"I would say Black Widow."

Operation Christmas Drop: A Romanogers Holiday AU (No powers.)

Non-profit fanfiction inspired by the Netflix film Operation Christmas Drop (2020), reimagined with Marvel characters.

When congressional aide Natalie Rushman is sent to Guam to evaluate a military program for potential budget cuts, she expects waste, inefficiency, and a quick report that could boost her career. Instead, she finds a decades-old humanitarian mission and Captain Steve Rogers, the pilot determined to prove why it matters.

Grounded in a real U.S. Air Force operation, this story blends holiday romance, political pressure, and found family, exploring what happens when ambition collides with community… and Christmas has other plans.

🎄❤️🎄❤️🎄

This is my first AU, and writing it was a delight. It was meant to be a short Christmas story, but because it explores themes I'm less familiar with, the research and development took a bit longer than I expected. Now it's all finished, and its 18 chapters will be posted weekly. 

If you enjoy holiday romances, the original movie is genuinely sweet and worth watching. Have you seen it? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

The film gives you the mission. This story gives you the people. Their thoughts, their choices, and the moments that never made it to the screen.

As always, feel free to ask anything. I truly appreciate your feedback.

I hope reading it brings you a small escape and maybe a spark of Christmas spirit.

~ Mari 🎄

Steve Rogers abandoning his team, his closest friends, and especially Bucky to return to a woman he knew for roughly two years during World War II never made sense to me. They barely had time to build a relationship, shared only one kiss, and after years living in the future, he was no longer the same man Peggy originally knew. How is that fair to her?

What makes it worse is everything he would have to ignore by choosing to remain in the past. He knows another version of himself is frozen in the Arctic. He knows Bucky is being tortured. Natasha and countless other girls are trapped in the Red Room. Howard and Maria Stark will be murdered. Tony will be kidnapped. Bruce will become the Hulk. Hydra is growing inside SHIELD. Future wars, attacks, and disasters will cost thousands of lives.

The Steve Rogers I know and admire would never quietly live alongside that suffering. His entire character is built around running toward danger, not away from it. He fights for the present, not the past. He does not abandon people who still need him.

Endgame asks the audience to believe that Steve suddenly stops acting like Steve Rogers, and that never felt emotionally truthful to me.

What made the ending even more frustrating was the way Steve’s relationship with Peggy became retroactively treated as the singular emotional truth of his life.

And. The idea of Steve as an “eternal virgin” never appealed to me. It feels less like a historically grounded interpretation and more like a modern romantic ideal projected backward onto a man raised in another era. I also dislike the implication that someone’s worth or moral purity is tied to chastity. Steve’s character was never built on sexual innocence. It was built on empathy, courage, restraint, loyalty, and respect for others.

Historically, the idea also does not really fit the social reality of the period Steve came from. Men of that era were not universally “saving themselves” for marriage. What existed was a strong culture of discretion and a very unequal social divide between women considered suitable for marriage and women considered suitable only for casual encounters. Since the Golden Age comics, Steve was always portrayed as respectful toward women, chivalrous, but never naive about them.

Peggy gained importance gradually through reinterpretations and retcons. Originally and chronologically, she was part of Steve’s wartime past, not the defining center of his entire emotional life. Sharon Carter was his most recurring romantic relationship, and over time Steve also had other relationships, affairs, and even a fiancée, Bernie Rosenthal. Rachel Leighton (Diamondback) was one of the few women he openly dated without hiding his identity as Captain America. Across eight decades of stories, Steve was consistently portrayed as emotionally capable of moving forward and forming new attachments.

The MCU gave Peggy much greater narrative importance, but even there Steve’s characterization is more complicated than “a man frozen in time waiting for one woman.”

In Avengers: Age of Ultron, Steve explicitly says: “The guy who wanted all that went in the ice seventy-five years ago. I think someone else came out.”

In The Winter Soldier Civil War, he kisses Sharon. (thanks @speromint )

The emotional constant throughout Steve’s life was arguably Bucky, the one relationship he never truly let go of. Personally, I suspect Endgame redirected Steve’s ending toward Peggy partly because Marvel became uncomfortable with how emotionally central that friendship had become in audience interpretation.

