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It’s quiet up in the mountains. Reminds TJ of summers spent with his grandfather in Virginia, the way the quiet seems to sink into the very air. But country quiet is different – filled with the low hum of cicadas at night, leaves rustling, the lone howl of a wolf or the hoot of nearby owls. Up here above the tree line, nestled under a blanket of snow, everything seems still. Pristine. Like the world’s been remade, brand-new.
Bucky and Steve seem to revel in it. They’ve spent hours sitting out on the porch together, neither of them talking or moving, just watching the fat white flakes drifting from the sky with almost childlike glee. (Contrary to popular belief, neither one of them minds the cold. In fact, the getaway had been Bucky’s idea.) TJ’s come out to join them a few times, but he doesn’t run as hot as a furnace on high blast, so those times are few and far between. But he doesn’t mind leaving them to do their thing while he stays inside, where it’s nice and cozy, reading his way through a thick stack of actual, physical books.
Most of the time, they spend together: either in the overlarge bed, tangled together so close even TJ has trouble figuring how which body part belongs to whom, or lounging together in the living room under thick fleece blankets and trading stories, some funny, some tragic, but equally embraced. And, day by day, the shadows retreat from Bucky’s eyes, the heavy weight from Steve’s shoulders, and the anxious coil from TJ’s nerves. The days and nights blend together, filled with laughter and kisses, with touches and murmurs and the rock-solid bond they all have with each other.
Seriously, why did they take this scene from the final cut? It is so very important! And not only to explain why Steve lacked the cowl in the end of the movie, but because this tiny moment is extremely important to Steve’s development as a character. He came to be seen as a fascist, as exactly that which he fought to destroy. Captain America, who sought to fight bullies his whole life, is now seen as one. Imagine the impact that had on his head. The meaning of his actions after he saw this. Steve began to give up the Captain America identity right here. This is why in Civil War he has no problems giving up the shield. He and Captain America have long been drifting apart. In fact, they were never one to begin with:
Steve went through his whole life trying to show people he wasn’t what they thought of him. Becoming Captain America was one way to do it, and giving this identity up is another one.
Steve isn’t unaware of the symbolism Captain America entails. For good and for bad. In The First Avenger he uses the symbol in his favour, transforming it. In The Winter Soldier he owns the symbol he became, working in favour of the greater good through his public image. However, in Civil War he has to give the symbol up, for it has come to represent something he is not.
When Tony tells him he doesn’t deserve the shield, Steve is tired of having to “prove” that his actions are those of Captain America. People put Captain America in a box that doesn’t fit Steve Rogers. Tony tells him he is not worthy of being Captain America, of carrying the shield his father made, as if he had betrayed what Howard Stark worked for, as if somehow Howard was responsible for the making of Captain America, and Steve became unworthy to be part of Howard’s legacy. This is just one way people created a general idea about who Captain America is, forgetting the man behind the shield.
Steve will be that which he has to be. That which he feels in his heart and head to be his duty, the right thing. He became Captain America for that reason, and for that same reason he threw cowl and shield aside.
They cut this?! UGH. This is so important!
How traumatising must it have been for a man who gave up everything, lost everything, even died fighting Nazis, to be seen as a fascist?
To have battled the monster for so long that he was percieved as a monster?
So. The missing extra novel I wrote last December, or ok ¾ novel. It was MCU fic, and featured Angie Martinelli as the main character, and Bucky Barnes as the secondary character. The plot was that she’d washed out of her acting career and come upstate to take care of her dying grandmother, and then gotten stuck with the now-dead grandmother’s hoarder house full of junk in this small town. And if she could get the house cleaned up and sold, she’d have enough money to get back down to New York, maybe survive long enough to get a job down there again. But in the meantime, she was stuck in this little town, which I lazily based off the town where I grew up. And so she’s working as a waitress in the 24-hour diner that I stole from a different but similar little town. And this weird guy shows up in town and it’s Bucky and they become friends; he’s brain-damaged and can’t really talk and Angie is enchanted by trying to get him to smile at her, he’s the most interesting thing to happen all year. But SHIELD is looking for Bucky, who escaped them and is just trying to live quietly on his own and not have to kill anymore. (Hey, I wrote this before Civil War even had trailers out, I feel kind of good about that characterization.) And they send Peggy, and it’s all Angie’s POV, but Peggy has twigged that Angie knows something, clearly.
