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It's March 4, 2015, and he's staring down the Avengers. The flickering lights behind him remind him too much of his past, the cold weight he carries feels like an anchor. Blood trickles down his forehead, and he has to resist the urge to squint as it turns at the bridge of his nose. It's him against the five of them, the only obstacle standing between a Hydra doomsday machine and the heroes that save the world.
He doesn't know how he got here.
"Please," Iron Man pleads, and takes another step forward. His helmet lifts, and it's Tony, just Tony, with his soft eyes and sad look, and he's always been so much harder to look at. Like looking into the sun. "We can help you. We've all said it a thousand times- you don't have to do this." He thinks of course he doesn't, that's what makes it his choice. Hasn't it all been his choice?
He tries not to think about it, and points the rifle in Tony's face. One shot is supposed to rip a hole in the armor, let alone what it'll do to an unprotected human skull. The faceplate doesn't come back down, and Tony doesn't back away.
"Please," he repeats, soft and sad, and it still hurts to look at. "Steve."
Steve closes his eyes to take the shot.
It's February 23, 2015, and Steve's under new management. He's used to the process.
The man looks him over and sneers derisively, like he's not worth his time, like he’s not so desperate to have the famous Nomad on their payroll that he went to such measures to catch him in the first place, ahead of anyone else. Steve doesn't even try that hard to not get caught, but never mentions it. Supervillains have very fragile egos.
His new boss isn't too different from the rest. Which, actually, isn't quite right. They're all certainly different, half of them in their own special brand of manic obsession, and most of them shoot for a flavor of originality, but. He's been through the creepy possessive boss thing before. He thinks rather uncharitably that these sorts of characters definitely have some kind of kink, seeing him in their uniforms. There's no other explanation for the fifteen minute stare-down.
"Yes," Zemo decides, and chuckles to himself at some unknown joke. "You'll do very nicely, Nomad." Steve tries to not roll his eyes.
"Standard rate," he reminds the villain, and doesn’t fidget. It's just another uniform, he tells the particularly loud corner of his mind. He's gone through a thousand of them, a thousand different patches and brands and even the occasional tattoo. It doesn't matter who he wears, nothing matters anymore.
"Double," Zemo replies, sounding manic as ever. "For you are fighting for the future!" He stands back to take in all of Steve, then crows "Hail Hydra!"
Steve thinks of soft eyes and a kind smile, like sunlight on his skin. He looks at the cold reality of the Hydra banner plastered on every damned wall of this hideout.
He doesn't know how he got here.
"Hail Hydra," he answers, having paused too long, and without any of the enthusiasm he should have. Zemo doesn't even seem to notice.
"Come, Nomad," he orders, and Steve follows like a well-trained animal. "We have much to discuss in the way of plans." Let me guess, Steve thinks.
"Our first objective?" he returns, wanting to cut straight to the point, rather than go into another philosophical rant about the meaning of life or politics or whatever the hell they're spray painting on walls these days.
"To the point," Zemo praises, and Christ, his leer is creepy. "Good. Our first step is the Avengers, of course." Of course.
But Steve isn't particularly worried. After all, it's always the Avengers that get him in new uniforms. He wonders at the stray thought that goes to Iron Man, and what he'll say when he sees the Hydra patch.
He doesn't care what Iron Man thinks, though. (Really.)
It's January 16, 2015, and Steve is out of a job again. He thinks he shouldn't find it so funny.
"You know, at this rate, I might take my own vendetta against you," he tells the Avengers. "Get my own henchmen. You're always stepping in on my paycheck." It feels casual, more than he thinks it should. He's proven right when Clint scoffs at him instead of scowls, when Thor just shakes his head to himself and continues helping tie up Steve's fellow henchmen. Who are also all out of jobs themselves, if not severely concussed.
"Oh, please." It's Tony that steps into his view, helmet tucked under his arm. Steve's not even that well-secured, and he thinks Tony should be more careful. "Like you have the energy for that, Grandpa."
"Tony," Natasha mutters, but Steve scoffs. He finds the corners of his mouth are turning up, it's a curious sensation.
