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fandomweekly2019-09-27 06:51 pm
iluvroadrunner6) wrote in fandomweekly2019-09-27 06:51 pm
Entry tags:
[#025] Waking Up from a Dream (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Theme Prompt: #025 – One Track Mind
Title: Waking Up from a Dream
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 857
Summary: Steve wrestles with coming out of the ice and finding himself in a brand new world.
Brooklyn doesn’t feel like Brooklyn anymore.
He walks down the streets he used to know, some of which still have the same names, and he finds himself with nothing he recognizes, no landmarks to orient him, no buildings and fire escapes to tell him that he’s somewhere close to home. He stands at the heads of streets he used to know, picks out stores that seventy years ago were something else entirely. As his eyes roam over the faces as they pass him by, he tries to see if there’s something left here for him in all this unfamiliarity. In the end, he just finds himself in a bar that looks closest to what he would expect a bar to be and stumbles his way through ordering his first beer in 2012.
“New in town, huh?” the bartender teases as she pops the top off the bottle.
He laughs, before shrugging. “More like newly returned. I’ve been … out of town for a while.”
“Well, welcome back to Brooklyn.” Her smile is warm and friendly enough, but it still doesn’t feel like home. “And let me know if you need anything else, okay?” He gives her a nod, and she disappears down to the other end of the bar. Silence wraps over him again, and he wonders, briefly, if this is what it was like for everyone else after the war. After all, they had been serving longer than he had, and the war changed all of them in ways they’d never be able to escape. Those things linger for Steve too. Steve didn’t come out of the war completely unscarred either. It just took him a lot longer to find his way back.
Captain America was the driving force of the war. Captain America was an unstoppable force that had yet to meet an immovable object. Captain America, however, was eventually supposed to run out of road – when the war was over, and the day was saved, Steve Rogers was going to be allowed to step to the forefront again, put aside the war and battles and plotting that had consumed his life for the last three years.
Steve Rogers was going to go to the Stork Club, dance with his best girl, and take advantage of the values he fought so hard to protect – life, liberty, and the pursuit of some kind of happiness. After all, hadn’t he earned it? Hadn’t he paid enough of a price?
(There are still nights when he sees Bucky falling off that train, slipping through his fingers, there one moment, gone the next, and it’s the one thing he will never forgive Captain America for. For being too focused on the mission that it cost him his best friend.)
In the end, Steve Rogers never got to come home. Captain America met that immovable object, crashed into the Arctic, slept for so long, that when he finally finds himself back in Brooklyn, he doesn’t know whether or not it’s really his anymore. This bar was never his to begin with.
He barely touches the beer before he leaves but leaves a big tip as he sets off to wander again. He follows the street names to avoid getting lost, eventually winding up in front of the apartment building that he grew up in, refurbished and rejuvenated into something he wouldn’t recognize were it not for the fact that it’s sitting right on a view he saw every day of his life. He ambles forward, letting his elbows rest on the railing as he stares out towards the Brooklyn Bridge.
The world is a different place without a war to fight. At least, not an obvious one. He’s starting to be convinced that Fury is always fighting a war and will use whatever weapons at his disposal to keep fighting it, but Steve isn’t his weapon. Not yet. Captain America went into the ice seventy years ago and as far as everyone else is concerned, he never came back. Fury had extended an offer, something to keep him doing the thing he knows best, but right now, he isn’t sure if he should take it.
Steve knows what he’s really being offered is a chance to come home from the war. He’s being offered a second chance at Steve Rogers, a man without a war to fight, to never have to pick up that one-track focus of a mission again and have the life he was always supposed to have.
(A life he never would have, because he knows that peace wasn’t an option. Korea. Vietnam. Afghanistan, twice. The government would find a way to bring Captain America back again, and there would always be another mission to fight.)
He doesn’t have to be Fury’s weapon again. At the same time, if he doesn’t have Captain America, what does he have?
The next morning, he walks up to Fury’s office and stops just before he reaches the door. It’s his last chance, his last ditch effort to say goodbye for good, but instead he raises his hand, taking a deep breath and exhaling as he knocks:
“Here we go again.”
