Disclaimer: In no way do I own Hetalia-Axis Powers, Captain America: The First Avengers, or The Avengers.

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Superhero crossover challenge: Steve Rogers, Austria

Summary: On the devastated streets of Manhattan, Steve Rogers sees a foreigner who bears a likeness to a man he distinctly remembers from seventy years ago. And an argument that somewhat changes his perception of the world.
Slight Captain America: The First Avengers AU.

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Concerning the Watchmen

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Manhattan is in shambles.

A whole week and a half has passed after the Chitauri Attack, and still, every street corner is another aftermath of tragedy. For every time Steve Rogers turns thinking he has seen it all, he will always be confronted with an even more unfortunate sight. He inwardly sighs, lifting debris off the sidewalk with his superhuman strength. For the hundredth time, he wonders whether they really won.

Across the street Steve sees someone that makes him stop.
It is a man of slender built, with a black business bag by his feet and a map in his hands. And as his back is turned, Steve can only guess that the man is looking for the street signs (or lack thereof) that have been partially destroyed during the very recent citywide disaster.

The cause for Steve to pause on his track is that for some odd reason, he swears the silhouette seems familiar. But for a moment Steve can't remember from where.

Then the man turns, resulting in the afternoon shine of the sun to reflect off a pair of half-rimmed glasses. And for a painful second time seems to stop and Steve catches his breath. He feels thousands of bottled up emotions boil within him, making him want to choke out a hysteric laughter or scream at the general unfairness of the world. Preferably while doing something violent.
But shock spears him immobile onto the ground and paralyzes his tongue.

Steve sees a too familiar young man–almost a boy–of early twenties. Garbed in an elegantly tailored black trench coat of sorts, anachronistic dress shirt and polished shoes, and an old fashion cravat. The man runs a hand in slight frustration through carefully styled chocolate locks with only an awkwardly uncooperative strand. The result is an exotic and sophisticated appearance, though also making him extremely out-of-place on the ruined New York street.

Steve remembers the man looking way too young to be an officer but with an air of command and arrogance that hinted as one. Dressed in a midnight blue uniform and dark green tie, with no armor and no helmet and a non-regulation haircut. Standing out as a unique individual amongst the duplicated grays of German's heavily armored HYDRA troops.

The fact reminds that the universe is playing a joke on him. A sadistic joke. As if stranding him seventy years in the future hasn't been cruel enough.

Steve remembers the man stepping out of the smoke behind Bucky, one-handedly holding a HYDRA issued HH Assault Rifle as if it weighed nothing. Even when men twice the size would still have trouble holding the heavy weapon steady, not to mention dealing with the powerful recoil.

Steve remembers holding up his shield in the last second.

Steve remembers the train being blown apart.

Steve remembers seeing Bucky picking up his shield during the confusion, eyes still focused on the enemy, firing his Colt M1911A1 Pistol.

Steve remembers the numbing horror when the assailant refused to even flinch after taking a chest full of bullets. And steps never wavering, taking a clear aim at his best friend.

Steve remembers seeing Bucky fall.

"Excuse me."

Steve snaps out of his thoughts, to find the man of his nightmares having crossed the street. Now standing only a few feet away from him, holding up a map with a troubled look on his face.

"Excuse me." The young man says again. (A German accent obvious, making the taller man inwardly shudder.) "I... I seem to have gotten lost." He continues, cheek dusted with a light blush. (Making him look endearing, yet wrong.) "Can you instruct me on how to get to the Washington Monument?"

"It's..." Steve begins, but falters.

He sees eyes the brilliant hue of indigo blink at him. Full of curiosity and patience and genuine embarrassment.

He remembers them the contorted cerise two shades away from freshly spilled blood. A cold mask of removed indifference to hide the murder intent he so convinced just coiling under the composed exterior.

"Are you not well?" the boy suddenly asks. And Steve tries to ignore the disturbing thoughts swimming in his head.

He isn't him. Steve tells himself. He is long gone, just like almost everyone else who still remembers the horrors of the Second World War. This kid doesn't deserve the anger bestowed on him because he looks like a replica from some post-war trauma.

"I'm alright. Just a lot on my mind while I was, you know, helping out around the neighborhood." Steve smiles weakly to show that he means it, gesturing in the general surrounding area of destroyed homes. He knows he failed terribly.

"Washington Monument is in Washington D.C. by the way." He adds. "We're in New York right now."

The young man blushes a shade deeper. "I must have gotten on the wrong flight." He says as if trying to savor some sort of dignity. "I... think I'll have to call someone to find me."

Steve nods, watching the other out of the corner of his eyes as the young man walk a little ways off to make several different phone calls in German.

They are very different. The Super Soldier states firmly to himself. Stop making baseless connections.

"Did you find a ride?"

