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It was Steve's first Christmas since everything. And it was funny; he could deal with the big things just fine- having been frozen in the arctic for a normal human's entire lifespan; waking up seventy years in the future; defeating a bunch of aliens led by a god trying to take over the planet. Those were so big and overwhelming that they were a complete shock to the system, forcing him to reimagine everything he knew. It was the small things he couldn't quite handle.
He'd been adjusting so well (at least the SHIELD therapists said so) that it was sometimes hard to remember how much had changed. And then he'd be jolted by the simplest of things: the lights hanging on the trees were smaller. The gifts were more opulent. A movie had turned the Macy's on 34th and 6th into a tourist trap where you couldn't possibly shop from November til January. And everything that he saw, he saw alone. He would never see it with Bucky again.
He would adjust, though. He had to, and he knew he would- if not for his own sake, then for everyone else's. He remembered how the whole city always came together at Christmas, and it was no different now than when he was a kid. More than anything, New York needed to heal. He was Captain America, and if there was something that united people, he was going to make sure he was a part of it.
When he made that decision, he hadn't quite realized that he already was.
*
Steve's first clue probably should have been the Christmas tree ornaments.
In his defense, though, there were a lot of Avengers ornaments. It was apparently the new big thing. There were no less than ten different Iron Man ornaments you could buy, plus three Hulks, one Hawkeye, and even a Thor, despite the backlash from the religious right that Christmas was about celebrating Jesus, not some Norse man who thought he was a god. (After Natasha's third meeting with the merchandising team, where she supplemented her explanation of why a spy's livelihood depended on secrecy with an impromptu knife-throwing demonstration, no one was proposing Black Widow ornaments anymore.)
Tony had gone all out decorating Stark Tower for the holidays; colored lights flashed everywhere imaginable, every door in the building had a wreath, and he even had a scale model of the tower built out of gingerbread right in the center of the lobby. The rest of it was full of Christmas trees, so that entering the building smelled like walking into a forest. Each one of the trees had a different theme, apparently decided on Tony's whim even though Pepper was the one who'd directed the people doing the decorating.
So he could thank Tony- or Pepper, or maybe one of the millions of Stark employees - for the Avengers tree, which he couldn't seem to stop marveling at. Every ornament on the tree was one of the six of them (well, the five of them, Natasha, but Steve noticed Tony had slipped a Black Widow prototype up next to one of the Hawkeyes), and at the top where the star should be was an A in the fancy logo font. Steve was so overwhelmed that they were that important to people that he didn't bother asking why two of the Captain Americas were the same style as everyone else's, but the rest were different. They'd been making these for the seventy years Steve was under the ice. It made sense that aesthetics had changed over time.
He was a little confused by the ornament of him and Peggy kissing under the mistletoe, but then, Tony had gotten someone to customize Barbie ornaments to give them red hair and pinstripe suits so that tiny Iron Man could have a tiny Pepper Potts, so Steve didn't think too much of it. It was the 21st century. Some things were going to be weird.
*
His second clue should have been the pictures people sometimes asked him to sign. They'd shown up occasionally, but then, a lot of different styles had; Coulson had explained to him the concept of fan art, and Steve was willing to sign anything that covered major parts of his anatomy and didn't have him kissing another member of his current team or the Commandos.
It was strange that there were this many pictures in the same style, sure; it was an odd one to replicate. But Steve was still learning about different art styles from the past seventy years. There was no reason there couldn't have been a sculpt-things-out-of-clay-and-photograph-them movement that he'd missed. After all, he hadn't believed that pop art was a thing until Bruce showed him the Campbell Soup cans and Marilyn Monroe portraits clearly done by the same artist who'd painted his cowl in different outrageous colors and had it displayed in the Met.
Besides, those were some of his favorite pictures to sign, because people who were just going to sell his autograph usually used comic prints. These pictures usually came from young children who earnestly told him that he was their favorite hero. Often within earshot of Tony Stark.
Just because he was Captain America didn't mean that Steve was above being petty.
*
His third clue should have been the music. There had been seventy years of new songs written since his last Christmas, obviously, but it seemed like a few of them followed him an awful lot.
Three in particular.
