My terrible headcanon that I will never put in a story is that Steve Rogers woke up after his plane hit the ice. Right after the initial impact, I mean. Idk why but I've always had this vivid image in my head of him lifting his head and looking around, half-aware, and hearing the water rushing in. Trying the radio, even, but of course it does not work. He is injured, he can feel the biting cold, his vision is already wavering. He understands his situation. He unbuckles himself and leaves the pilot's seat. He stumbles to the floor. He puts himself on his back. No one will find him, he thinks. He's at peace with that. It was worth it. So he lays himself down, thinks hazily that it's lucky he was sick as a kid, because he's already had his last rites. He's losing feeling but he tries to fold his hands neatly on his stomach the way his mama was when she went into the ground. He thinks about her. His Commandos. Peggy. Stark. He hopes he's done right by Dr. Erskine. It's so cold. It was cold like this when he lost Bucky. Now he's following after, like he always does.
When SHIELD finds him they notice that he is not in the pilot's chair. There would have been more speculation about where he was found - was he trying to escape the sinking plane? Was he thrown from the chair? But the straps are still intact. He was buckled in during the crash, surely? - except that when they realize he's alive that supersedes all else. No one ever asks, and Steve never tells.
Steve laid himself down in his coffin of metal and ice, and Bucky was forced into his. They follow each other to the end.
Yes! I'm sorry, but there's no physical way Steve could have been at the controls of the Valkyrie in the position SHIELD found him in. If the impact had simply thrown him from his seat, how would he have ended up in that position� He lay still, straight on his back, with his arms by his sides.
Steve knew he was going to die, so he took that position, hoping someone would someday find his body and place it in a coffin đĽ˛