"I might," he defends, mostly on principle. The idea isn't so appealing anyway, he knows what happens when people take vendettas against the Avengers. "I could work it in between my Pilates."
Tony chokes on laughter.
He's stood up with the rest of those that can, and one by one, they're filed out of the (miraculously) standing warehouse. The others are processed first, there's a lot of injuries that need treating, and Steve leans back against the wall. He thinks he'll try to break his twenty-seven day record at the Raft, just for giggles. Maybe someday they'll just give up on arresting him.
"You're getting sloppy," Natasha then tells him, and Steve tries to not jump. Jesus Christ, he didn't even think there were that many shadows out here. He knows he'll never get used to that.
"What?"
"You know," she replies, and he does. He doesn't know how to respond, and thinks he should be angry. But instead he feels... kind of tired, kind of sore, and he'd like to take a nap. Maybe he'll even get the cell that has a slightly softer bed. "They lived, by the way." Steve's shoulders fall, and he exhales softly. Well.
"... Okay," he says, and doesn't meet her eyes. "Fine."
"Said to thank you," she adds, and his shoulders bunch up before he can help it. She drops it, and he's grateful for that. He doesn't know what he might do if she hadn't. "You know, someday they might actually build a prison you can't break out of." Steve snorts, though the tension is still there, a pressure at the back of his neck.
"The day technology gets that far, I might really be dead." There's a long moment of silence, and they watch the last of them file in. Almost the last of them. The police look at Steve expectantly, and he straightens off the wall.
Natasha catches his shoulder before he can take a step forward. "You don't have to do this." He freezes in place. He's heard it before, many times. He's never heard it from Natasha Romanoff.
It's scary enough to almost be believable.
"You caught me," he retorts sharply, shaking off her hand. "Maybe you won't next time."
"Captain," she begins, and his damn temper rears up, hot and ugly, strobing lights in the back of his head and tunnel vision on red hair and green eyes.
"I am not-!" He catches himself before he can grab her, only because the amiable chatter of Avengers goes deathly silent, and the police are already going for their guns. He's in full cuffs anyway, he'd only brain her before he would come to.
He's scared enough to admit he doesn't want to wake up with her dead at his feet.
"It's Nomad," he reminds her stiffly, and turns to take his due. He just wants a half-decent prison meal and a nap, and then he'll get around to breaking his record. He'll fight the Avengers again, because everyone loved putting him up against them, loved all the fights where he was close enough to 'winning' to count.
This was his life, and it was... it was...
(Maybe it hadn't been his first choice.)
2014, and it's been an exciting year for Steve, all around.
The Avengers are hounding him like a damned plague, ten times more persistent and annoying than Steve even knew they were capable of. He can't avoid them, because now he's got that reputation. Everyone knows Nomad is the go-to against the Avengers. He's the one that fought them again and again, the one that almost won by that much. Everyone and their evil step-mother now thinks that with the right resources, he can be pushed to finally win.
Steve hates the part of himself that regrets the idea. He wouldn't miss them. Really.
It’s July when they catch up to him again. The Fourth of July, naturally. Steve thinks he should understand something about supervillainy, so he does get that there’s always going to be that one asshole that wants to set off ‘fireworks’ on a national holiday. Still, it gets annoying, having to rig up a thousand different explosives for a display that won’t even work out in the end, because the idiot’s planning on calling the Avengers before they even start this ‘party’, and what is even the damned point-
“Seriously, what is it with every supervillain and fireworks?” Iron Man asks, and Steve just sighs gustily. He lets his hands drop, not bothering to continue. He’ll need his hands for the fight, anyway.
“Beats me,” he admits, not turning around. “It’s starting to border on obnoxious, though.”
“God, yeah. Wait, are you doing these all on your own?”
“Apparently, he couldn’t hire much more labor force.”
“He hired you.”
“And I’m expensive.” Steve thinks he can turn around. It’s just Iron Man, cold and faceless. Except he does, and it isn’t, it’s Tony again. Steve hates when he does that. “Put your damned helmet back on.”
