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Just a kid from Brooklyn ((for Rey))
Sep. 10th, 2021 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shieldborneRetirement 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.
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.
