A Captain America/MCU musebox

Retirement doesn't agree with him.

Ultron was right in some ways, when he accused Steve of being unable to cope without a war to fight. Without the serum and the work it allowed him to do, he feels disconnected, adrift. Sam has all kinds of reassurance and advice. It's normal to struggle to adjust after a return from war. After loss, after trauma. There are a million support groups out there--not just for soldiers with PTSD, but also for every person coming to terms with five years in dust and a sudden return to reality, and every person who lost someone they loved for those five years only to get them back in a jolt. Steve should be in one of those groups, and he knows it. But the entire world is an emotional disaster, so why the hell does it matter if he is, too?

Every morning he looks in the mirror at his narrower jaw, at the blue eyes which seem bigger in this fine-boned face. He puts his inhaler in his pocket, takes his pain meds, his B12, his everything-else that wasn't available in the 40's but helps him get by now. He reminds himself he's not Captain America, and he doesn't need to be. That a sacrifice has to hurt to mean something. Like the pills, it helps. Doesn't cure anything, but it helps him get by.

He's retired, and he doesn't have to like it, but the world goes on without him behind the shield, and there are more people stepping up to help. Spider-Man, he knows, but he's one of many, and the portion of those many that are literal kids scares the shit out of Steve.

He went to war in the hopes that other guys wouldn't have to, and now there are teenagers out here risking their lives. Something, he thinks, went terribly wrong somewhere along the way, and maybe that wasn't his fault but it bothers him that he's in no place to do the heavy lifting to fix it now.

What he can do, and does do, is give everything he can when a new proto-Avenger pops up: someone different trying to make a difference. He has no way to measure power or talent, no way to track down anyone who doesn't want to be found, but what he can do is very carefully offer himself as a sounding board, or a crying shoulder. Steve is his own support group.

He's got an art studio now, too. It's on the second floor of a consignment shop in a part of town that's somehow managed to keep a balance between seediness and gentrification. Mostly, he paints. Today he's painting with the window open. The first breeze of autumn smells a little like diesel and tomcat urine thanks to the alley nearby, but it still feels good.

Love makes things possible, there is no question of that, though it doesn't make them easy. Steve struggles, daily, sometimes hourly, under the weight of his self-imposed responsibilities. He's not sure how he would manage without his friends, and more significantly, without Loki. For a god of chaos and change, she is strangely reliable, at least where Steve is concerned. She's nearly always there to fight by his side, or to cuddle when he comes home bruised from a fight. If there are times she has to go off and wrestle her own demons, or play games he can't join in, he knows she'll be back. He has a ring on his finger to remind him.

That doesn't mean day to day pains are meaningless, though, and after several weeks of alternating political maneuvering versus the Accords with battles against an upstart offshoot of HYDRA, he's worn pretty thin. Frequently he comes home carrying dinner, but he's not sure he's in the mood to even eat right now. Drink, maybe, but food just seems like too much effort.

No, not food itself, deciding what to eat and then forcing himself to go through the motions are what feel like the effort. That's probably not a great sign for his mental state. He's pretty sure he's going to be zero fun to be in the same room with tonight, and there's an apology on his lips when he walks into the house.

He forgets any words he might have said, though, when he sees her.

Steve misjudged Tony Stark pretty badly the first time they met. There were a lot of reasons for that, really. Partly it was Howard Stark's legacy: Steve considered the man a good friend, he admired some aspects of him, but goddammit Howard, why didn't you leave the Cube lying in the sea where it fell? And also, there's no denying the man was a showoff and a playboy, two things Steve has a hard time coping with. He saw the showboating aspect right off with Tony. It really is a major facet of the man's personality. The thing is, there's a lot more underneath that.

Tony is a complicated man. Hurt and damaged, doing penance for sins of his own and his father's, spoiled and arrogant, too smart for his own damn good, absolutely maddening at times--but he is definitely one to make the sacrifice play. And in the end, if he survives the sacrifice play, he's the one to try and play it off, like it was no big deal. Like he didn't almost die for his friends, for the world, for whatever. Oh, he'll talk up the accomplishment (hi, yes, Stark, we remember who carried a nuke through a hole in the sky), but the risk?

What risk? I'm Iron Man.

Steve's seen it before. He'll probably see it again. But this time, he's not letting it slide.

Tony needs a while to recover after almost killing himself this time, and while he does, Steve is deceptively mild, all playful banter and solicitous kindness. It's not until his physical recovery is complete that the good Captain makes arrangements for everyone else to be gone from the new Avengers compound for a night and most of the following day. Dinner is set up in Steve's quarters, and it's overtly romantic, with candles and roses, although the meal is basically just finger food and a good red wine.

"We need to have a talk," Steve tells him at the table. "And I mean the kind of talk where safe words apply."

Hopping from one world to another is not in Steve's repertoire. It's the kind of thing he reads stories about, because he's a fan of sci-fi and fantasy, but if anyone in his peer group was likely to tamper in God's domain in that fashion, he'd have to anticipate it being Thor. Not that he'd put it past the Tony Stark he knows, either, but at least he seems to be busy enough on planet Earth, in his own dimension of origin, to start looking for trouble elsewhere. This other version, maybe not so much.

