moved to @worldloved

                 Celeb status? Since when had Steve ever garnered enough media attention to be considered a celebrity? He had always considered himself an outcast because of his upbringing, because of a childhood filled with trauma due to what he was and, moreso, what he wasn’t. Steve still wasn’t used to the notoriety that he’d received when he took the serum, when he took on the mantle of Captain America. A near impossible name to live up to, and it was often that he believed that he was falling sort of it. 

                Steve was a little lost and overwhelmed with all of this information. He wasn’t an idiot or anything, but the modern world, and its conception of fame and celebrity, was still something that was hard for him to digest. There had been the starlets and musicians of his time, but celebrity had never been celebrated so whollistically, people worshipped the ground that others walked on and it just didn’t make sense to him. Steve took a deep breath, eyes closing for a moment as he took in everything that was thrown at him. “I suppose…that would be okay. As long as nothing is posted without my expression permission. I don’t want people getting the wrong idea about me.” 

“I totally hear you,” Alexis agrees. “Nothing gets posted without being proofread by you first. And now that we have that settled, I think you are entitled to a well-deserved breakfast, as promised! I am so looking forward to representing you, Steve, you will not regret this.” She clasps one of his hands between both of hers, then turns back to her presentation pad to pack up. It feels like she’s just gotten away with something; talking her way into representing the second-highest-profile Avenger when her only previous job experience was representing her own mother? Definitely one of her more ambitious career moves. 

                   Thankfully, Steve knew exactly what generation that Alexis was talking about. Boomers. That’s what he’d heard Sam call them, at least. The generation that came from his, the one after the Silent Generation. Apparently, they caused a lot of issues in the political sphere, and Steve really didn’t know where people his age went wrong, there. It’d always been a family atmosphere in the Borough, but that was the past. Times had changed and apparently morals had, too. Screw Boomers. Steve didn’t respect bullies, no matter how old they were. 

                 Steve may be all for freedom of choice, but he wasn’t the type to throw bricks through windows unless there was good reason. Like the Black Lives Matter movement, of course. But there were other ways to rebel and sometimes they had more decisive action taken in reply because of it. “Never met the guy, but yeah, he was a good President. For the most part. But don’t you think it’d be a little weird that someone run social media accounts for me? It feels a bit disengenuine.” Steve scratched at the beheaded mass of hair atop his scalp, squinting his eyes. 

“Not at all,” Alexis insists with a wave of her hand. “It’s actually, like, extremely common for someone of your celeb status to have social media managers. It’s not because you aren’t a genuine person! But you’re just, like, way too busy saving the world to worry about your twitter mentions.” She flips her pad closed and instantly feels strangely bereft without her giant prop to work with, wriggling in place. She wants him to understand, but doesn’t want to overwhelm him, either.

“The thing is, someone as famous as you can have hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of followers, from all over the world, all of them constantly posting at you, wanting just a second of your attention. And if you give them that second? Now, they think they’re entitled to a minute, and if you give them a minute they want an hour, they’re never satisfied. And if you say even the tiniest bit of a wrong thing they attack, and it’s just, like, so easy to get sucked up into it and let it ruin your day. Believe me, I know. My shipping heir ex-boyfriend used to send his followers after me every time we broke up.”

“– Right…” mumbles Wash. It’s not new for him, having to check and re-check, because he’s sure right now that he’s asked why she was here before, and more to the point, that the answer hasn’t changed. “– Right, just making sure.”

Absently, he brings a hand up to his throat, running his fingertips along the scar there. Funny how something so small could’ve done so much. He swallows again and shakes his head. “– Valerie’s…” Wash frowns. He knows his sister isn’t in town, but he can’t quite place where she’s gone. He dismisses that before he can pursue it, though, knows the rabbit hole well enough. “– She’s out of town. And the guys from the VA, I don’t…” He frowns. He can practically feel Caboose hefting him into a bear hug already, can practically smell the wine and cheese from Donut. “– They’ve got enough going on.”

