not to get emotional about steve rogers on main again, but do you ever just want to crawl into a bed for the rest of the day because you made the mistake of thinking about how young steve actually is?
like. steve only remembers living until 26, remembers drowning and freezing and dying at 26 and suddenly he wakes up in 2012 and he’s meant to be turning 94, 68 years of life that went un-lived but are supposedly his? he goes from living his present, from accepting his death, to being the only one who could remember it, and remember it clearly and constantly and consistently, not in the way it’s been warped since he fell, not in the way he’s been twisted into since he died: he becomes an actual, living, breathing testament to what was, and finds himself standing in the face of and struggling to reconcile with what is.
steve is only 26 when they unfreeze him and ask him to fight again. he’s younger than even natasha, but no one remembers that, because steve is 26, but captain america is 94, 95, 96, and they’re both ageing but it’s only steve who’s growing older, but not fast enough. steve is 26 and he remembers, perfectly, so clearly, his war, and bucky’s, and peggy’s, and howard’s, and the commandos’. steve is 26 and he remembers dying but he’s alive again, only to fight again, to fight back against something he’d died to put to sea, only for it to be used to summon aliens from another world. steve is 28 when he finds the soldier but 30 when he finds bucky, and in between, he remembers, clearly, so clearly, the word fascist spray-painted over his face in sokovia, and wonders how it’s come to this. he’s 30 when peggy dies, when the accords come into play, when he and tony fight, and ‘so was i’, and the raft, and the threat of five more winter soldiers appear. he’s 30 when he becomes steve rogers again; captain america doesn’t make it to 100 – it turns out all it takes to kill a myth, a legend, is doubt, is lack of faith – but steve remembers the weight of the shield in his hand, anyway, and how the cowl had obscured him in favour of a symbol: let the rest of the world remember captain america how they want to; he’s trying to remember steve.
and he’s 30 on the run but at least he’s steve now, he’s the closest to himself he’ll ever be, shield or no shield, 31 on the run, 32 on the run, and then not even 33 yet when another war comes, when a worse war comes, and – just like the first time – he comes out of it alive and on the other side, maybe wishing he’d finally met his death this time, why couldn’t it have been him this time, because not again, but then. but then, we know steve rogers stands up, anyway. he will stand up and square his shoulders and keep going, because he was steve rogers before he was ever captain america, and captain america is dead, the shield is gone, the uniform is dirty, there’s no more cowl to hide behind, but steve rogers is still alive. he is still so young in the face of the world, in the face of the gods and men and kings he keeps company with, but he has seen as much as any of them, stands shoulder to shoulder with them, and moves forward, and it’s staggering, i think, when you think of how much he has lived, only to consider what’s left to be lived.