“Make me, Mom,” Tony replies, all the maturity of a stubborn little four-year-old. Steve thinks he can imagine Tony at four, bright and excited and animated like a little cartoon, probably hounding whatever new obsession of the week he had like he was now hounding Steve. It’s easy to imagine, mostly because he thinks that Tony never really grew up. “Still, kind of a shitty job to be doing on your birthday.” Steve’s automatic defensiveness about his life choices falters in the swell of surprise, and he knows it shows on his face.
“How did you-?” He stops. Files, right. Sometimes he still forgets, even if they learned to stop calling him something he wasn’t.
“Oh my God, it’s actually true?” Tony asks him, seemingly oblivious. “You were actually born on the Fourth of July?” Steve breathes unsteadily, but as far as conversations go, this feels safer. It’s just a birthday, and in the context, yes, it is pretty ironic.
“Yeah,” he admits, a little embarrassed. “I was.” Tony looks delighted, eyes bright. Steve is again reminded of sunlight, for some absurd reason.
“That’s adorable. That is just-”
“I get it.” Steve rolls his eyes to the heavens, but he feels his mouth twitch towards a smile. “Thank you, really.”
“Happy birthday,” Tony adds, and it nearly knocks the air out of Steve. It’s one thing to admit his birthday, but this is… It’s strange, he thinks. He can’t remember the last time someone told him that.
“Thanks,” he replies, careful and unsteady, and needs to look away. If Tony picks up on his slip, he doesn’t comment. Doesn’t go for a cheap shot either, though Steve’s accepted that he’s kind of a noble idiot.
“Hey, for your birthday, let’s get a hot dog instead of doing… this.” Tony gestures vaguely at the storage room filled with explosives. “Skip the whole dance, do something nice.” Steve hasn’t ever thought of going to a hot dog cart as ‘nice’, not until he considers the last time he did so. Then it does appeal to him. A lot more than rigging explosives that will never go off anyway. “It’ll be fun,” Tony adds.
“For my birthday, you could just let me do my job for once,” Steve tells him, but it’s already fallen flat halfway out of his mouth. Tony just raises an eyebrow.
“Is that what you want?” There’s definitely a god out there, because Tony doesn’t wait for an answer. The suit peels off of him like skinning fruit, except with a lot more moving parts and a lot more fascinating to watch. “Come on, let’s ditch this lame scene. Hot dogs with all the fixings, finest mystery meat in Manhattan.” Steve finds himself walking, though logic dictates he shouldn’t be. How curious.
“You’re paying,” he warns Tony instead, walking alongside a man no longer in a suit of armor, trying to remember when this felt less weird. “You cost me half of my last paycheck.”
“You didn’t get paid in full up front?”
“It’s practical. The Raft always takes it anyway.”
“Fair enough.”
They get hot dogs, which are a little better than Steve remembers, and Tony asks him if any of his bosses made him work in a maid uniform. Which, while Steve has gone through an amazingly skintight variety of catsuits and leather jackets, hasn’t actually happened to him. He listens to Tony’s explanation, expressive gestures and the occasional tangent on things like ‘anime’ and ‘tropes’, and thinks, not at all for the first time, that he lives in a very strange world.
Steve is ninety-four, and out of a job again, but for the first time in many years, he doesn’t feel his age. He just watches Tony Stark have at a soft serve like it’s going out of style, vanilla ice cream trickling down his fingers, and thinks about flying armor and how he hasn’t been to see real fireworks in decades.
But it’s when they die away over the East River, and Tony points at the stars instead, that Steve thinks he doesn’t mind being here.
He still goes to jail, mostly so he can get the rest of his pay, and he’s sent a package. A card with well wishes from five different superheroes, a chocolate bar, and a sparkler that Steve will never know how they got in.
He uses the sparkler to open the lock on his cell, but he still appreciates the sentiment.
It’s barely October, and Steve’s got twice as many job offers as last time, and doesn’t even need to break out of the Raft by himself. He’s appalled to find that it’s not just supervillains that doubled their interest in him.