Bruce's favorite was "Sergeant Christmas (Wartime Reprieve)," which Steve often heard him singing under his breath while working. It didn't remind Steve of wartime, so much as what people wanted to believe wartime was like- but then, that was the whole point of music, right? Despite himself, Steve liked the way that song combined war imagery with the story of Christmas; the idea of the Star of Bethlehem as one of the buttons on a soldier's jacket choked him up a bit. It reminded him of his men. Steve had read about Vietnam. He was glad that some parts of the country still respected the hard work the armed forces did.
Tony seemed particularly fond of a song called "Under the Mistletoe," which was all about a man having his first kiss as an adult with a woman he respected. Steve wasn't entirely sure if this was Tony's version of flirting with him or if Tony was just trying to make fun of what he saw as Steve's lack of experience, but in either case, Steve liked the song. It was all about courtship and consent and not just relating romance to the holidays because they thought it would sell well. He made a point of complaining about it, because otherwise Tony would have stopped singing it, and Steve was still in the process of learning how to download music.
He still hadn't heard the full song that Clint seemed to like best, because apparently Natasha hated it; any time Clint hummed a few bars, Natasha would give him the kind of death glare that would have led to the castration of anyone but Clint. Steve came to like the first few notes, though, even as they constantly hung in the air like an icicle, frozen in mid-drip.
*
But ultimately it was Thor, who had a single-minded devotion to finding out about Midgardian customs that even Tony had to admire, who introduced Steve to the film. Thor was clearly having issues about how much the season was supposed to be a time of family. The team was trying to support him through it, which meant that they'd gotten roped into Thor's latest obsession: holiday movies.
It was the night before Christmas. They'd spent the past week watching what Tony had deemed the classic specials as a group, and watching Thor get more and more disheartened in the process. He'd started each movie optimistic, but by the end he'd be openly weeping. After he made the team watch A Charlie Brown Christmas, Thor worried that he and the Warriors Three had treated Loki like Charlie Brown, or possibly like the tiny drooping tree. After Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, he wondered how much having a red nose was different from being the god of lies. Bruce tried to explain that not being taken seriously as a director and not getting invited to play reindeer games wasn't exactly the same thing as trying to take over Earth, but Thor wasn't convinced.
Clint and Tony had started a betting pool for what movie they'd watch next that would inadvertently trigger Thor's brother issues. Clint had placed his money on Year Without A Santa Claus, which featured brothers constantly fighting, pointing to the fact that a snow miser was practically a frost giant, but Tony was leaning toward How The Grinch Stole Christmas, because the Grinch was green and hated everyone. Steve had researched both of them on Wikipedia and even looked up Boris Karloff, so he was ready for either one.
Instead, Thor entered the room jubilant, waving an unfamiliar box. "Steve!" Thor had boomed. "You had not told me of your movie!"
"Everyone knows about my movie," Steve said. "Remember when Clint got us all to watch it and it was humiliating and Tony made JARVIS play the Star-Spangled Man every time I entered a room, even when no one else was in it?"
Thor chuckled, a deep thundery sound that made Steve mentally reconfirm the idea that Thor should be Santa for the Christmas party the team was scheduled to give the orphanage, no matter how much people thought it should be him. "No, your holiday film!" Thor said, and he showed Steve the box.
On the cover, a small clay Captain America- the same as the ornaments, the same as the pictures he'd autographed- was brandishing his shield on a snowy landscape, with a bunch of figures huddled behind him (were those supposed to be--? no, they couldn't be, could they?) as he valiantly defended them from-
"Are those Nazi elves?" Steve said finally. He felt kind of faint.
"This is going to be the best movie night ever," Bruce said.
Natasha tapped Clint on the shoulder, and without a word he and Tony both passed her money.
Thor eagerly put the disc in the machine and pressed play, and the logo for A Very Captain America Christmas appeared on the screen.
*
"Who's Tommy Kirk?" Steve asked as the third name wrapped around the spinning candy cane.
"He was in Old Yeller," Bruce said. "And Swiss Family Robinson."
"He plays Bucky," Clint corrected.
"Bucky's in this?" Steve asked. He hoped his voice didn't sound as wobbly as every single part of him felt. He felt a strange combination of being punched in the stomach and hope. Actually, that summarized most of his childhood with Bucky, too.
"He's your plucky sidekick," Tony said. "Every Christmas special needs a plucky sidekick. You're lucky they didn't make him a rabbit."
But that was all wrong. Bucky wasn't his plucky sidekick; he was Bucky's. That was how it always went. Steve frowned.