So, Steve isn't enchanted with the idea of leaving his dimension to have coffee with this alternate Tony, but the chat they've already had has beguiled him, and when it comes right down to it, he trust the guy to get him home safely, before curfew. Or at least, if he doesn't manage that, it won't be for lack of trying. With that faith in mind, here he is, in his battered uniform with the star scraped off the front. There's a jacket over it, at least, so it's visibly a tactical outfit but maybe not so noticeably a Captain America outfit.

Sunglasses are probably not an effective disguise, and he doesn't own any right now, anyway. This is as low-key as he gets, Stark. Take it or leave it.

Sarah Rogers is buried in Green-Wood cemetery, tucked in a tiny corner shadowed by fencing and one of the caretaker's shacks. The grounds are recently-developed there, and while the grass and clover is thick around the borders of the various plots, there are no tall trees, only some wispy saplings along the path. It's a long walk from the gate to this spot, but it was an affordable plot, and therefore an ideal resting place for a thrifty and practical woman.

Steve makes the walk every Sunday, in lieu of attending Mass, which is probably not something his mother would have approved of, but since she gave him a thousand times more than the Church ever did, Steve sees no issue with worshiping at her grave, with the traffic sounds and shouts from the neighborhood below as the liturgy. He gets as many flowers for her as he can afford on any given week; usually just a fistful of carnations or chrysanthemums, but today he has a pink rose with a ribbon around the stem, and he's a little proud of it, tucking it conscientiously in front of her headstone, then sitting in the grass with his sketchbook in his lap.

He doesn't talk to her, not even in the privacy of his head. That seems a little pathetic, because he knows she's gone, and even if she could hear him, he'd rather let her rest. She did nothing but work her fingers to the bone her whole life, and never complained. If Heaven exists, he just hopes she gets to sleep in as much as she wants to there. But sometimes he draws, sketches of the graves, of insects or birds or sky.

The sky is peculiar today. The sun is bright enough to cast moving shadows all across the ground, but the clouds above are churning and leaden, and when they part, he thinks he sees not blue sky, but green, fretted with darkness.

Could be a storm coming.

The years go past, and if Loki and Steve's bond began as untraditional, it nevertheless seems to have become strong beyond any conventional expectations. The unusually-independent Omega and the unusually-understanding Alpha seem to fit together like puzzle pieces, despite the occasional rocky spot in the road. When Steve manages to sign up for the army, there are arguments, but nothing their affection can't survive. When he emerges from Project Rebirth twice his former size...

( Cut for length and handwaving )

Steve Rogers is the approximate equivalent of ten pounds of spite and obduracy in a five pound bag. Really, it's just who he is. He'd be the same single-minded little bastard whether he were an Omega or a Beta, although in the former case, hormones might at least knock him off course every now and again, soften him up and make him listen to the people around him who care about his welfare.

( cut for length )

It's just after one of these aborted rut periods, in an afternoon in late summer, and Steve has had a half-day of work. He can only hold down a part time job at a printing press, but with a little supplementary income from freelance magazine illustrations, it's enough. He tries to cook when he can, since Bucky works more hours, but his energy and enthusiasm for the task is somewhat lacking right now. He opted to make egg salad for sandwiches, and there's a little bacon left over from breakfast sitting on the counter. It's not much, but it'll fill them both. Meanwhile, he's propped open the only big window in the flat, and he's sitting on the sill, asthma cigarette in one shaky hand, blowing the smoke out into the open air. From this position, he can usually see when Bucky gets home, coming up the street.

The Avengers disperse after the Chitauri attack, for the most part. Thor zips off to Asgard, Bruce retreats to regroup, and Natasha and Clint have their work for SHIELD. Stark stays in the city to rebuild; hardly a surprise. It's his home after all.

It's Steve's home, too. He doesn't have Tony's knack for engineering, naturally, but he has a nearly bottomless well of stamina and determination to make a difference. He has no intention of budging until he's reached the limits of what he can do to help clean up and rebuild. He doesn't need much sleep. Could probably go without food for longer than an ordinary human, too, but he's not interested in testing that. Instead, he spends a couple weeks doing solid multi-day shifts of volunteer cleanup service, pausing only to shower and eat for three days, sleeping a night, and then going back again. It'll be too much for him eventually, and he'll have to settle for a less superhuman schedule, but in the meantime, he flings himself into it.

Truth is, it helps. He doesn't want to think. Coming out of the ice has been hard; he's left his entire world behind. Bucky's dead. Peggy is alive, but her family and SHIELD both are a little cagey about letting Steve see her. He doesn't see why. One more shock for him on top of everything else can't make things much worse, and he can't imagine anything ever truly being shocking enough to hurt Peggy.

But he has better things to do than argue, and he can bide his time. Today, he's on the third day of his crazy self-imposed workshift, gathering chunks of concrete and glass and twisted rebar from a schoolyard. He's got a wheelbarrow for loading things, but he seems to be having more luck just tucking the largest pieces under his arm to carry back to the cleanup trucks. It's earning him some stares, but in a cap and sunglasses he's slightly less immediately recognizable as Captain America than he could be.