Suddenly, the Avengers are pretty damned interested in him. They’re a lot chattier in their fights, and it’s pissing Steve off. He talks back and sasses the hell out of them, though he doesn’t know where it came from. Something small and quiet in the back of his head reminds him that he’s always had a mouth.
The worst of all of them is Iron Man. Steve used to think he was a stubborn man, right up until he met the self-made superhero.
He thinks Iron Man’s a real jackass.
“I’m just saying, there’s a lot of missed opportunities!” the mechanical voice insists, and if Steve wasn’t trussed up like a calf and bruised all to hell, he thinks he’d do anything to shut up that grating voice. “It’s an overused theme for delicacy, and just putting the patch alone would work-”
“I do not understand,” Thor cuts in, bewildered. “You say this is a form of dance?”
“Yes! Ballet. It’s- I’ll Youtube some videos when we get home, but you know what I’m talking about, right Steve?” Steve Steve Steve Steve. Steve twitched violently.
“I never know what you’re talking about,” he bites out, though it sounds like grumbling to his own ears. He’s distracted when the faceplate lifts, and it’s Howard’s son looking at him, the famous Tony Stark. He doesn’t look as much like Howard as he remembers. Or maybe Steve can’t imagine Howard ever jumping in a suit of armor like Tony.
“Ballet,” Tony repeats, snapping his fingers for attention. It’s an amazing accomplishment, given he’s still wearing his gauntlets. “Come on, they’ve had that forever. You know what ballet is, or does your masculinity reject it?” Steve rolls his eyes.
“I know what ballet is,” he drawls.
“You ought to,” Black Widow agrees. “You’ve got an awful lot of practice spinning like that. A dancer’s run, too.” Steve blinks. No one’s ever accused him of running like a dancer.
“Wait, she’s right,” Hawkeye realizes, looking keenly interested. “If he’s running around, flipping and twirling like that, and kicks everyone in the face-”
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Tony insists, looking quite miffed. He gestures vibrantly at Steve. “Ballet costume!” he insists. “A missed opportunity! Keep up, will you? He’d be the scariest ballerina on the planet!” The redhead raises an eyebrow. “Second,” Tony corrects himself. “Second scariest.”
“I’m not a dancer,” Steve has to cut in, because this went from stupid to bizarre and he can’t even remember when. “I’ve never danced with anyone.”
“Really?” Tony grins at him, and something about the light of the afternoon, something about his big brown eyes, something in his face tickles at Steve’s head, and he thinks of sunlight. “I would be ecstatic to teach you.” He winks. It takes Steve a moment to realize that Tony’s flirting with him.
It’s so bizarre he thinks he should get angry. But he isn’t, he’s just annoyed, surprisingly still in the moment, and… kind of…
“You’re an idiot,” he tells Tony, and he means it, he really does. He does. “You can’t afford me.”
Tony laughs, and Steve thinks he still hates Iron Man. Tony, though, he’s…
Well, Steve’s not really sure.
It’s September 24, 2013, and he really almost gets an Avenger this time.
It’s cold and dark, and Steve hates the cold and dark. He’s wearing another patch, some marine animal he’s already forgotten- it may have been a cuttlefish, he honestly doesn’t care. He has his orders, and he follows them. He’s supposed to stop the Avengers from stopping the submarine. They give him a gun and a uniform, then essentially tell him he’s on his own. He took the full pay up front at least, so he turns around to meet his fate.
Even he’s surprised when the gun in his hand knocks out the Hulk.
There’s a blinding flash of light, and everything freezes, everything but the much smaller man in bright purple pants that’s falling out of the sky, falling as fast as Hulk’s pounce had been. There’s a wounded cry from somewhere behind him, and he’s running so fast he thinks he’s having another episode, and he’s going to wake up to something terrible, another nightmare to add on the pile.
He wakes up from a dive still curled around a half-naked man with messy brown hair, the only blood on the ground his and the familiar ache of dislocation in his left shoulder. He looks up, and the Avengers are staring at him, but not attacking.