Still, something about the potential outreach must have poked at a spot in his brain, because Wash is struck, all of a sudden, with clarity. That clarity comes in the form of the following;

“– Honestly, I just wanna put on dumb kids’ cartoons and maybe order Chinese. If you want, you can join me, but it’s okay if you wanna get back.”

Shit. Of course Valerie’s out of town. It sends a spike of hurt through Joy’s heart that he’ll put his own trauma aside for the sake of the VA members’ safety. They’re supposed to be there for each other, but he keeps putting himself aside. 

The nod coming from the girl in front of her who seems to be his daughter, feels like a punch in the face. A punch that brings everything that happened back then. How he left his family, how he hit his wife, and probably would have done the same with his daughter. 

He feels cold sweat running down his back. Should he leave? Is she just here for money? Does she know what he has done? Did her mother ever tell her about everything? What if she is just here to yell at him what an awful father and person he is? Should be right, of course. He has never been a good father. He could have reached out to her. He could have talked to Gabriela about it but no. He didn’t. He was just a coward too afraid to face his own mistakes.

Now he had the chance to right his wrongs. To talk to his daughter and tell her how sorry he felt. That there was barely a day he didn’t think about her. 

But how should he start this? Just tell her what’s going through his mind? Hell, he wasn’t even really able to grasp what is going through his mind himself, how is he supposed to tell someone else about? 

“You… you got tall.” After a silence between them that lasted way too long, he managed to press out something but… oh my god how stupid. Of course she got tall! The last time he saw her she was 6. Now she is, what? 15? Thinking about how long it has been, just makes him feel even more and more guilty.

He has to say something else. Something that isn’t so tremendously stupid. “How have you been?” Yeah, that’s not much better.

daddydaddydaddydaddylovemelovemelovemeloveme—

fuck.

That’s all he has to say? That she got tall? “Yeah, nine years’ll do that,” Ava says numbly. Her palms are sweating and she wipes them on her ripped jeans. Aversely, her lips are completely dry now. She wants to cry. She wants to go home. This was stupid. This was a bad idea. Mom was right. He probably has some shiny new family and doesn’t care.

“I’m failing band.” The words tumble out in response to his second question before she registers them as a thought. “ Embarrassing, right? How do you fail band? Answer: I keep forgetting my oboe at home. I hate the oboe. The case is huge and awkward and doesn’t fit in my backpack so I just leave it under my bed. I want to learn how to play the guitar but my school doesn’t teach strings. It’s the worst.”

                 Steve didn’t think he had ever heard anyone talk like this young woman was talking. It was so…indirect, so far from a clear and concise sentence, he just didn’t know what way was up, especially given the fact that he had just woken up and his brain was positively foggy if he hadn’t had his morning coffee or at least gone on a run. He did his best to focus on what little words he could understand with Alexis speaking so fast, but it wasn’t pretty. The sound of breakfast sounded good, though, and his stomach grumbled in agreement. The boy could eat a shit ton of food, so that was absolutely a fair trade. “Okay, Miss Rose. What exactly should my image be? I’m not up much for changing, but if it’s a publicity thing…” 

“Thankfully, the demographic that will want to make you do things that make you super uncomfortable is rapidly decreasing in size,” Alexis begins, flipping her presentation pad open to BOOMER SHRINKAGE. She does a double-take at her own writing. “Okay, I could have possibly chosen better wording for that.” 

She flips to the next page: YOUNG ANARCHISTS. “Now, no one is saying that you should be throwing bricks through windows or anything.” She winks, because hey, sometimes people want to throw bricks and she is fine with that as long as he doesn’t get caught. “But, the pool of young people dissatisfied with the current US government is extremely vocal, and pissed. What you and I need to do together is briiiiidge that gap.” 

Flip.  ROSE 

Flip.  ROOSV 

Flip. ROOSEVELT.