Title: Waking Up from a Dream
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 857
Summary: Steve wrestles with coming out of the ice and finding himself in a brand new world.
Brooklyn doesn’t feel like Brooklyn anymore.
He walks down the streets he used to know, some of which still have the same names, and he finds himself with nothing he recognizes, no landmarks to orient him, no buildings and fire escapes to tell him that he’s somewhere close to home. He stands at the heads of streets he used to know, picks out stores that seventy years ago were something else entirely. As his eyes roam over the faces as they pass him by, he tries to see if there’s something left here for him in all this unfamiliarity. In the end, he just finds himself in a bar that looks closest to what he would expect a bar to be and stumbles his way through ordering his first beer in 2012.
“New in town, huh?” the bartender teases as she pops the top off the bottle.
He laughs, before shrugging. “More like newly returned. I’ve been … out of town for a while.”
“Well, welcome back to Brooklyn.” Her smile is warm and friendly enough, but it still doesn’t feel like home. “And let me know if you need anything else, okay?” He gives her a nod, and she disappears down to the other end of the bar. Silence wraps over him again, and he wonders, briefly, if this is what it was like for everyone else after the war. After all, they had been serving longer than he had, and the war changed all of them in ways they’d never be able to escape. Those things linger for Steve too. Steve didn’t come out of the war completely unscarred either. It just took him a lot longer to find his way back.
Captain America was the driving force of the war. Captain America was an unstoppable force that had yet to meet an immovable object. Captain America, however, was eventually supposed to run out of road – when the war was over, and the day was saved, Steve Rogers was going to be allowed to step to the forefront again, put aside the war and battles and plotting that had consumed his life for the last three years.
Steve Rogers was going to go to the Stork Club, dance with his best girl, and take advantage of the values he fought so hard to protect – life, liberty, and the pursuit of some kind of happiness. After all, hadn’t he earned it? Hadn’t he paid enough of a price?
(There are still nights when he sees Bucky falling off that train, slipping through his fingers, there one moment, gone the next, and it’s the one thing he will never forgive Captain America for. For being too focused on the mission that it cost him his best friend.)
In the end, Steve Rogers never got to come home. Captain America met that immovable object, crashed into the Arctic, slept for so long, that when he finally finds himself back in Brooklyn, he doesn’t know whether or not it’s really his anymore. This bar was never his to begin with.
He barely touches the beer before he leaves but leaves a big tip as he sets off to wander again. He follows the street names to avoid getting lost, eventually winding up in front of the apartment building that he grew up in, refurbished and rejuvenated into something he wouldn’t recognize were it not for the fact that it’s sitting right on a view he saw every day of his life. He ambles forward, letting his elbows rest on the railing as he stares out towards the Brooklyn Bridge.
The world is a different place without a war to fight. At least, not an obvious one. He’s starting to be convinced that Fury is always fighting a war and will use whatever weapons at his disposal to keep fighting it, but Steve isn’t his weapon. Not yet. Captain America went into the ice seventy years ago and as far as everyone else is concerned, he never came back. Fury had extended an offer, something to keep him doing the thing he knows best, but right now, he isn’t sure if he should take it.
Steve knows what he’s really being offered is a chance to come home from the war. He’s being offered a second chance at Steve Rogers, a man without a war to fight, to never have to pick up that one-track focus of a mission again and have the life he was always supposed to have.
(A life he never would have, because he knows that peace wasn’t an option. Korea. Vietnam. Afghanistan, twice. The government would find a way to bring Captain America back again, and there would always be another mission to fight.)
He doesn’t have to be Fury’s weapon again. At the same time, if he doesn’t have Captain America, what does he have?
The next morning, he walks up to Fury’s office and stops just before he reaches the door. It’s his last chance, his last ditch effort to say goodbye for good, but instead he raises his hand, taking a deep breath and exhaling as he knocks:
“Here we go again.”
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Thanks for reading, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
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Thanks for reading!
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