He wonders how the hell he got here.
“Not a bad catch for an old man,” Iron Man then cracks. “What’s your thing, Pilates?”
Steve growls, flickering white on the edge of his vision. He thinks they might be backing up, backing off, that he’s rolled the unconscious man off of himself. He thinks he wants to hurt them, to hurt Iron Man, get his hands around metal and squeeze and squeeze until it all goes away, until this nightmare changes and he’s- instead he’s-
He turns around and runs instead. They can have the damned submarine.
(Turns out, they never go for it.)
It’s June 14, 2013, and Steve is cornered by the Avengers again. He’s getting pretty damned annoyed by it.
His job’s not supposed to involve them. It’s a standard heist, a break-in at some museum in DC, because there’s an ancient piece of jewelry suddenly on exhibit that a wannabe wizard just has to have. Steve’s seen enough in his lifetime to know that sometimes these things might actually work out, but still, nodding along with these plans is starting to become a hardship. He wonders why these ‘powerful sorcerers’ can’t just steal a damned necklace for themselves.
It’s Hawkeye who nearly gets the drop on him, but he’s seen enough footage and actually throws the caught arrow away from himself. It explodes against a wall and sets off the alarms. It’s Thor who charges down the hall, sending him into a strategic retreat. He’s learned to not be in the direct path of that hammer. It’s Iron Man that’s cut him off from his planned escape route.
It’s Hulk standing in his alternate route, leering instead of snarling, that tips him off to what’s actually going on.
“Captain Rogers,” Black Widow says, and something cold like fear seizes Steve’s insides. She’s holding up a file, and his breathing comes uneven, sharp and fast. “I think we need to talk.”
Talking doesn’t go well for anyone.
He still feels sick while they’re hauling him away, and it’s not entirely because they know. Across the torn parking lot, they’re treating Thor’s broken arm, no matter how he sulks. Black Widow still has the bandages on her head, and watches Steve with narrow eyes. Iron Man’s faceplate is lifted, the man beneath much more expressive than his cold outer shell, and just as angry as any Hulk. Steve can’t look at any of them, not without getting angry, he thinks.
But he only feels cold all the way to the Raft.
It’s October 31, 2012, when Steve first runs into the Avengers. He doesn’t really mean to, which feels like a running joke in his life.
He’s working with a pumpkin on his shoulder, one of many masked henchmen running around tonight. Steve thinks this plan borders on pathetic rather than ‘whimsical’, but keeps his opinions to himself until he gets his cash. He thinks the strangest of employers are getting a lot bolder this year, but to be fair, aliens happened. A lot of the world feels changed.
He’s still not sure how it happened.
In any case, this newfound team of ‘superheroes’, the Avengers, ends up crashing the party. Steve doesn’t bother standing in the line to shoot at them, not like the others. He was hired because of his thieving skills, but he has enough self preservation to not stand in the way of an oncoming Hulk.
He lets the giant focus on his coworkers and decides to go for it, and tackles Iron Man right out of the sky.
“Holy shit!!”
It’s not an easy fight, it’s actually the hardest he’s had to fight for himself in years and years. It’s not until the Hulk turns around and catches wind that Steve decides to cut his losses, standing against the five of them. He’s just about to surrender when Iron Man says,
“Wait, so who the hell is this guy?”
“It’s Nomad,” Black Widow repeats sharply, eyes mean and narrowed. Steve wonders if they’ve met before. “He’s a cat burglar and mercenary.”
“Well, you pussy-footed your way into the wrong job this time,” the archer laughs, and the next thing Steve knows, he sees flashing white.
They have to break his leg at last to slow him down, and he’s sent to a maximum security prison they call the ‘Raft’. It takes him twice as long to escape as it does for his leg and shoulder and hand to heal up, and only because he needs to learn the layout of the place.
Another two-bit ‘villain’ offers him a job in America again. Steve’s a lot less reluctant about taking it.
It’s May 4, 2012, and aliens have invaded the planet.
Just when Steve thinks he’s seen it all.
