DISCLAIMER: It should be blindingly obvious, but I don't own anything to do with any of the characters herein - Disney/Marvel does. If they should want anything of this story, it's hereby given to them.

In the aftermath of not only waking up after a seven-decade nap but also an alien invasion, Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America, found himself without a job and, worse, without a purpose.

He'd hated that the most, back in the '40s, when enlistment officer after enlistment officer rejected his application - the lack of purpose. All his life, Steve had felt that he was meant to do something. It wouldn't be anything grand, he'd thought, just something to justify his existence in the world.

The Second World War had come along, and fighting Nazis, or even supporting those who actually fought in some capacity other than collecting scrap metal, seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Except Steve's health meant the Army didn't want him. Neither did the Navy nor the Marine Corps. If the Air Force had been around then, they wouldn't have wanted him, either.

Dr. Erskine had given him a chance, and eventually, that chance allowed him to fight the Nazis. Finally, Steve had a purpose, and he'd always been grateful for that, even as he was guiding the Valkyrie toward what he'd assumed would be his death.

Only it hadn't been. He'd awakened in a very mocked-up hospital room with an anachronistic baseball game playing on the radio and a woman dressed just slightly off of how he remembered, certain he was the victim of some Nazi plot.

One very clumsy escape later, Steve found himself in a Times Square he only barely recognized, and there was no way the Nazis had come up with a plot even half as crazy as the truth.

Not even a week after that, Steve was fighting once again, this time beside other costumed adventurers against an alien invasion. Even in the middle of combat, even facing down monsters worse than any nightmare he might have had, he'd been glad to have purpose once again.

But now that fight was over, and Steve had no idea what to do with himself.

At the moment, he sat in the apartment Tony Stark - so like his father it was both funny and painful - had provided, a sketchbook open on his lap, pencil poised to draw … what? Another view of the New York skyline - one that didn't include Stark Tower?

Before he could decide, a knock sounded at his door.

Steve set the sketchbook aside and crossed the apartment - ridiculously large by his standards, ridiculously small by Tony's - and opened the door, coming up short when he saw the dark-haired woman standing in his hallway.

"You may not remember me, Captain Rogers," she began. "We met on the helicarrier."

Steve wouldn't forget anyone as beautiful as she was. He swallowed and said, "I remember, Commander Hill. Is there a problem?"

"Not a problem so much as some administrative details that need to be handled," she said. "I wanted to call before I came over, but nobody has a telephone number for you."

"I haven't gotten a cell phone yet," he said, and suddenly remembered his manners. "But come in, Commander. Would you like some coffee? Water?"

"Just water, thanks," she said and gave him a hint of a smile.

He swallowed again, gestured her toward the living room. "Please, have a seat. I'll be right back."

Steve crossed to the kitchen, filled two glasses with water, and brought them to the living room, offered one to Maria Hill.

"Thank you." She took a drink.

"How can I help you?" That was it, Steve told himself, fall back on formalities and duty. It had worked well enough for him before, when he'd had to figure out how to act, how to be with Peggy - no, he was not going to think of her now.

That way led only to grief and heartbreak over a future he'd never gotten to have, rather than looking forward to the future he had now, and whatever purpose he might find in it. He focused again on Maria Hill when she sat forward slightly.

"Mostly I need your signature on some forms returning you to active duty status and so on."

Steve felt his eyebrows climbing. "Active duty?"

"The Battle of New York counts as military service, and you were in it."

"I just did what anyone would do," he said.

"Not just anyone, Captain, and you know that as well as I do." Her tone was stern, but Steve thought he saw amusement in her eyes.

"Maybe," he admitted. "But why does that require returning to active duty status?"

"Most important reason first? So you get paid for it."

Steve blinked, surprised by her directness, but then he remembered that she worked for Nick Fury and thought that directness might be one of her better attributes. Still, the offer of a paycheck was one he couldn't entirely refuse. He didn't want to be beholden to anyone for his keep, even if Tony Stark had said, "Dad would come back from his grave to kill me himself if I didn't help you out. Forget it."

"All right," Steve said. "But I didn't do it for a paycheck."

"I know that," she replied. "But you have to eat - and a healthy amount, too, I'd imagine."

Steve chuckled ruefully. "You've been reading Dr. Erskine's journals."

"No, just supply requisition records."

She said it so dryly that for a moment Steve thought she was kidding. Then she continued, "There's a noticeable uptick in combat rations ordered after you went on active duty."

Steve blew out a breath. "It took a lot of special requests, and eventually Colonel Phillips had to contact General Eisenhower directly to get permission for the increased ration allowance."

"I'm sorry to say that Army bureaucracy has only gotten worse in the intervening decades."