Sort of coincidentally, I not only set the fic in my hometown, I also set it during the time I was growing up. So it’s the late 90s, in this fic; there are flip phones that can text, but if you want Internet you probably have to go to the library.
And everyone’s really homophobic. And Angie’s a lesbian.
So here’s an excerpt, because I’m remembering now how it came from a pretty vivid place for me, and maybe I’m in despair because I remember how fucking terrifying this shit was and we’re barely starting to come out of that and now everything is politically and culturally horrible and we’re sliding backward as a society etcetera.
(And oh yeah the novel switches tenses to present about halfway through, so.)
Angie’s so wound up in thinking what she’ll do that she isn’t paying any attention as she walks to her car. (It’s a small lot. To keep from crowding customers out the employees all park around the corner in a graveled-over little spot under some trees, it’s dark and it’s isolated and at night Jorge walks everybody out but it’s not quite full dark yet so she didn’t ask.) She puts her hand on the door handle, and someone very close says, “Angie,” and she jumps out of her skin oh God they’re not even going to come back to her house this time they’re just going to fucking jump her in the parking lot this time–
It’s Peggy. “Jesus Christ,” Angie says, stumbling against her car.
“Sorry!” Peggy says. “Oh, my god, sorry! I thought you’d see me!”
Angie flattens her hand against her chest as if she can stop her heart from beating so damn fast. Fuck fuck fuck fuck what is she going to do?
She bursts into tears. “Oh my God I thought you– sorry! Sorry–” She puts her face in her hands, Christ, she actually didn’t mean to do this, but it’s all coming back, they came to her house, they tried to break into her house, they weren’t going to kill her right away.
“Angie,” Peggy says, horrified, “Angie, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Angie’s crying too hard to talk. It’s mortifying. And fuck, it’s suspicious, Peggy’s going to assume she’s got a guilty conscience. Angie shoves her face in her apron and pulls herself together, deep breath in, you’re gonna get James killed. “It’s not you,” she manages to say. “Christ, I’m sorry, it’s not you– I’m the only goddamn queer in this entire town and sometimes people take exception and I don’t– like it– when people– startle me, I take it bad, I’m sorry.”
“Oh my God,” Peggy says, soft and horrified.
“They came to my house,” Angie says, shaky, “they tried to break in, they weren’t gonna kill me they were just gonna teach me a lesson, I gotta get out of this fuckin’ town.” She wipes her face. Her hands are shaking. “I shouldn’t’a been cute with you before, I shouldn’t’a done that, I know people saw it, they’re okay with the rumors but– you gotta be careful, you can’t be obvious like that, and that was stupid, and I’m sorry I just unloaded all that on you but don’t sneak up on me, okay, don’t sneak up on me, I wasn’t built for this ninja shit.” She starts crying again. Fuck. Well, fuck, fine; she’s good at talking about herself, it’s a good distraction. Not hard to be honest about this.
“I am– so, so sorry,” Peggy says, “oh my God, Angie, I didn’t mean to put you in danger like that. You poor thing!”
“I ain’t here for your goddamn pity,” Angie sobs. She can’t stop shaking.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Peggy says.
“Nobody ever–” Angie shuts her mouth, tries again to pull herself together. “Christ on a fuckin’ crucifix, lady.” She breathes, in, hold, out, repeat. It’s hard to get the air out, her lungs want to hold onto it, like they might not get more. Out. In. Hold. Okay. “I called a friend,” she says. “Cops take a half-hour, and you know, they might not take your side, when they finally show up. I called a friend. He said, get a baseball bat or somethin’ and hide behind the dining room door. That way there’s two exits so they can’t corner you. He said, you just gotta live through it, and kill time, and stay alive as long as you can. That’s what I learned from that: what they leave you, in the end, you gotta try to make a life outta that.” She breathes in, holds, breathes out, makes herself push it out, breathes in again. “He got there before they got the door open. Scared ‘em off. That time. That’s all I got, lady. That’s the space where I live.”
Fuck, she should get a fucking Oscar, except that really wasn’t where she wanted this conversation to go. Too bad.