He watches the footage from a hotel in France, late at night. He watches because it’s aliens, and outside everyone’s already talking about the end of the world, and there’s a handful already talking about waving the white flag. He watches five strange individuals come together to fight off an entire army, and something cold and distant he didn’t know he still had begins to ache.
He watches Iron Man fly a missile to the other side of the portal, and doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until the Hulk catches him.
He collects the money from his last heist, and takes the last job offer back into consideration, digging it out of the trash. He hasn’t been to America in a very, very long time.
Hopefully, long enough that they’ve all forgotten him.
It’s May 3, 2009, when Steve first hears about Iron Man.
It’s all over the news in Italy, because apparently, the guy’s some kind of superhero that’s trying to get himself killed. There’s footage of a race track and some lunatic with whips, and there’s a man in a metal suit (of course it’s Howard’s fucking kid) and Steve ultimately shuts off the television and dismisses it altogether. He returns to cleaning his knives.
It’s really not his problem.
It’s January 1, 2000, and Steve makes another valiant effort to get drunk.
He thinks it must have worked a little, because he wakes up with blood on his hands and face, and he doesn’t remember beating his own head into the brick wall beside him.
It’s sometime in 1991, or probably ‘92. He doesn’t care anymore.
He takes another job that involves stealing, and he can’t remember when he stopped asking for a reason why.
It’s June, 1967, and Steve realizes that he’s better suited to stealing things and running jobs, rather than waiting for his temper to get the better of him. The worst he can do is wake up to smashed glass and surrounding police, rather than blood and broken bodies.
He thinks maybe he might wake up to a bullet in his brain one of these days, and keeps on taking jobs.
It’s December, 1963, and someone follows him from a bar somewhere in Eastern Europe. Steve stumbles off the road and throws up, and it’s not from his best efforts to get drunk. The blood on his hands stains the snow, one more sickly color against the pure white.
He’s cold and numb and cold, so he doesn’t react to the man at first, and the stranger takes it as acceptance. He gives Steve the address, and asks that he does it quickly.
Steve doesn’t remember the reasons why by the time he’s at another bar, wrestling a gun out of the bartender’s hands and knocking him out with the butt of the gun. But everyone’s still alive, and he’s sure there was a reason he wasn’t paying attention to.
The man pays him in leva, and it’s more than he remembered being mentioned. He thinks it must have been a very good reason.
“What are you called, anyway?” the man asks him. Steve thinks he should ask the same thing. He doesn’t remember an introduction.
He answers, anyway.
“Call me Nomad.”
It’s not until 1959 that Steve learns the SSR hasn’t been around since the end of the war. He doesn’t care.
He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care at all he doesn’t
It’s winter time, and probably still 1957. Steve wakes up in a snowdrift, though he’s hard-pressed to recognize it as white snow. He thinks he should leave before someone finds him again, before someone sees the blood. He thinks he should look for the body. Or bodies. He doesn’t remember.
Instead he lays back down in the red snow and screams without a sound.
It’s 1956 when Steve breaks out of the SSR facility, and stumbles along through what he finds out is northern Asia. He doesn’t remember most of what happened.
But when he dreams, he can still hear the screams. They’re the first in a long line of nightmares.
It’s been years since he was outside, he can’t think anymore. He can’t focus, he keeps blacking out, but his eyes are still open and his body is moving.
He wakes up to his own screaming, lights flashing in and out, behind his head, directly in his eyes. He must be screaming because there’s pain, but he can’t tell anymore.
There must be a reason, there must be something, he’s done something, he’s done nothing there’s nothing oh God he’s done nothing there’s no reason he doesn’t know he didn’t do anything please God help me helpmeHELPMEPLEASE
It’s March 4th, 1945, and Steve crashes the Valkyrie. His sentence cuts off with the shock of impact, some comment about his two left feet. It’s cold and dark, and he feels like he’s floating.
It’s supposedly only a month later when they unthaw him from the ice. The SSR tells him the war is over, and he’s in a medical facility for tests. They run a lot of tests before he asks why Agent Carter or the Howling Commandos aren’t there. Maybe he’s presuming, but he likes to think they’d be glad he was alive.
