Work Text:
Today is a new day: beginning, ending, middle all in one.
He woke up in the future.
He woke up to tiny cars that run on electricity and mini-computers that function as phones in your pocket and movies could be in three dimensions instead of two. Interracial marriage was legal, homosexuals could marry and serve in the military, and there was an African American president.
He woke up in the future, a (mostly) wonderful time, and he felt like a relic in the era.
More often then not, he felt like the experiment that Tony told him he was.
This is the story in medias res.
He, the Hero (our Hero, their Hero, or just a hero), slept encased in the ice until he was awoken again like a king of old. It all has to do with birth and death and rebirth, the cycle of winter into spring. It’s all long and short and very complicated. In the end, the simple answer is that he woke up and he was needed again. Or rather the Hero was needed again because the man was wiped away. He became a Legend and people have a certain expectation of them.
The issue of this is that this Hero was not always a hero.
Understand?
No?
Don’t worry. Most people don’t.
Once upon a time…no. Wrong type of story then the one that is being told.
The Hero became a hero a hero because the world needed one. The Hero was a mask. Oh sure there were parts of the man that made up the Hero: he was brave, kind, courageous, and true. But most of the stuff? That was just lies. Propaganda to bring up morale. The Hero is an artifice but also real now. More real and longer lived then the man who took up the mantle. Before he was the Hero, he was an artist, and before that he was Steve just Steve.
Just Steve is where this began. Way, way back before he become the Hero he was just a boy. Boys (and girls) need heroes.
So…who is the hero of The Hero?
Funny you should ask that.
This begins, as many things do, in medias res. Most stories begin in the middle and most stories are about middles.
Or the story begins with Tony Stark being an ass, which is probably a huge surprise.
“So Capsicle,” said Tony with a martini glass in his hand and a grin on his face, “Tell us a story about the good ol’ days.”
The Hero looks up from his drawing. His fingers stained with charcoal.
This is who he always has to be: Cap, Capsicle, Captain, sir, Captain America. He has given up his name to greater things, to a Legend that not even he can live up to.
“I grew up during the Depression,” he said simply, “I’m not sure that I have many stories about the good ol’ days, Tony.”
Tony looked thoughtful, “You grew up in a orphanage right?”
The Hero froze at that before deciding an honest answer would be good. He had his own dead to honor.
“No. I mean I was an orphan but I never lived in an orphanage. A couple took me in.”
Hit rewind. We need to go a little earlier in the middle.
Amelia Williams was a beautiful, fiery, and very Scottish woman that lived in the slightly above tenenment building where Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes grew up. She had coppery red hair, skin the color of milk, and kind brown eyes that sparkled with mischief. She could also lay a man out with one punch and wrote articles everywhere to make money. She was proud and stubborn and (or so people said) a bit crazy. It amazed the building, really the neighborhood, that she was the wife of kind, soft-spoken, British Rory Williams.
Still it was clear that they loved each other to distraction. Mister Williams was a good man. Despite (or because of) her eccentricities, Mrs. Williams was a good woman.
James Buchanan “Call Me Bucky” Barnes had a crush on Mrs. Williams a mile wide. So he would drag his best friend: skinny, sickly Stevie Rogers over to the Williams apartment and see if anything needed doing. Mrs. Williams knew of Bucky’s crush and found it (and him delightful). Around her, and maybe with a bit of tutelage, Bucky Barnes grew into the rakish ladies man persona that served him well later in life.
Stevie would usually sit on the couch, sometimes joined by Mister Williams if he was there, and practiced his sketching.
When Sarah Rogers passed away from the world: alone in a hospital bed in the hospital where she served as a tuberculosis nurse; Steve was with the Barnes family. Now Mrs. Barnes loved Stevie like one of her own kids but they couldn’t afford to feed another mouth. Bucky, panicked at the thought of losing his best friend to an orphanage (because no way he could look out for Steve there), took matters into his own hands. He went to the Williams’ apartment and, all of a child himself, begged them to take in Steve.
To the surprise of everyone, even Steve, the couple did.
Freeze. Now back to the Hero.
Tony looked shocked at that news. The Hero wondered how much he would be shock about the lies in the Legend where he was forged. The man before the Legend was not nearly so interesting.
The room, and the Hero forgot the room was full, was also quiet.
“That wasn’t in the records,” said Natasha slowly. Her mouth was pulled into a frown and her hair was the dark, rich red color of freshly spilt blood. The Hero wondered if the Widow was a legend all her own yet. If she understood being defined by something she has no control over.
“The adoption wasn’t official. They took me in and that was that. The orphanage wasn’t saying anything because they didn’t want another mouth to feed. I didn’t mention it on any forms because I thought they would be more likely to take me if they thought I had no one to go home to.”
Hero had written letters to Amy when he could. When he was still Steve, he made Peggy promise that if something had happen to him that she would tell Amy in person and make sure everything went to her.
“Who were they?” asked Tony.
