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It's simple enough to tell someone your name, but she hated hers. Steven Grant Rogers. What a strong goddamn name her parents had picked for her. She hated it. Hated the way it formed around her lips, around the lips of everyone around her. She hated all the bulky consonants and expectations a name that solid came with. She suspected she would always hate it, no matter how well-meaning her mother had been.
Solace had come in the form of Bucky, her best friend for as long as she could remember, of course Bucky had figured it out first.
--"I saw Becky ogling at the same dress yesterday Steve, she'd look ace in it if she were... Well it's definitely for the slimmer sort."--
That was a blessing in disguise. Her sickly male body had kept her from growing tall or broad, and the only thing that had gotten masculine over the years was her voice. Even that she could pitch in certain ways to make it less commanding.
--"Ya sing like a bird Steve, Becks would kill to have a voice half as pretty as yours."--
People made fun of her for it, sure, they didn't understand why Steve kept to 'himself' or didn't talk much or much of anything at all really. So of course she ended up scraped up in scraps with people bigger than her, fighting tooth and nail for no reason at all.
--"Yer ma's gonna kill me for lettin' you get so scraped up. God, look at yer eye Stevie, she's really gonna let me have it this time." Bucky's fingertips tender around the swelling before he replaced the old ice pack with a new one.
"Should see the other guys," She muttered, looking grim when really she'd been preening over the nickname, newly tested and so much more fitting than Steven.
"Oh I did," Bucky grumbled back, "When they ran for the hills as I rounded the corner. They'll get theirs Stev-."
"-ie," She supplied, leaving it unexplained. Bucky didn't question it though, Bucky'd never questioned any of her decisions about her identity.--
So of course Bucky was the first to figure it out, respectful and gentlemanly from a distance while Stevie struggled to put words to the discomfort of being in her own body. Not to say it was easy, not to say it didn't involve some coaxing from her best friend, but he had this way about him that made it seem like she could be who she wanted to be without ever having to put words to it.
--She was ogling her mother's make-up again, failing to hide the glimmer of envy in her eyes. Of course Bucky hadn't missed it, and of course he had that half cock-eyed smile and an idea, "If ya let me, I'll show ya how ma taught Becky to do it."
Of course she let him, no shame between them and it would all wash off before anyone would see. Bucky's hands had been sure, but she had always had the more artistic touch. It hadn't taken her long to figure it out, the soft brushes to apply eyeshadow and blush versus thick sticks of lipstick and liner.--
Bucky had been so good to her, so supportive, the best friend she'd needed. And then war had come. Of course, and it had taken her best friend. Why would she want to go after him? Why would she go so far as to lie on enlistment forms to do it? Why would she try and try again? The answer was obvious to her. She couldn't let her best guy go it against an army of bullies alone.
They'd rejected her, repeatedly, of course. Flat feet, asthma, failing eyesight, failing hearing, anemia. Her body was a mess in more ways than one, and no amount of fudging the papers could change that. But she kept hoping someone would see past all that. And eventually they did.
And then came the serum.
--"The serum amplifies everything that is inside, so good becomes great; bad becomes worse."--
That was how it was supposed to have worked, and it had, but not quite. Her shoulders had gotten broader, her legs and torso longer, her arms stronger, but... The core of it... The core of it had remained male. She had hoped, and surely she realized it was some crazy sci-fi hope of hopes, that it would bring out her inner... Well, her true gender. Sure, seeing and hearing was nice, and she was coughing less, but she wasn't anymore girl than she'd been at the start of the process.
Still, when Bucky had seen her again, he didn't let her forget.
--"Stevie."--
She had needed him more than ever. And then the train ruined it all.
--Soundless screaming into the gaping chasm of Russian mountains, the train whirring along its tracks, the boxes shaking inside the car behind her. Stevie, motionless, alone, tears streaming down her face, repeatedly asking the Commandos how she could have let her best friend fall? How could she...?--
Bucky'd been the only one who'd known, the only safe person for her, and then she'd gone and lost him. The least she could do was end a war and let what was supposed to happen next happen.
--Darkness, dreams, lights and baseball game chatter.--
She groans at the memory, Bucky cheering alongside her all too enthusiastically for their team. He's gone, she has a moment to think before blinking, putting together the pieces, and realizing that they're all gone.
"I had a date," She voices, the sound of it lost in the busy streets lost in New York, her fists clenching and unclenching repeatedly while she wonders for a moment if the war was won, and what it would feel like to punch this man who woke her up.
She goes months without hearing herself gendered properly. She’s able to let it go to a degree, but every call of Steve, every Sir or he or him or his just grates against the skin. She misses her best friend, misses the hell out of him and just being addressed properly, but Stevie can’t have everything she wants in this future.
Months become years and even if she knows that there are other people out there like her - born in the wrong body - who make the effort to fix their outward expression, but Captain America? Captain America is a standard, there are expectations to be adhered to. That doesn’t mean that alone, in her own private space, Stevie indulges in the soft touch of silk dresses to her skin, or the drag of rogue over her lips. She just keeps it to a minimum. Stevie, as much as she wants someone to notice, is completely certain that no one’s noticed.
That is, until one fated afternoon, Tony settles next to her on the couch in the lounge of the Avengers’ Headquarters, and their fingers brush together. “I just wanted you to know,” He starts with the lightest touch of lips against the corner of her mouth, “That’s it’s okay to be a Stevie or a Stephanie instead of a Steven Grant. Or hell,” He chuckles, leaning back, “You could be a Starla Twilight Moonshine for all the fucks I’d give. I’m just saying, that if I could handle it, then the world can too.”
Stevie thinks over it for a moment, the startle still clear in her expression, and finds herself too stunned for words.
“And if they can’t handle it, you can tell ‘em to shove it where the sun don’t shine. And if you don’t want to, I’m offering to do my level best to say it for you, in my absolute best Cap impression,” Tony finishes with a flourish and a wink.
And maybe Stevie, queen of snark hasn’t said much on the subject to date, but she does manage something witty, or she thinks it is. Because Tony’s laughing and relaxing, and leaning back next to her when she finally introduces herself to another Avenger for the first time, “You can call me Stevie.”