"I wish I could say I'm surprised. What do you need from me?"

"A lot of autographs," Maria said, deadpan, and Steve glanced up at her, startled, until she smiled again. "On a lot of forms, Captain, relax."

There were more forms than Steve had ever dreamed might exist, and he signed them all as Maria explained them, until one made him stop.

"Wait, what's this?"

"As I said, it's the application for your back pay."

"No, I heard that. I mean the amount."

"I know, it's a little low, but this is just your base pay. The special allotments - housing allowance, combat pay, foreign duty pay - are a different set of challenges, and we're contacting the JAG for assistance with them."

"Low?" Steve stared at her. "It's almost five million dollars."

"Four million, eight hundred three thousand and change," Maria said.

"How am I possibly owed almost five million dollars?"

"I have a spreadsheet," Maria said, and flipped through the sheaf of papers she'd brought until she found the one she was looking for and passed it to Steve.

He glanced down at neat columns - year, rank, pay grade, base monthly salary, base annual salary.

"You've been restored to POW/MIA status for all the years you were presumed killed in action," Maria explained. "As you served time in grade making you eligible for promotion, those promotions are assumed to happen automatically. We allowed four years at each rank, though an argument could be made for three, or even two during years when you would presumably have seen active combat."

"The war ended in 1945."

"That war, yes," Maria agreed. "But then there was Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iraq again - and those are just declared military actions I can think of off the top of my head."

But Steve's attention had caught on another detail. "I've been a four-star general for forty-one years?"

"Technically, yes," Maria said. Then she pursed her lips, thoughtful. "Though I think you should keep the codename Captain America. General America sounds like a bad name for a corporation."

Steve laughed, briefly, still too astonished by the total at the bottom of the spreadsheet to fully register her comment.

Five million dollars. It was more than he'd ever expected to have in his life, an amount he barely comprehended. Finally, he looked up at Maria, gesturing at her with the paper he still held.

"What am I supposed to do with all that money?"

"Well." She looked thoughtful again. "It's really not that much, by today's standards - not enough that I can say whatever you want, anyway."

"Not like Tony Stark," Steve blurted, and was relieved when Maria only nodded.

"Right. And while I can't tell you how to spend it, I do have some advice."

"Anything will help," Steve said.

"Take some of it - maybe fifty thousand, maybe a hundred thousand - and do whatever you want with that. Mad money, they call it. Buy something you've always wanted. Take a trip somewhere. Drop it all on hookers and blow - whatever."

"Hookers and blow?" Steve repeated. He'd heard a lot of unfamiliar slang in this century, but he'd been able to figure most of it out. This had him completely confused - more so when Maria blushed.

"Never mind," she said hastily. "The point is, don't worry about what you do with that money. Leave the rest of it in a bank or a money market account until you can think about it with a clear head."

Steve stared at the number at the bottom of the sheet he held. Five million dollars really was a lot of money, he thought, even by today's standards if not Tony's. He could do a lot with it, if he only had an idea what to use it for.

Same problem, different angle, Steve decided, thinking about his own lack of purpose in this new century - new millennium, even. Whatever purpose he ultimately found, five million dollars would help him achieve it.

Still …

"Do I have to take it?" he asked.

"Technically, no."

Maria's tone made Steve look up to study her more intently. Her expression was controlled, carefully neutral. "You think I should."

"I think no one deserves it more than you do," she said after a moment. "I think that if it were any of your Commandos, you'd tell them to take it without hesitation. And I think that the only thing more maddening than a bureaucracy following its procedures is that same bureaucracy when someone doesn't follow its procedures."

"So I should take pity on the poor accounting clerks and follow procedure?" Steve asked, amused.

"That's one way of looking at it."

"In that case…." Steve put the spreadsheet aside, signed his name on the application, and handed it back to Maria. "Next?"

"That was the last one, Captain." Maria stacked the papers neatly, returned them to the file folder, and started to stand.

"Are you busy tonight?"

Maria looked as startled by the question as he felt for having asked it. "Why?"

"Well, I have fifty thousand dollars to spend on whatever I want, and since I have no idea what hookers and blow might be, buying a beautiful woman dinner is a good way to spend some of it."

Wait, was that actually smooth? Steve replayed his words in his mind. Maybe not smooth, but at least I wasn't a babbling fool. I don't think.

Maria hesitated before answering, and Steve had almost convinced himself she was going to refuse when she said, "No, I'm not busy. I'd like to have dinner with you."

Steve smiled, hoping it didn't look as relieved as he felt. "I hope you know someplace good around here."

"I might." Maria smiled back, and for now, Steve thought, taking her to dinner was purpose enough.