Oh. The Hero knew this game. He wanted the full names. Amy told him old legends about faeries that had power over you if they knew your true and full name. So the part of Hero that was still Steve was going to make Tony work for his answers.
“They were Rory and Amy.”
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Turn the dial back. We need to go back earlier in the middle but a bit later than where we were previous.
Steve’s mother was dead. She had been now for three months at this point.
This was all he knew of his family. His father died before he was born. He was buried somewhere in France. He has a flag and a medal and that is it. His mother was a nurse. She was buried in one of the poorer cemeteries in New York but not into some Potter’s Field.
Steve missed his mother so much that sleeping, to his embarrassment, was hard in coming. He would wake up coughing and wheezing and with Mister Williams helping him through an attack. Mrs. Williams boiling water on the stove to help him open his airways.
He was scared that they would change their minds and send him to the orphanage.
A lot of fears had plagued Steve in those early days.
Amelia Williams, however, had an inkling of Steve’s sleeping troubles and their roots. So one night, before bed, she sat down next to him on top of the covers. Steve was too old to be tucked in and kissed goodnight but Amelia said he wasn’t too old for one of her stories.
“Hunker down, love,” she said kindly, “I got a million of them.”
Steve did as asked and shut his eyes. Amelia’s hands carded through his hair. Rory sat down in the chair.
“Once there was a mad raggedy old man with a magic box who fell into a little girl’s garden because she was afraid of the crack in her wall.”
Wait. We need to simultaneously fast forward and rewind.
There is a girl in a garden wearing her wellies and sleeping on a small suitcase with a swimming costume (among other sundry things) inside. She is dreaming about a raggedy man: one who is young yet old with a blue box and swimming pool in the library. He is going to be back in five and twelve years and two after that to take her away and see the stars.
She is The Girl Who Waited and she grows up into a Woman Who Saves. She becomes a woman who makes heroes. She believes in them and creates them and loves them fiercely. She gives birth to them, once literally, and raises them figuratively into the people that they need to be.
She will grow and help create heroes and, in doing that, the Girl Who Waited becomes a hero herself.
Right now though, in this instance in time, she is just a girl who is waiting and sleeping and dreams.
Back to the Hero, who still has more to tell.
Several weeks after the revelation that the Legend of the Hero did not quite match up to the reality, he woke up in a cold sweat.
He dreamed of ice and snow and mountainsides. He dreamed of the sharp, arctic bite of a cruel winter howling around his ears as his best friend fell and fell and fell to the icy abyss below.
There will be no magic box with a swimming pool inside to catch him as he falls.
He screams in the dreams and the breath is caught in his throat when he awakes. The brief, hopeful, and terrifying thought fills his head in that moment that he was not remade and unmade in something new, someone new, that he is having another asthma attack and Bucky or Rory or Amy will be there in the a second to help him breath.
But then a voice, not a voice JARVIS, is asking him if he is in distressed and the Hero has to swallow thickly.
“No. Just a bad dream.”
It has been a long bad dream.
He lies back down in the sheets that are covered in his sweat and cooling rapidly. The Hero closes his eyes and tries to remember back to being small and young (but not so young) and listening to Amy’s stories.
This is how the story begins.
There is a boy. A nameless boy on a planet believed to be dead, but isn’t. Not really. It’s honestly just a bit misplaced. He was a clever boy and a troublemaker. He was too small, too mouthy, too smart, and too wild. His people were his people but they were also boring and dull. Stuck in a stasis that affected even him (just a little bit).
This boy, nameless, read of good men and women and anyone in between or not from all over the universe and throughout times itself. They do not have rules, he notices.
They just do.
One of these good men and women and anyone in between or not is the Hero. But this is not that story either.
So when the boy grows old and into a man (but not really he is still that boy at heart), he steals his ship and his granddaughter and two alien teachers from the past and they move among the stars and time.
Eventually he realizes that he will need rules. It does not stop him, however, from trying to be a good man.
In the end that is what everyone tries to be, isn’t it?
Slide back to the present.
The day before Steve moves out of the Williams apartment and in with Bucky is also the day Amy tells him her last Doctor story. Steve is too small, too mouthy, too smart, and too brave. He is a practical sort and optimistic in spite or because of these hard times. He stands up to every bully in his path because he refuses to run away from them. He will, however, run to something if the opportunity presents itself. He dreams and draws in constellations and of adventures where it is not strength but heart, brains, and bravery that saves the day in the end.
And Amy worries over him because his ending will be a harder path in the end. She and Rory know of what is to come and of the boy who will be in history books.
Of a son, because he is their son in the ways that count.
All they can hope is that he will be saved too.
The Girl Who Waited and the Lone Centurion are Legends and Heroes in their own right.
More importantly, however, they are Rory and Amy.
Legends and Heroes and the people they once were do not have to be mutually exclusive.
And she hopes, hopes, that as she tells of the separation from the Doctor that Steve understands this.
He does. Eventually. But it takes a long time.