"Don't worry too much about accuracy," Coulson advised. "It's like when Han visited Chewbacca's family for Christmas. This whole film is completely out of comics continuity." He paused for a moment. "Based on your file, it doesn't have a lot in common with your life either."
Steve blinked and evaluated everything Coulson said. "No one visited Chewbacca's family in any of the Star Wars movies Clint made me watch," he said finally. "Is this one of those things that we're not allowed to speak of? Is his mom Jar Jar Binks or something?"
They had to pause the DVD until Bruce could stop laughing.
*
He didn't need to watch the names on the opening credits to recognize most of the voices during the opening scene in the barracks. "They played themselves?" Steve asked. He'd heard them speak in the past few months, of course- there were six Captain America documentaries, which had varying amounts of accuracy, and all of them had at least one or two of the Commandos or Peggy talking about his life alongside the traditional military scholars and scientists. But here, without the videos of them wrinkled and gray-haired and weak, even though they were clay models, he could see them as they really had been: his team, in front of him for the first time in (nine months) seventy years. There was Dum-Dum, and Falsworth, and Jacques, and-
"It was one of the stipulations of the contract," Tony said.
Steve barely remembered asking the question in the first place. Words seemed hard, somehow. "What?"
"My dad figured if you were all going to be stupid Claymation characters, you'd want them to get some of the royalties."
All of them but Bucky. But Steve wasn't going to think about that- not now. Not on Christmas, when it could pull him under as deep as- no. "Well," he said finally. "He was right. Thank you."
He waited for Tony's requisite smart-ass comment about his father, but he didn't hear any. That didn't mean Tony hadn't said anything, of course. Maybe Steve was just so focused on Falsworth's voice.
"Shut up," Bruce said. "This is the best part of the whole movie."
The characters were in a war zone, possibly on an undercover mission, but apparently there was no need for stealth. Not only were they singing and dancing, but one of the guys was shooting up fireworks in red, white, and blue. The song ended with a shot of the night sky, and Steve recognized the Star of Bethlehem before it dissolved to his own uniform jacket. "Sergeant Christmas (Wartime Reprieve)" was a lot more literal in context.
*
"I'm not really comfortable with how much of this movie I spend surrounded by ice," Steve said as he watched his tiny clay alter ego wander the snow palace with nothing but his uniform and his shield. Steve had worn those things in sixty degree weather and gotten a chill; they really weren't built for the North Pole. "Aren't I- I mean, isn't he cold?"
"Come on," Tony said. "You didn't get enough practice being surrounded by ice during most of the last century?"
He didn't even remember it. "Well, that version of me didn't." Steve gestured at the screen. "Just because I took the serum doesn't mean I'm not still susceptible to cold and flu."
Steve expected Tony to mock him for that, but instead his eyes lit up. "JARVIS, pause," Tony barked as he auto-dialed on his phone. "Pepper," he said almost before it stopped ringing, "we need to get Steve an endorsement deal with Dayquil."
Clint futilely stabbed at the remote, trying to get the movie to start again. Tony looked away from his StarkPhone long enough to stick his tongue out at Clint.
"Real mature, guys," Steve said, which seemed unfair, given they were both older than him.
"But my favorite song is coming up!" Clint protested.
Right as Tony finished with Pepper, Natasha remembered a call she absolutely had to make. She slipped out of the room as Clint unpaused the DVD. Knowing Natasha, Steve was pretty sure her disappearance was carefully timed, but for the life of him he couldn't imagine why. Bucky led the Commandos in a literal song-and-dance routine, giving himself all sorts of ridiculous titles to complement Steve's designation of Captain America, right up to the titular "Winter's Soldier." Steve noticed Clint tapping his hands against his thighs, maintaining the militaristic drum beat. He was tempted to do the same.
The guy voicing Bucky couldn't act worth a damn, but for an hour at least he was Bucky, and he was leading a team- their team- in an acrobatic claymation routine, and Steve saw why Clint loved this song so much. It was definitely the most delightful scene in the movie. Steve had vivid memories of rescuing the Commandos before, but he'd never gotten to see them dance and celebrate their freedom in an ice palace. At least not until they were a few sheets to the wind.
Natasha had timed her disappearance scarily well; she returned as the final chords were dying down. Clint manhandled her onto the couch between himself and Coulson, and to Steve's surprise, she didn't fight at all as two hands weaved their way through her hair in repetitive soothing motions. It was the kind of thing he would have done for Bucky, and so many feelings pierced through him at once that he couldn't identify any of them.
