Chapter Text
Steve lived a simple life.
A simple life which consisted of two basic things:
One, taking on painting commissions whenever he pleased (or whenever his wallet was starting to look sad and pathetic) and two, taking care of the huge garden in the backyard.
It was a beautiful garden, filled with lush fruit trees in one corner, cabbages, carrots, tomatoes and other herbs in another, flower shrubs in yet another corner, a small collection of cacti and succulents near the porch, and a soft carpet of fluffy grass covering the whole area to top it all off.
All green and bright and oh so perfect.
But it hadn’t always been like this. It was barren when Steve was still a child, just a square of cracked land overgrown with weeds and grass.
The first tree was planted when Steve’s father died; a tiny lemon tree seedling nestled in a corner, in memory of his father who loved lemon pies more than any other dessert (It was still there up till this day, producing the same fat juicy lemons as they had years ago).
The next tree was an apple tree, given a home beside the lemon tree when Steve got into his first choice college, scholarship and all.
Then came along the flower shrubs, which not only gave a well-needed burst of colour to the yard, but also welcomed a new family of tiny chirping robins to take up residence in the garden, fluttering and cheeping around happily throughout the day.
And then tragedy struck.
One day Steve’s mother was watering the plants, humming to some song, and another moment she was on the ground, watering can limp in his fingers.
A stroke. Clot in her brain. The death was quick, the doctors reassured, and all Steve could think of was: why? Why?
The garden wilted away after that, plump glossy leaves shrivelling into brown, crumbly paper, weeds and vines swallowing up all that lush greenery and turning the once grand oasis into a sad wasteland. Even the birds left, leaving Steve to wake up every morning to a gloomy silence, no chirping, no buzzing, no sign of life at all.
And then Sam Wilson – still his best friend even after he returned from war, haunted look in his eyes – brought over an orange seedling, thrusting it towards Steve.
“Had a buddy at the VA give me this. But tough luck, ‘cause I don’t know a damn thing about gardening.” Sam had said, not subtle at all.
He’d seen the disaster that was Steve in the months after his mother’s passing, broken plates and glasses strewn over the whole kitchen, a thick layer of grime and dust covering every available surface while Steve barricaded himself in the room, hiding under a pile of dirty clothes.
It had taken a lot of persuading, a lot of bribes in the form of Steve’s favourite cookies, but Steve eventually got his act together, cleaning up the room and returning to some semblance of normality.
He cleaned up his mother’s room, packed all her belongings somewhere, and then finally turned his attention to the backyard.
The garden had been his mother’s greatest pride, and Sam’s orange sapling reminded him of that, reminded him of the smile she had when watering the plants, her sheer joy when she first noticed the tiny robins perched on the trees, surveying the land.
Damn it all if Steve was to let all that die away too.
So he got out the weed wacker, a wheelbarrow, a pair of heavy-duty gardening gloves and set to work. He was small and scrawny, because puberty apparently skipped past him, but he hacked away at the weeds nonetheless, patch by patch, day by day.
It took months, but the garden sprung back to life under Steve’s meticulous care. He gave that orange sapling a new home, and it grew well beside Steve’s apple tree – now tall and proud.
Steve planted new flower shrubs, started a collection of cacti and succulents, and in time, the garden was restored back to its original glory, thriving with a new population of visiting bees and butterflies.
Soon enough, the robins returned, and Steve’s mornings were lively again, melodious and cheerful.
Steve installed a bird feeder and set his sights on starting a small vegetable garden next, planting some tomatoes to start with.
It worked well, and his vegetables grew, sprouting thick juicy leaves and red fruit that made Steve’s heart tingle with a rush of pride.
Of course, that was until Steve found it.
It being one small, bushy-tailed squirrel that dug unsightly holes in his garden and stole his tomatoes.
Sam had laughed when Steve complained to him about it, and when he successfully chased away the damn rodent by squirrel-proofing his whole garden and installing some large, intimidating metal fences all around, he started to regret it.
Now his garden looked like a military fortress, ready to zap any poor creature that came close, when all they really wanted was a tiny morsel of food because they were simply hungry.
“But Sam! Now the squirrel’s starving because of me!”
“Seriously, Steve? First you were complaining that the squirrel was a – and I quote – a thieving fluffy bastard that you didn’t want anything to do with, and now when it’s gone you feel…bad for it?!”