As for changing the past, I do not think comparisons to stories like Flash really apply. The moment Steve returned to the 1940s, the timeline was already altered by his presence alone. He had spent years living in a different century, shaped by experiences, wars, technology, and social changes that did not exist in 1945. He was no longer the same man who originally went into the ice.

That tension is explored directly in the comics Captain America: Man Out of Time, where Steve struggles with aspects of the past he can no longer accept, including segregation and other social norms of the era. Steve would never assassinate people or become some reckless timeline manipulator, but I also cannot imagine him quietly living through decades of injustice without speaking up or defending ordinary people.

I’ve been sharing my fanfiction Operation Christmas Drop along with illustrations for each chapter, offering a visual glimpse into the story as it unfolds.

This piece illustrates Chapter 2, “Santa’s Helper Zero-One.”

The image reflects two sides of the same moment.

On one side, it’s the version seen in the article that drew Natalie to the island: a relaxed pilot under a Pacific sky, a Santa hat and a ukulele, an easy smile.

On the other, it hints at what that image doesn’t show, the distance from home, the responsibility he carries, and the people who matter on both sides of the world.

Created using a mix of digital drawing, composition, and AI-assisted elements.

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 2.

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Guam — Andersen Air Force Base — Wednesday, December 20, 2023

On his screen, Christmas glowed from a farmhouse outside South Bend, built by his great-grandfather in the early 1900s, with Irish-Catholic roots and cornfields stretching for miles.

(...)

Colored bulbs blinked around the front doorframe. His parents sat shoulder to shoulder. His sister occupied one end of the couch, her daughter perched on her lap, small socked feet swinging as she leaned toward the screen.

Then the image froze.

"Again?" Leaning closer, he squinted. "Sorry, I lost you. You guys there?"

The picture jumped back, voices overlapping as Joseph and Sarah argued about the Wi-Fi connection. Stephanie giggled. So painfully normal.

Wanda rolled her eyes. "And that concludes the Rogers family's attempt at Christmas caroling via the internet." 

"It's okay, sis. Watching Mom and Dad fight about tech reminds me of home more than you know."

Then Stephanie leaned in, chin propped on her hands. "How's your Christmas over there, Uncle Steve?"

"Well, you heard of a partridge in a pear tree? I got a seagull in a coconut palm."

A quiet chuckle slipped out. She tugged at her sweater, fidgeting, before her smile softened into something smaller, more hopeful. "Maybe you could borrow a jet and fly home. It's only 5 days till Christmas."

"I wish I could, kiddo." His voice gentled. "They need me here. We're helping Santa out. But I'll be there for New Year's."

"I know." The 6-year-old pouted. "Mommy told me. I just… I miss when you and Daddy helped me put the star on the tree." 

She had the same clear blue eyes that once belonged to a man who should have been sitting beside her. Eyes Steve remembered from his own childhood.

The room quieted. Wanda's arm tightened around her daughter. Their parents watched with that familiar mix of worry and restraint, as if naming what was missing would make it worse.

"Me, too, pumpkin." Steve exhaled. "More than you know."

🎄❤️🎄❤️🎄

Does this change your first impression of Steve?

I’ve been sharing my fanfiction Operation Christmas Drop online, but most of the feedback I receive tends to come from people offering art commissions rather than from readers reacting to the story itself.

So I decided to try something different: creating my own illustrations for each chapter — to give readers a visual glimpse of the scenes and characters while sharing small excerpts from the story.

Operation Christmas Drop is a Romanogers AU inspired by the Netflix film, reimagined with Marvel characters.

This artwork illustrates Chapter 1, “The Naughty List.” Below is the beginning of the chapter.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Monday, December 18, 2023

The wind off the Potomac turned the late afternoon sharp and biting, wrapping the city in cold air. Along Pennsylvania Avenue, tourists clustered for photos near vendors selling roasted chestnuts and cider in paper cups. Evergreen wreaths swayed beneath the streetlamps. Somewhere down the block, a bell rang steadily, cheerful and relentless.