They keep running tests, and it stops being about him recovering. He asks why, he fought for them, he did his best to serve, if the war is over he just wants to go home, he just wants to leave.
“Don’t you know that you died, Captain?” the agent asks him, and it’s a title that they’ll taunt him with for years to come. “You did, after all, agree to donate your body to science.”
Steve doesn’t know how he got here, but his pleas for answers collide into an endless scream.
It’s March 4, 2015, and it’s been seventy years to the day since he did the right thing. He tells himself the slips over the years don’t count, no matter what the Avengers will tell him.
He closes his eyes and takes the shot, and the bullet misses Tony’s head by half an inch. It sails over the top of his head and strikes Zemo in the sinister expression, just behind Thor’s shoulder. The Hydra head dies without ever realizing he was betrayed, and Thor only realizes the danger when the body hits the floor.
Steve doesn’t move when Clint rushes past him to shove the USB into the computer, presumably shutting down the countdown, planting a virus, or whatever it is that computers do these days. The lights stop flashing, but he can’t open his eyes. He feels the tears slip out anyhow, and the gun clatters to the floor.
He thinks they should arrest him again. His lips tremble.
“Why,” he whispers, voice wavering. It sounds loud without the beeping of the machine. “Why would you help me?” The answer has to lay in his past. Something in these stupid, heroic idiots still sees the man from the newsreels, still sees a flag bearer for his country. He’s lost his country a long time ago. He’s lost a lot more than that.
Tony’s hand is calloused and gentle, curling around the back of his neck, drawing him in. He doesn’t so much accept the hug as he falls into it, and it’s a good thing Tony’s wearing the rest of his armor, or he might be mashed under Steve’s weight.
“Call us crazy,” Tony tells him, “but we save everyone we can. I think there’s enough of Steve Rogers left to save.” Something like laughter bubbles up his throat, except it comes out like a sob, and he clings to Tony. He’s surrounded by Avengers, by kind smiles and words. He takes it all in, keeps his eyes open.
He hopes this isn’t a dream, and hopes he never wakes up.
It’s March 4, 2020, and seventy-five years to the day when Captain America went down in the ice.
It’s two years to the day that Captain America joins the Avengers full-time, officially as co-captain of the team. In reality, he’ll probably never stop bickering with Tony, probably never fully agree on the perfect way to do things. But as with everything, they’ll compromise and pull forward, and the results come out better than either of them imagined.
It’s just another day when Steve walks through the halls of the Avengers Tower, and he’s allowed to. He’s just showered, towel slung over his shoulders, wearing a shirt probably a size or two too small. He does it consciously, despite what half of the family thinks. It’s been a long day, and Avengers are camped out in the commons area, probably watching some reality show, or arguing over pizza toppings. Either one makes him smile.
It’s been a long, hard road to get here. When he looks back, he’s glad he’s made it this far.
He finds Tony in his shop, and takes satisfaction in how the genius comes to a brief halt at the sight of him, blue eyes glinting. Tony then grins, catching on, and waves him forward.
“Manipulative,” he accuses, and Steve laughs and kisses him.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right. Of course.” Tony smiles anyway, and it’s still like sunlight on his face, warm and inviting. “Come on, I want to show you this.”
“So I’ve heard.” He gives in anyway, pulling up the second chair. “What’s up?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking, as always.” Tony winks. “The world’s getting pretty nuts.”
“Haven’t noticed.”
“Shush. Look at this.” Tony claps his hands, though it’s an unnecessary gesture these days, and the curved screen projects a brilliant blue globe before them. It spins gently, but Steve still catches the stylized A that’s on it, the central piece to a network that’s spread all over it. Points that are all over the world, and he thinks he recognizes some of the places he’s been in his long life.
“Impressive,” he comments, though he knows Tony will start his pitch any moment.
“I know,” Tony agrees, and holds out one hand to his creation. The other hand takes Steve’s and squeezes gently. “I call it Avengers World.”
It’s the day that Steve looks forward to his future.