Peggy doesn’t say anything. Angie breathes a little more. “So that’s the shit you mess with,” she said, “when you come in people’s lives and push shit around, that’s the space you’re takin’ up. You scare people enough, they kill each other. You ask everybody in town about this kid yet? If you found him you wouldn’t be here still talkin’ to me. You wanna see if you can get me to give you somethin’ else, stir up some more shit, maybe next time they’ll just jump me in the fuckin’ parking lot, like I figured you were gonna just now.” Her hands are still shaking. “And then you drive away, back to somewhere you belong, and I gotta live with whatever they leave me.”
I had definitely built it up in my head into more / other than it was.
Looking at it again, though, if i scraped off the ending where I attempted to develop the plot, and filed off the serial numbers and changed a bunch of details, I could maybe make it into something interesting. (I dunno, maybe I’m just less despair-y tonight, or maybe it’s that I’ve despaired so long and hard I now no longer know what “good” even means anymore.)
Also– for what it’s worth, the thing wasn’t finished, but it also did not contain a romantic relationship; the main pairing was a platonic one. I don’t know if I can manage a whole novel like that, but it is interesting to note. If I redo the plot and change the Steve/Peggy characters… I don’t want Angie to be an eternally chaste lesbian though. Whatever her name winds up being. Hm….
She didn’t want to spook him. She knew how scared he was, of everything. But she had to talk to him.
She went to the gas station. She knew at least part of his schedule because his truck trundled by the diner on his way to and from. So she showed up just at the end of his Tuesday morning shift, just as he was coming out.
He was wearing the hoodie he always wore, but he had the hood down, and his hair was long but well-groomed, pulled neatly back. She’d parked next to his truck and was leaning against her car, so he saw her instantly, and he went on high alert like a wild animal.
“Hey,” she said. “I just wanted to say thanks. For— sticking up for me on Saturday.”
He looked alarmed, then made a wry face and shook his head. “I know,” she said. “But it helped me a lot.” She smiled at him. “I know you’re kind of a shy person but I just thought I should say I consider you a friend, and I don’t have a lot of friends in this town, and it means a lot, okay?”
He looked totally dumbfounded by that, and stared at her as if she’d said something truly astonishing. Angie had considered this beforehand, had thought he might be alarmed by it, so this didn’t take her totally by surprise.
“I don’t need anything else from you,” she said, “I’m not asking you to do more than you have. I just thought I’d tell you that. I wanted you to know. That’s all.”
He looked at her like he was investigating her. He was different, out here, she noticed; in neutral territory, or possibly his territory, he didn’t look like he was ready to flee. He looked bigger, more confident, less tense. She really, really hadn’t realized before how big he was; he was at least six feet tall, and had shoulders like a football player.
“I also figure I ought to tell you that,” she said, and it was hard to say the next bit. “That they were right. I am– a lesbian. A dyke. So uh. I’m not– trying to hit on you. You know?”
He tilted his head a little, like the dinosaur in Jurassic Park, like he was hunting, but he didn’t come closer. He looked like he was considering it.
“So uh,” she made herself go on, “it’s okay if you think that’s gross and don’t want to come around anymore. I’m— I’m used to that. Kind of thing. I just. I wanted to tell you because I’m sick of lying.”
Alarm crossed his features briefly, wide-eyed alarm, and then he made a face and stepped closer. His mouth moved, like he wanted to talk. She knew he could, now. “Angie,” he said, and it was a hoarse croak, no real voice. He leaned in and she stared at him in shock– he’d said her name. He pointed at his chest, put his right hand against it, tapped twice, and said, “Faggot,” and his face twisted up a little.
“Oh,” she said, and before she could think better of it she leaned forward and threw her arms around him and hugged him. “Oh James! Oh, James.” That would be why he was so upset. If people had treated him like that. She remembered his hands shaking.
He put his right arm around her; he was tense, stiff as a board, but didn’t push her away.
“Angie,” he croaked again. She leaned her head against his shoulder and hung on. He was thinner than he looked, her arms fit around his waist easily. After a moment he awkwardly petted her hair, and she wondered when the last time was that somebody had touched him.
Not like a lot of people touched her anymore.
She let go of him and stepped back to look up at him. “So,” she said, “you too, huh?”
His mouth pulled sideways and he shrugged, then nodded slightly.
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