*
Steve squinted at the screen and tried to make sense out of what was happening on his own. It was much harder than when he watched Twin Peaks with Bruce. "But why would Hitler try to kill Santa in the first place?" he asked finally.
There was a long pause, and he braced himself for the next comment that showed how much he didn't know about the twenty-first century.
"Actually," Clint said, "I'd always kind of wondered about that."
"I think they just wanted to give you another excuse to punch Hitler in the face," Bruce said.
"But I'm- I mean, this version of me- is tied up. I don't see how I'm going to-" Steve blinked. "Oh. Never mind."
He could learn a few tricks from his clay alter ego.
*
It turned out that in context, "Under the Mistletoe" was pretty damn depressing.
Not for the audience. Just for Steve. It was one thing to know what he missed out on, but entirely another to see exactly what he'd wanted, and know it was a lie.
"So in the movie I end up with Peggy?" he asked. "I never even got to go on a real date with her."
"A clay figure of you got to kiss a clay figure of Peggy before the closing credits," Natasha corrected. "And I don't think either of them got to enjoy it. Because they were made of clay."
"Most of the internet thinks you were banging Bucky anyway," Clint said helpfully. Then there was the short, sharp grunt that Steve recognized as Coulson elbowing him. "What?" Clint protested. "You're the one who told me that!"
Steve definitely wasn't crying by the end of the song. He wasn't. Not that there was anything wrong with tears, but this wasn't going to break him. If being a superhero was something he could take in stride, he was not going to get broken by a Christmas movie. Especially not when he was here, with a group of people who had gathered entirely because they loved each other.
He rubbed a fist over one eye, trying to keep himself focused on the screen. This was just a story, like all the other stories. Just because it was a story featuring a team, his team, but in a world where everyone survived and everyone won-
He could do this.
Thor, on the other hand, could not.
Thor didn't have any of the hang-ups around crying the rest of them did; he felt things strongly and expressed them in kind. Thor said that sharing emotions was a natural part of the warriors' bond. And if he was mostly saying that because Jane was stuck on the other side of the country and his brother had gone insane and violent- well, none of them were going to tell him they'd caught on.
Steve had taken the lead in comforting Thor before. Bruce avoided physical contact, Natasha avoided intimacy, Clint and Tony couldn't stop themselves from good-natured teasing, and Coulson had been almost killed by the same brother Thor was weeping over. But this time, he couldn't move. He could just listen.
"Steve's relationship with Bucky," Thor said. "That was how brothers should be, not-"
Steve couldn't hear anymore. He didn't want to hear. He stood up and walked out of the room, forcing himself to keep his breathing deep and even. As he waited for the elevator, he debated his two best options: his studio, with his paintbrushes and his canvas and whatever other supplies Tony had decided to buy him this week as part of his Overbearing Host Routine, or the gym, with its endless supply of punching bags.
The elevator chimed, and Steve went to the gym.
*
He'd only destroyed two of the Stark-designed specially reinforced punching bags when Natasha appeared behind him. It would have surprised him, but he'd lived with Natasha for long enough to know that her silence was the one predictable thing about her.
"He cared, you know," she said. Natasha wasn't the type to let her voice or her face give anything away, but from the way she had chosen to seek him out, Steve knew that her telling him this was a sign of vulnerability. Maybe even trust.
It would have helped if she made sense."What?"
"Bucky. They could wipe everything else away, but not you."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's way above your clearance level," Natasha said, a ghost of an expression Steve couldn't quite place slipping from her features almost as soon as it appeared.
"I don't care about clearance levels. I'll break in there myself if I have to. Tell me I can get him back"
This was a test, he realized as soon as he spoke, and he was glad he'd passed it. "When you get into the system, search for Clint's favorite song from the movie. It'll tell you what you want to know."
He liked that she didn't even question his ability to get into the SHIELD system, even though he had no idea how to go about it. For Bucky, he'd figure it out.
"Merry Christmas, Cap," Natasha said, and she was gone before he could even say thank you.
The world still felt new and strange, but there were pieces that were still the same. The giant tree was still in Rockefeller Center. St Patrick's Cathedral still held midnight mass. And Steve still had a team.
"JARVIS," he said, "Did Tony get me any clay by any chance?"