"Ja, my cousin is going to come and get me." The young man answers, pocketing his phone. "But I am told not to wander off on my own, even though New York isn't such a big place." Then he shoots Steve a sidelong look and asks an unexpected question. "Have you ever been to Europe by any chance?"

"Y-yes, I mean no... I mean, I went there twice." Steve stutters, it caught him unawares. "About two weeks ago I went there for a short visit. The first time I've ever been there was a long time ago though..." A long long time ago.

"I see." The young man nods. "That's why you look so familiar."

Steve feels his heart suddenly speed up.

That's not possible...

"It was on the train to the Bavarian Alps, wasn't it? You look so different while not wearing that very dramatic uniform of yours, I almost didn't recognize you." The young man continues, not realizing the subtle changes (from extreme shock to cold rage) on the expression of the other male.
But then he frowns like something is bothering him. "Wait." He says, just the smallest bit of confusion in his tone. "Wasn't that during the 40s?"

The next instant Steve finds himself pinning the smaller man to the nearest wall, a hand seizing him non-too-gently by the ruffled cravat and all rationality gone out the window.

"So he is you!" Steve almost shouts. Almost.
The young man (monster) blinks rapidly, shaking himself from the daze of suddenly having the wind knocked out of him. "You're the person who killed Bucky Barnes! You're the one who murdered my friend!"

"Ah..." The young man thinks for a second before nodding with slight difficulty under the constraint. "Do you mean the kid who fell off the train? I suppose I did."

"You...!" Steve wants to scream, but chokes on the lump in his throat as the memory of Bucky falling to his death flashes across his mind's eyes.

"You have my condolences." The younger-looking man softly continues. "But I will not apologize. It was war after all. And you yourself had ended the lives of a fair share of my people." He says it with the kind of bitterness like he had lost his child.
"Now unhand me, fool. You are making a scene."

Steve tightens his grip for a split second before finally letting the man go. "Who are you?" Steve demands, voice hoarse and defeated. "Why are you here? And how is it possible for you to still be alive and exactly the same as seventy years ago?"

At this the younger man narrows his eyes, then quite suddenly, chuckles. "My name is Roderich and I'm here to offer some help to an acquaintance of mine. He was wounded in the recent catastrophe." He says, straightening his rumpled coat. "As for why am I still the same after all those years? Well unfortunately, I don't think it is exactly my place to tell you, Herr Rogers."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Steve growls. Inwardly he debates the pros and cons of knocking the other man out and taking him to the nearest S.H.I.E.L.D quarter.

"I am not going to have a standing conversation in the middle of the street." Roderich huffs, suddenly changing the atmosphere of the whole conversation. "I am tired and I want to rest. So if you're going to be strafing me with any more questions, take me someplace where I can enjoy coffee and a slice of chocolate cake."

What the...?

Is he some overbearing college student?

"I thought you were told not to wander off."

"But I would not be wandering off by myself, now would I?"

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That's how Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, finds himself in a small coffee shop of a relatively undamaged Manhattan block, sitting in a booth right across from his best friend's murderer.
Who after a fail attempt at ordering a cup of Kleiner Brauner, compromises with the typical American black coffee.

"So what is it that you want to ask?" Roderich starts, carefully cutting his brownish cake-pie-thing as if he is dining in a royal palace and not some shabby coffee house.

Steve decides to be blunt.

"What are you?"

"I've told you, it is not my place to freely hand off such information to you. Ask something else."

"I'm beginning to think you're just going to dance around all my questions."

"Maybe." Roderich muses, then his lips twitch forming something like a half-smile. "But I do not wish for you to interpret my actions as ungrateful."

Now Steve is totally lost. "What."

A sip of coffee. "Are you not part of the American espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D and a member of the assembled Avengers team?"

"I..." Steve is shocked, to put it mildly. "I... thought it was confidential."

"It is confidential to most, so do not worry." The younger man replies, but those deep amethyst eyes focus solely on the swirling patterns of the black coffee in his hands and he does not look at the Super Soldier. "I am grateful like many others for your team's help in reducing the damage done." For a very brief second, there seems to be an underlying insincerity.

"Sounds like you have something else to say."

Now the younger man does look up. And Steve sees something unidentifiable flashes in his eyes. "I am just rather curious the rationalizations behind America's–I mean, the American government's–vehement refusal of the Interdimensional Defensive Arms Proposition." Roderich finally states, but almost too politely. "Not that they would admit it in so many words, of course."

"What do you mean?" Steve frowns. "What's that Proposition about?"

For the first time, Roderich looks surprised. "The agency director didn't inform you on that?"

"Director Fury never told us anything we don't need to know."

"Don't suppose it would matter if I fill you in." Roderich sighs. "The Proposition is a joint project between Germany and the U.S. on harnessing the energy of the Tesseract and the manufacturing of Cosmic Weapons."

"What?!"