Senior Legislative Aide Natalie Rushman navigated the festive street on an urgent assignment. Or so she kept telling herself.

Her wool coat fell just below her knees, a scarf hugging her throat, leather gloves resting in one pocket. "Hey, Darcy." Natalie shifted the high-end shopping bags in her arms. "This is taking longer than I thought. Can you bump me up? I'm still two cashmere sweaters and a Tiffany bracelet away from the bottom of the congresswoman's list." At the crosswalk, she tapped her heel against the curb. "Feeling more like her personal shopper than an aide right now." 

Inside the Capitol complex, holiday decorations were subtler yet just as deliberate. Garlands lined the railings across the wide central office floor. Poinsettias flanked security desks. Congresswoman Virginia "Pepper" Potts' bullpen buzzed with overlapping conversations, clattering keyboards, and the low hum of printers working overtime before recess. Long rows of desks formed small islands, each cluster close enough to collaborate while keeping strategic privacy.

Staff Assistant Darcy Lewis stood near her desk, balancing a call while scrolling on her computer.

"It's a compliment, Nat. She takes her Christmas shopping very seriously. That's why she only trusts it to you."

Out on the street, Natalie gave a passing Santa a quick high-five. "That's a positive spin." 

Darcy tapped the keyboard. "Ah, I found that article you wanted." 

The Indianapolis Post appeared on her screen.

OPERATION CHRISTMAS DROP

What is the military spending our tax dollars on?

Beneath a cloudless Pacific sky, an Air Force pilot posed in front of a cargo plane, ukulele in his hands, a Santa hat perched jauntily on his head. 

The assistant squinted at the screen. "What's a Christmas Drop?" 

"It's a mission from a Pacific airbase. They parachute gifts and supplies to remote islands at Christmas."

"Sending the link now. And…" Darcy let out a low whistle. "Okay, who's Major Eye Candy in the Santa cap?"

Pausing mid-stride, Natalie zoomed in on the image. Broad shoulders. Sun-bleached hair. Smiling. Annoyingly attractive. She'd met plenty like him — a cocky grin that masked a reckless streak, using charm to cover any mistake. Definitely not worth the trouble.

A reluctant smile tugged at her lips as she scrolled. "No idea, but looks like he's heading straight for the congresswoman's naughty list."

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First impressions of Natalie?

If you'd like to continue reading, the full chapter and more are available on AO3 / Wattpad / FanFiction.net.

Feel free to leave a comment here as well — I always enjoy hearing readers’ reactions.

💍 After 12 years… Chris Crush is finally complete 💍

The Chris Crush main story is finished! 💝

• NEW Chapter 24 — the night‑before‑the‑wedding phone call

• NEW Chapter 25 — the wedding

It’s been a decade since my last new chapter, and over the past three years I’ve revised and expanded the entire story — 114,000 new words added across 23 earlier chapters, plus two brand‑new ones (#24 and #25). Scenes are richer, deeper, and packed with new moments — including over 12,000 words added to three pivotal chapters leading into the wedding. 💕

📖 For the full emotional payoff, I recommend re‑reading:

• Chris Crush (Family) — Chapter 3: Steve’s Birthday

• Chris Crush (Main) — Chapters 22 & 23: from his proposal through the bachelor/bachelorette parties

This finale closes the Chris Crush main arc… but not their world. The sequel (Can We Hear It Again?) and the prequel (Steve Rogers: Through the Seasons of Christmas) are already in motion — along with other side stories like Selfless Love and The First Halloween (ongoing). 💖

Thank you for climbing this ladder with me — step by step, year after year.

Whether you’ve been here since the start or just found the story, I’d love to hear from you.

Even a simple “still here” means the world. Love you all!💋

🔗 Read the complete Chris Crush (Main) and Chris Crush (Family), Chapter 3 on Fanfiction.net

🔗 Read the complete Chris Crush (Main) and Chris Crush (Family), Chapter 3 on AO3