"Yes, sir," JARVIS answered promptly. "There are several types of sculpture materials in your studio."
"Great." He was already unwrapping his hands. "When I get up there, can you make sure no one bothers me for a few hours?"
"Of course, Captain."
"Thanks, JARVIS." Steve paused and looked up, the way he always did when he wanted to talk to the AI. "Oh, and could you get me some info on claymation?"
"It will be on your StarkPad momentarily."
Steve hummed a few bars of "Winter's Soldier" as he finished putting away his gear. He felt like a kid at Christmas.
*
Steve woke up to the smell of evergreens and the sound of Tony's voice. "Was he catching Santa coming in?" Tony asked. "Because if so, I'm going to have to talk to my security team. They've got to step up their game if a fat old guy can get through."
A laugh that sounded like Thor. A snort that sounded like Bruce. And a silence that sounded like Natasha and Coulson.
"Santa doesn't need doors." Clint. "If he wanted to find Santa, he would have camped out at the fireplace in your suite."
Steve realized they were talking about him. He forced himself awake, trying to take in his surroundings and check his own status at the same time. His fingernails had dug deep grooves into the palm of his hand, and his cheek felt hot, like it had been pressed against a hard surface for hours.
In fairness, it had been. The gingerbread tower in the lobby was on an ornate table that didn't have much give.
"Hey, Rip van Winkle," Tony said. "What are you holding there?"
Steve looked down at his hand like he was seeing it for the first time. "Your Christmas present," he said. "Or mine, maybe. I wasn't really sure."
In front of him posed seven small figures, just large enough to be recognizable. A glinting red and yellow suit was the most obvious, but the rest of them soon became clear: one held a hammer, another a bow, and a third a very professional-looking briefcase. The only female figure wore gold cuffs and carried a tiny clay revolver that, despite itself, could only be described as cute. Steve stepped away, letting everyone else get a better look.
"Did you- is that us?" Bruce asked, reaching out to the figure holding a tiny beaker but not quite touching it, and Steve realized that this was the first time for him; all of the toys and action figures were of the Hulk.
"I already have one claymation movie of me with my old team," Steve said. "I figured it's time we made one with my new one."
Silence, louder than anything, roared through Steve's ears, and for a moment he thought he'd made a mistake.
And then there was chatter, several voices at once, Clint's demands that everyone look at his tiny bow and Tony's insistence this was next year's Christmas card rising over the crowd.
It would have been normal if Thor weren't silent.
While everyone else was occupied, Steve edged toward Thor, waiting to see if he'd bolt. When he didn't, Steve reached into his bag. It was one of the obnoxious ones with the Iron Man logo on it; that had been the only one he could find on short notice. "I made these for you too," he said to Thor quietly, offering two figures.
Asgard didn't have camera technology, not the way Earth had even when Steve was a child. So he hadn't seen pictures of Thor and Loki as kids. But he could imagine. And he did. Steve made them like he remembered being with Bucky; he shaped their mouths into the kind of grins that felt they might break their faces, and their eyes wide with wonder. He posed them to be looking at each other, loyal. Devoted. Friends.
Steve expected tears, but Thor didn't cry this time. He just looked at them in wonder, like they held the secrets to all of the realms.
Steve reached into the bag again, but waited until everyone was turned away to pull his hand out. He kept it hidden until he caught Natasha's eye, and then slowly raised it, just enough for her to see.
Bucky. Not in the tower yet, but not forgotten either.
He didn't think of Natasha as the kind of person to give a sincere thumbs up, but then, he hadn't thought of her as the kind of person to tell him a secret either.
As much as he loved watching everyone's reactions, Steve had something more important to do. He walked to the Avengers tree, taking in the ornaments of him with new eyes. Even if he hadn't kissed Peggy, this character had, and people believed in a Steve Rogers who was loyal to that. Even if he hadn't managed to keep all of the Commandos safe, there was a world full of giant candy canes and ice palaces where everyone was still okay.
And there was a tree, with nearly all of his friends hanging from the branches, proof that what they did mattered to all of the people around the city who were just starting to wake up on Christmas morning. Probably some of them would get replicas of his shield, and with it the belief that they could fight for the underdog, refuse to accept bullies, make the world a better place. The thought made him shiver, and it gave him more strength than a million serums ever could have.
Whistling "Winter's Soldier" to himself, Steve turned around, and went to rejoin his team.