fernweh

Was violently bullied throughout his childhood and into adulthood.

Watched his mother waste away and die.

Was an orphan by his mid-to-late teens.

Grew up in poverty, during the Great Depression, as the child of immigrants .

Grew up color-blind, partially-deaf, malnourished/stunted, and chronically-ill, in a culture that was so big on eugenics that Nazis took their cues from the US systems.

Signed up for the army and then dove on what he believed to be a live grenade because he believed the best use of his life was to exchange it for the lives of others.

Fought on the front lines of the bloodiest and most horrific war in human history, where he undoubtedly witnessed terrible violence and atrocities.

Watched his best friend die and lived with the guilt of believing he was responsible.

Crashed a plane into the ocean, fully believing he was going to die.

Was frozen alive.

Woke up to find that nearly everyone he’d ever known was dead and gone, and his home was changed nearly beyond recognition; he could never truly go home from the war. Ever.

Lost his shot at happiness with the one woman who ever actually looked at him when he was small and frail, and had to watch her mind come apart, and later carry her coffin.

Found out his sacrifice – the thing he gave up his life, his friends, his whole world for – was in vain, and that HYDRA had corrupted the legacy of the people he loved.

Found out his best friend survived, and that he’d abandoned him to a fate worse than death, and got to then live with THAT fresh guilt.

Is seen by most people as Captain America; almost no one sees Steve Rogers.

Was only 26 years old, biologically, during the Battle of New York. 

Writing Good Guys is never boring. 

The ridiculous thing about Steve Rogers is that he is everything that is brave, earnest and true.  And no, he’s not perfect, he’s not a saint, he’s sassy and snarky and occasionally trips face first into the Land of Adorkable. (All right, maybe not occasionally.  Maybe all the flippin’ time.)  But good is awesome.  Good rocks.  Good doesn’t mean soft and weak and boring.  

Doing the Right Thing is hard and it hurts like a sumbitch at times and you’ll get crap thrown at you every which way but Steve Rogers keeps going and somehow manages to stay kind and still be this sweetheart, despite everything else that would’ve broken other people long ago.  

Somehow you read about Steve being playful and pretending that he doesn’t understand modern technology but is probably the biggest techie geek there is.  You read about Steve saving puppies and kittens and telling a wide-eyed six year old girl that she can be Captain America when she grows up if she wants to be.  You read about Steve charming little old ladies and respecting the hell out of women in general and you can bet your ass he’s not some chauvinistic asshole with entitlement issues.  You read about skinny Steve and you realize Captain America’s always been in him, even when he didn’t have the strength to match that superhero heart of his.  You read about Steve trolling the hell out of his teammates and Tony goes “SON OF A BITCH WHO KNEW?!” and Clint cackles over and over because this is rich, this is awesome, Captain America’s a little trolling shit and PHIL DID YOU SEE THAT?

And Bucky would’ve told him, Steve’s always been a punk, didn’t you fellas know that?

And the Howling Commandos would’ve had some stories about their crazy C.O. and the shenanigans he came up with and that Steve ran a mixed-race unit with a couple of soldiers from not even in the US ARMY and took no guff from anyone who complained about that. 

And Natasha doesn’t ever get disappointed in this good man, when she’s been disappointed by so many so called “good men” and she starts to believe.

And that’s the Steve Rogers story I’ll never get tired of reading.  Or writing. 

And the issues aren’t boring, and Steve isn’t a self-righteous goody-goody.  He blows his deadlines at work (he’s a freelance artist), he makes a fool of himself a couple of time romancing the pretty glassblower, he makes mistakes, he’s guilt-stricken because he let Bucky AND a poor guy named Roscoe who tried to sub for him as Cap die, and he makes mistakes.  It’s sweet and funny and yes, it’s clearly for kids and younger teens, but you know what?  These issues are well written and drawn, and as dated as they are in some ways, they’re so much more enjoyable than the grim, bitter wreck we see in the current comics, or the neocon jerkwad from Ults. 

Steve reads The Hobbit in the 30s/40s. Maybe Bucky saves up and buys it for him one year for his birthday. Maybe he picks up a copy while on the USO tour. Maybe Peggy lends it to him.

He reads it. He loves it. He goes into the ice.

He wakes up and rereading it crosses his mind but “It’s an old book now, no one’s probably heard of it.” and there are so many new things to read that it gets pushed aside.

(Or maybe he knows that they’re making The Hobbit into a movie and he’s so happy about that but he doesn’t really read into it, you know? It’s going to be a movie, that’s good enough for him. He doesn’t watch interviews, he doesn’t read articles- he hears about The Lord of the Rings, of course, but no one ever makes the connection for him.)

(“I’ll reread The Hobbit before the movies come out,” but there’s still so many new things that it still gets pushed aside.)

Someone (Nat or Sam, in a hotel somewhere while they’re looking for Bucky, or Bruce in the Tower, or whoever) flips through channels and puts on The Lord of the Rings movies and Steve is only half paying attention. Maybe he’s sketching. Maybe he’s reading reports. Who knows.

Then he hears “hobbits” and it catches his attention because wait, is that…? But this isn’t The Hobbit, he doesn’t know this story, but he’s invested now and he’s watching a little bit more.

Gandalf appears, and Bilbo, and wait he definitely knows these characters what’s going on, what’s happening here, what story is this?

“Well, yeah, it’s The Lord of the Rings, it’s the sequel to The Hobbit-”

“He wrote a sequel? There’s a sequel!?”

“…there’s technically a prequel too, mostly put together by his son, but-”

“HOW MANY MORE BOOKS ARE THERE?”

“…three in The Lord of the Rings, plus the Silmarillion, and a lot of history/meta stuff too…”

“I WANT TO READ THEM ALL.”

Steve does read them all. 

(There’s a moment of loud indignation when he reads about the riddle game because “It didn’t happen like that!” He has to have the changes explained, and then it’s the funniest thing in the world to him.)

Steve reading about Frodo and Sam nearly dying on the slopes of Mount Doom, saving the world by the skin of their teeth, and it’s exactly the epic fantasy ending he was expecting. Aragorn marries Arwen, and the hobbits are heroes, and everything is right in the world.

And then they go back to the Shire.

They go through literal war, and they try to go home… but it’s not home. It’s been ravaged by the war, by technology, and “in your heart you begin to understand: there is no going back.”

And Frodo sails. Frodo sails, and even though you know that Sam still has Merry and Pippin, look at what he’s lost. He lost Frodo, he lost Gandalf, he lost the innocence of the Shire. And Sam is left behind, left to return home to his wife and family alone, and its an awful, terrible moment, that moment when you’re confronted with the reality that “We set out to save the Shire, Sam. And it has been saved, but not for me,” that winning the war can mean losing in other ways, that sometimes you don’t get your happy ending-

But that’s not the ending you’re left with. Because the last line of the book is “Well, I’m back.” and Steve, sitting in his apartment, surrounding by a future that never expected to see, that he understands and embraces but still sometimes doesn’t feel like his own world- Steve sits back, and sets the book down, and innately understands Sam’s feeling of pushing forward and finding happiness even in the light of a great personal loss. Steve has literally lived through his own Scouring of the Shire, has tried to go home only to realize that there is no going back, Steve would have every reason in the world to be Frodo and to decide to step back and find his own peace because damnit, he deserves that.

And to add more food to the fodder, from Cap #255 by Roger Stern…

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