how destiny must be laughing in the shadows of limbo

my darling space mechanic oc Vinnìk (and his buddy, bud-e), who i am CHALLENGING myself to draw EVERY DAY of july to KILL the villain Art Block ✩˚₊‧★.*

legible version of the itty bitty text under the cut :)

yes it’s true!!! i’m super cool now, living my dreams as a golden marshmallow!!

I’ve been thinking about him today

Tony: it’s so hard to be on the brink of death all the time. I miss Steve

Black Widow Girl❤️🍷🫧

A Meditation : 68 Capybaras

"All my life I've tried to find a place for Steve Rogers—but still he lives under the more colorful shadow of Captain America… Perhaps it's Steve Rogers who's the legend—and Captain America who is the reality! Perhaps I was born to be a red-white-and-blue Avenger—and nothing more! But there must be more to life than endless combat! Others have found a home—a family—why can't I? Or, is Steve Rogers destined to walk alone forever—until the final battle—until he walks no more?"

— Tales of Suspense Vol. 1 #75 (1959)

"[...] But, even in the center of a crowd, I'm an outsider—a misfit! Only when I'm costumed as Captain America do I seem to come alive—to have a mission—a purpose! But, as Steve Rogers, I'm merely a name—a hollow shell—with no roots—no real life to call my own! Other men have friends—wives—loved ones!"

— Tales of Suspense Vol. 1 #92 (1959)

in the comics, the canon event of tony stark, the first person steve meets in the 21st century, giving him all of those things — a purpose, a home, somewhere to belong as himself and not just cap — changed his entire life.

"The first week after I came out of the ice… It was a dark time. I'd lost everything. My best friend. All my friends. All I had. I didn't know what I could hang on to. And then Tony Stark came in with this little… handheld cinema. Future technology. He showed me a newsreel. Right there, I saw a man walk on the moon. For all mankind. And in that moment, I felt hope again."

— S.W.O.R.D. Vol. 2 #6 (2021)

"Mr. Stark, when I woke up in this era, I had no one. Nothing. You gave me a purpose. Somewhere to belong… You gave me a home."

— Iron Man/Captain America: Casualties of War (2006) 

meeting tony and the avengers, creating those friendships and connections, living at the avengers mansion with them, gives steve hope that he can still find happiness and belonging in the present day.

i always found it ironic that in the mcu steve projects this ideal of happiness and domestic life onto tony. this scene in ca:cw is a perfect example of that disconnect between the reality and what steve assumed on the surface was tony achieving what he never could — having a partner, his own family and kids. (the fact that cacw tony is 4 seconds away from a heart attack at all times and too busy running around firefighting PR crises just further drives home the irony.)

and then in a cruel twist of fate, mcu actually gives tony all of these things: home, family, wife and kid. we see steve witnessing tony having these things and knowing it's all possible, but just not for him and not in this era. (and ultimately, tony only gets to have these things for a brief period of time before having to give it all up.)

He isn’t all warm about it, like comics Steve would be, but he’s still found some measure of solidity. A place to put his head down and call his own. It isn’t the romantic ideal of a nuclear family with a wife and 2.5 kids, but did he ever believe he was going to get that, for most of his life before Peggy? 

But the kicker is that that very day is when Tony leaves. 

And so it is. WE WERE SO CLOSE DAMMIT. but instead we have found ourselves in a narrative cycle where when one chooses to stay and commit to the Avengers-as-a-home, one has to leave - a la Steve driving away on his bike in Avengers 1 and evidently not returning while Tony is redesigning the Tower for the team. When really what we should’ve had is two sides of a coin, the building blocks of a team. The family experiences that, as OP mentions, forms the basis of the trust and bond they should’ve had and Steve’s connection to the present day. The cherry on top of that shit sundae, is that what happens next is CACW, which narratively calls for Steve being isolated and stripped of everything that he cares about in the present day, put in a blender with his man-out-of-time trauma. So then we have this:

I don’t like the idea of you rattling around a mansion all by yourself. We all need family.

The Avengers are yours, maybe even more so than mine.

So instead of them taking a leaf from the book of their comics counterparts and going to each other to say, ‘come back. there’s no avengers without you.’ Steve relinquishes all claim on the Avengers and says they were never (formally?) his in the first place. Like Steve and Tony hadn’t built this team together. Because in the MCU... they hadn’t. They were never allowed to. Steve was never allowed to accept a home, even when one was offered to him.