still going to make a difference to a lot of SCFs, he thinks. It has to.
Steve is finally snapped out of his pout by Private Lorraine’s polite knock on his open door. “I take it the President approved your initiative, sir?”
It only takes a beat for him to remember to put on a pleasant expression, or he’d be just as out of uniform as if he’d forgotten to put on his slacks this morning. “Seems so! I’ll get to working with Public Affairs on drafting a statement, and coordinating with the CFC on operations.”
“Congratulations, sir,” Lorraine says, tucking a thick blonde curl behind her ear and clearing her throat. She never forgets her smile, even when it’s time for her to get down to business. Steve envies someone who just genuinely finds a reason everyday. “I want to run the metrics by you for the focus test of the program name. So far Pet Vets is testing the strongest, followed closely by Companion Care. Pet Vets certainly appeals more to the younger generation, who don’t relate as well to the Russian occupation.”
“I was worried about that,” Steve grimly admits.
“Sir?” Lorraine glances up from her tablet, where she regularly tracks high level metrics for Steve’s reports.
“The idea that we’d call these soldiers ‘pets’...” Steve trails off, giving a hard look to the President’s fresh signature on the cover sheet. He doesn’t finish the thought though, and closes the folder. “Well, we’ll put a pin in the name for now. Let’s start with setting up the public affairs and operations meetings. I also need an appointment with Major Wilson at the Air Force Personnel Center to confirm the benefits for the SCF-a’s”
“Yes, sir,” Lorraine nods, tapping into the appointment app on her tablet. Steve’s already turned to his computer, dozens of emails loading into his inbox to start of his day. Maybe it isn’t so hard to find something to be proud of? He’s already looking forward to setting up the logistics of the campaign. In a way, planning a PR campaign of this size is somewhat like tactical logistics. He already feels a flood of relief that he has more to worry about than how often POTUS is tagged with all the Tweets-made-political statements. #FreeRussia from liberals who think military operations in Russia should have magically ceased years ago; #RememberDavos from the conservatives who think there's something to gain with being at war forever. Armchair pundits make more of a mess of things than they could possibly know when their cutesy slogans start trending.
“Oh, and I’ve taken the liberty to arrange for you to visit the CFC Lodging and License office on Independence Avenue.” Private Lorraine adds, before she turns to head back to her desk.
“I— What?” Steve stutters, looking up from his monitor in shock.
“The cat kennel, on Independence?” She rephrases. “You’ll need to pick a model candidate to get the program started with. We already know we’ll get at least a thirty percent increase in reach if the public has some testimonials to share on social. Shouldn’t be an issue, right sir?” Lorraine is already engrossed in her work, checking Steve’s calendar and monitoring morning reports, which is lucky because there was no way for Steve to get his shit together and swipe the dumbstruck expression off his face.
“Right,” Steve stiffly replies. “Of course, I remember.” What he actually remembers is going home the night he realized he'd be working directly with a cat again for the first time since his last combat deployment and drinking himself into oblivion. “What time did you set it up for?”
“Fourteen hundred, sir,” Lorraine answers. “It's on your calendar.”
Steve hopes that whomever is working at the front desk of the CFC’s L&L office doesn’t know about the ban he earned at the New York branch three years ago.
Of course they wouldn’t, he suddenly reassures himself. The bureaucracy at the Center for Feline Control is so vast they had managed to lose an entire cat once. Steve’s heart kicks in a familiar way, like a worn out key turning in a lock it wasn’t meant for, stopping just short of opening, and he doesn’t think of Sakhalin.
In case you missed it in the preview chapter in Part 1: The Stars are Hiding, Superhuman Disasters made this incredibly gorgeous piece of Bucky fighting the Russian cat on the Sakhalin docks!