Bucky always did say he wasn’t that quick on the uptake.
Fast forward.
The Hero is in the gym after a fight with his team with snarls and snaps and ugly yells. They look shock when he reaches his own breaking point with them and then attack back just as fiercely.
They are all broken souls. They are lost beings. They are heroes.
But his team are not Heroes yet or Legends.
Maybe Thor is. But he does not feel the burden whenever he wakes of the expectations and the dreams and the hopes of all who have heard his story and all that need him.
Or maybe he does but knows how to bear it better.
The Hero though is not a god. He is not a billionaire. He is not a master assassin. He is not a genius or a man whose rage takes form.
The Hero is a Legend. The Hero was a man but was swallowed into his Legend before he could stop it.
Seventy years or a blink of an eye and everything changes eventually. Even the Doctor switches his face.
Everything it seems lately except him.
The bag goes flying and breaks against the wall. Desperately the Hero wishes he can as well.
But he is the Hero and is not allowed to break.
So he walks away to find a dustpan and brush.
Now spread out like the sand on the floor and the stars across the sky.
There’s a mad man with a big blue box that runs across the stars and dances throughout time. He is young and old, short and tall, wild and restrained, kind and dangerous all at the same time.
He becomes a Legend through blood and burning.
Gallifrey falls. The world burns.
And he spends the following decades and decades of his life trying to escape it as the universe watches and whispers.
Right up until he disappears as if he never existed.
Sometimes a Legend and a Hero can be erased until only the man remains.
He is a kind man, a dangerous man. He is the storm in the calm or the calm of the storm. They whisper of him throughout the stars still. He can disappear and erase the evidence.
The Legend remains though.
It always does.
Another type of story careworn through the years and experience, whispered to those who had difficult sleeping or needed something to pass the hours is told. It is about a man who tries to be good and do good. Yes he has the power to make the universe bend and time to twist but he uses this power to try to help others. He is loved by the people who leave him and is loved by the children who hear these stories.
This is the story that inspires Steve Rogers.
This story begins in medias res.
There’s a man there for Steve, not the Hero. He is an old man: bald and with white hair. His eyes are kind though and he sits with his hands clasped.
“Steve Rogers?”
He says it like he never heard of the Legend or the Hero. It shocks Steve back into consciousness like he had almost forgotten his own name.
“Yes sir?”
“Canton Everett Delaware the Third,” said the man who held out his hand, “Rory and Amy were friends of mine.”
Steve swallowed a bit. The memory of Amy’s coppery red hair and Rory in the uniform shortly after Pearl Harbor was bombed flashed through his mind. They both, in their own strange way, almost seem to know what was happening when he left.
Amy told him to never lose his hope, even when things got strange. She kissed his hair and held him tight and told him to be safe.
She didn’t cry when he told her he was accepted. She just smiled a strange smile and told him to change the world.
“We need heroes, Steve. Never forget that.”
“Captain Rogers?”
“Steve please, Mister Delaware.”
“Then it’s Canton,” he gestured for Steve to sit and he sat.
And he pushed a letter forward to Steve, who is a man and not a Legend.
Just a man.
“From Amy. She gave this to me and told me to come here on this exact day to meet with you and give you the letter. “
“What’s in it?”
A laugh that is old and a bit brittle but kind, “I have no idea. But knowing her? The secrets of the universe.”
It wasn’t that but it was close.
See the thing of the matter is that all stories have a grain of truth. All dreams have a real world root.
All Heroes and Legends have a person behind them.
The Hero packed his bags and left the Tower in the night. He'll return eventually.
Steve Rogers closed his eyes and breathed in the air to begin his own journey.
Now where does this story begin?
In Medias Res of course haven’t you been keeping up?
He’s in London.
Which is a bit frustrating because he’s not meant to pick up Clara today.
The TARDIS seemed very certain to come here though. This is despite the fact that was planning on going bungee jumping off the emerald cliffs of Jordux in the thirtieth century.
He fixes his bowtie though and steps out.
A man is waiting for him: tall, broad, blonde, and golden. His eyes are blue and almost kind but sad. He hunches his frame like he’s meant to be shorter than what he is. A rucksack rests at his feet along with a strange circular bag.
And he stares at the Doctor with pure wonderment.
“Doctor?”
“Yes?”
A smile breaks out across the man’s face, which makes him look years younger and almost boyish.
“My name is Steve. And I have a letter for you from Amy and Rory Williams.”
The Doctor feels his hearts seize and almost dangerously close to break. He is a Lord of Time but he has been around humans enough to pick up these feelings.
He takes the letter and reads it. Then he looks at Steve, who is just Steve and no longer the Hero.
Not right now anyway.
“Would you like to come in?”
Steve looks at the blue box that holds the universe and time. He looks at the man, his own Hero and Legend and well-loved story. He thinks of gentle hands in his hair and kind eyes.
He thinks of his own weights and the healing that he needs.
There is only one answer.
This is how the story begins.