"The prototype of the Weapons is after all German invention. It would be less time consuming for them to duplicate and upgrade the technology, definitely more efficient than waiting for the Americans to figure it out themselves." Roderich continues, in a rather matter-of-fact though somewhat disapproving tone. "Recently, I've even heard of the most preposterous rumor that the Americans have given up on manufacturing the Cosmic Weapons altogether."

"They're not rumors." Steve states firmly. He will always stand by his belief that there are things better off never to exist. The Cosmic Weapons are one of the very first that comes to mind. "The Avengers are assembled so that the world will NOT need those horrid weapons of war!"

Having heard that, Roderich becomes the slightest bit uncomfortable and more than a little angered. "And now I am more than a little unsettled by the ulterior motives in the forming of the American Avengers team while your government refuses at all to cooperate under conventional excuses! Especially in a time like this!"

"There are no ulterior motives!" Steve raises his voice in frustration. "And trying to promote world peace is NOT conventional excuses!"

To reciprocate, Roderich slams his coffee cup on the saucer the tiniest bit more roughly than appropriate. "There are always ulterior motives." He states, also raising his voice. "And what does world peace has anything to do with this? All I can see is when Stuttgart was attacked, my cousins were powerless to stop it! Not to mention it was too close to my house for comfort, while knowing full well that I don't possess the means to protect myself from harm!"

"We were there! We did help protecting the people!"

"That is exactly the problem!"

"Problem?! You have a problem because we protected the people of Stuttgart?!"

"Apparently you have no idea how many foreign airspaces did your team violate with the Quinjets. And that's not counting a fully functional SUPERPOWERED American attack squad appearing with no warning in the middle of a German city!"

"You are being unreasonable!" Steve fumes in frustration, already half-way out of his seat.

"I am not being unreasonable at all!" Roderich huffs. "It's you who are being irrational!"

They both glare at each other angrily for twenty seconds.
But Steve is an adult, and isn't planning on continuing the bickering of politics with a stubborn immortal(?) with the mentality of a rebellious teenager. So begrudgingly Steve sits back down and gives in.

"Why does it seem to me that you perceive the Avengers Initiative as something solely created for the protection of America?" After another tension filled ten seconds, Steve breaks the ice with a heavy sigh.

"It doesn't matter what I think. The fact reminds that the Avengers is an United States organization."

"I find you to be very narrow-minded."

"And I find you to be frighteningly optimistic concerning international relationships."

"Why's that?"

"We..." Roderich bites his lips, cutting himself off. His eyes shift, suddenly down cast, and he starts playing with the remaining crumbs on his now empty plate with the dinning utensil. There is a long pause.

"We're afraid, America." The younger man eventually relates. Then he cuts himself off again as he think over what he let slip, quickly rewinding in the process. "No, sorry. Please forget that. I suppose I get a little carried away in voicing my thoughts. Just... please forget all that."

"What...?"

"I think I have to leave." Roderich abruptly stands up, dusting off his retrospective attire and picking up his bag. "It's a breath of fresh air to talk to someone more mature once in a while, but there just are some things you cannot understand."

"Wait!" Steve says, practically jumping up as he grabs the other man's wrist before he has a chance to make a dash for the door. "What do you mean by 'You're afraid'?"

"I... don't..."

Then Roderich turns, his face is blushing a deep scarlet again. "Can you promise me that... that with the unparalleled destructive powers of the Avengers, the ever increasing international political influence of the S.H.I.E.L.D agency, the energy market and warfare weaponry monopoly of the SI Repulsor technology in the easily foreseeable future, and the only diplomatic contact with Asgard... all belonging to America.

"Can you promise me that in a few decades time... America will not become the next global empire?"

At that, Steve becomes speechless.

Then very slowly he lets go of the slender wrist and asks one last time.

"What are you?"

Then finally, there is a true smile. Just before the smaller man disappears gracefully out the front door with delicate steps, as if he's waltzing.

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Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, still holds all his beliefs close to his heart. But it will be a lie to say that his perception of the world hasn't changed.

Steve still doesn't know who, or what, that young man of his distant past is. Only now, he no longer sees him as a one dimensional killer. Just that Steve isn't sure whether he is ready to forgive or not (though never forget).

It was only after ten long minutes of pondering over those parting words before Steve decides on the best course of action. He calls Tony, asking whether he could find any information on a German male who looks to be in his early twenties with violet-indigo eyes and a first name of Roderich.
Steve Rogers is not a very obsessive man, but it will be a lie to say that he doesn't want to meet the youngish looking man again.

And it was only after another ten long minutes before Steve realizes the mysterious being has had left without paying, leaving the bill to him.

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A/N: This story borrows themes from Watchmen, hence the title.

* Austria is an Austrian (duh), but since it is never mentioned Steve would most likely think that he is German. Because the sad truth is that not many Americans can tell the two countries apart, just like not many Europeans can tell Canadians from Americans.