“Well- I mean. It only came in because it was hungry. It wasn’t hurting anybody.”
“Apart from your tomatoes, you mean.”
“But Sam!! You’re missing the point! What if the squirrel dies because of me?! I just keep thinking of how it must be so hungry and oh god- Sam, I killed the squirrel didn’t I?!”
“…I can’t even tell if you’re being serious or not.”
“I’m a squirrel killer!”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Steve. Look, if you really feel that bad for the damned animal – even though it was being a pest and destroying everything in the garden you worked hard on – then remove the fence. Un-squirrel-proof the garden. Put out some food if you seriously pity the animal so much.”
And then Sam hung up, leaving Steve to pout on the porch, staring out at his garden that definitely looked ready to defend against a zombie attack.
Yeah, this wouldn’t do at all.
He removed the fence and un-squirrel-proofed the garden, setting out a dog bowl of food scraps and water instead, and within a few hours, the squirrel returned – with a bunch of friends no less – who decidedly agreed to leave all of Steve’s precious tomatoes alone as long as the dog bowl was filled with food.
Then Steve moved on to planting cabbages, and that itself came with another set of problems, because Steve woke up one day to water his plants as usual only to find that his cabbage patch had been turned into a massacre scene, plucked out straight from a horror movie. There were leaf pieces and juice everywhere, and his poor defenceless, innocent cabbages have been brutally murdered, chomped on at the very root, with only a few strands of grey-brown fur and little footprints scattered all over as hints to the culprit.
He immediately picked up his phone and punched in Sam’s number, settling down on the porch.
“…Ello?” Sam sleepily picked up.
“Sam!!”
“Wh- It’s six in the morning Steve. This better be an emergency.”
“My cabbages were murdered!!”
“Err…What was murdered?”
“My cabbages, Sam. Something ate them!”
“Your…cabbages..?”
“It’s all gone!”
“Well that’s what you get for un-fencing the garden you idiot. Of course you’re going to get some unwelcome visitors.”
“But-”
“Seriously Steve. It’s six in the morning. And you know exactly how to fix this problem. It’s very simple. Starts with an ‘F’ and rhymes with ‘dense’ – which is well, exactly what you are!”
Sam hung up, and Steve mumbled a few profanities to the air, before groaning out loud.
He found the culprit a few days later, a big-eared greedy deviant that had absolutely no qualms about abusing innocent cabbages.
A rabbit.
He contemplated getting rid of his cabbages altogether, or growing them somewhere far away from the gluttonous bunny, but one look at the insufferably cute face with twitching ears and pink nose immediately melted Steve’s heart.
He ended up putting out a separate bowl of fresh vegetables and fruit every day for the rabbit, and it left Steve’s cabbages alone.
Fast forward a few more weeks, Steve heard a loud thump on the window, and when he went out to investigate, he found a poor crow on the floor, feathers falling out, with its wing twisted in an unnatural angle.
Steve took it in of course, how could he not? He fed it, talked to it, and it eventually recovered, flapping out of Steve’s house with a loud triumphant caw one bright morning as a final farewell.
Steve didn’t expect to see it again, except that he found the crow calling outside a few days later, leaving a shiny bauble at his doorstep before flying off. The next day, it happened again, this time with a piece of foil on the floor. The following day, a glittering keychain.
The gifts kept coming, and he filled up a little jar with all the trinkets and proudly displayed it on the porch.
The next month, he had a stray cat visitor, one that now wore a collar to prevent animal control from taking it away and regularly took naps on Steve’s couch, meowing and prodding him awake each morning.
And then the next year, Steve was visited by a pair of prickly hedgehogs, quivering little balls that desperately needed a home. Steve built them a tiny wooden house, leaving out logs and leaves for them to burrow and play in.
Sam teased that Steve had become a full-blown Disney princess, and Steve made no attempt to dissuade the notion, making a scrapbook with doodles and descriptions of his garden animals and pinning it to his wall, regularly adding new pages throughout the year as the number of residents in the garden grew.
Countless bugs.
A fox.
Another rabbit.
Many different birds.
Even the occasional visit from a wild deer.
Steve became very good at dealing with the different animals, feeding and caring for them, providing them a safe space to come back to whenever they wished.
And when his scrapbook was full and Steve was convinced that there were no other new creatures that could possibly be attracted to his garden, he was proven wrong. Naturally.
Because he failed to take into account the mysterious species of humans called ‘The Avengers’.