If you don't already know what this is about, well, 1) I envy you and 2) this fic won't mean much to you. If you do, read on. (Also, if you want to argue with me that either MCU or comics HYDRA =/= Nazis, please hit the back button now, or maybe read the articles I linked in the end notes on AO3 and still don't argue with me because I'm sure we both have better things to do.)
"What the fuck is this?"
Everyone jumps at the sound of Steve's furious voice as he storms into the common room (everyone except Natasha, anyway, who just raises one eyebrow, but that's basically the same thing for her—and Thor, who left to visit Jane yesterday, and Tony is suddenly wondering if he should be jealous or sympathetic that Thor's going to miss…whatever's going on here). Tony pulls his feet off the coffee table and sits up, definitely not because he nearly just fell off the couch. "What, what the fuck is what?"
Steve stalks over and drops a StarkPad on the table; it clatters loudly, and from Steve's body language, Tony's honestly kind of impressed the thing isn't already broken. "This steaming pile of horseshit pretending to be journalism."
"You're, uh, not really narrowing it down much," Bruce says.
"I'm gonna share this with the rest of the class, if that's—?" At Steve's terse nod, Tony reaches for the pad and sweeps his hand over it, transferring the display to the widescreen where everyone can see. It's an article off some website, and it's…oh. Oh.
"Okay," Tony says, "I just want to be sure I'm not going crazier, everyone else is seeing this, right?"
"Oh, I'm not touching that," Natasha murmurs.
Steve is nearly vibrating with tension at this point. "Assuming you mean these assholes calling Captain fucking America a goddamn Nazi, then I sure as shit see it."
"Damn, Cap," Clint says admiringly, "I was starting to think you didn't even know any of those words."
Steve's glare could probably melt solid vibranium. "Shut up and read the fucking article." (Tony, who was thinking pretty much the same thing as Clint but who is not actually in trouble right now because of his big mouth and would like to keep it that way, thank you very much, says nothing and reads the fucking article.)
Captain America: Secret Agent for Hydra?
The Enquirer has uncovered evidence of a shocking deception: Captain America, everyone's favorite patriotic supersoldier, might be a spy for the shadowy terrorist organization known only as HYDRA—and he might have been one of them from the beginning. The even more shocking twist: he may have been recruited by his own mother.
Our sources—kept confidential for their protection—didn't know Sarah Rogers (birth date unknown; died 1936), but their great-grandparents did, and on their deathbeds they passed along a disturbing family secret. Now that Captain America has miraculously returned from his supposed death, these citizens have courageously come forward to share their story. They say that Ms. Rogers was approached by HYDRA operatives and brought into the fold years before her son ever became Captain America. She had already passed away by the time Project Rebirth turned Steve Rogers into a supersoldier, but surely her influence lingered.
Publicly, of course, Rogers fought to destroy the strange organization that originally grew out of Hitler's fascination with the occult—but what if his loyalties have always lain elsewhere? Perhaps Captain America was secretly working for these enemies of freedom all along. Now he is back, immediately granted the public's trust thanks to his place in history and his seeming heroics during WWII, which few now living can corroborate—and despite his involvement in recent events that devastated the Potomac area of Washington, DC. Instead of regaining an old protector, has America in fact accepted a snake into its bosom?
The article keeps going, but Tony can tell from glancing at the rest that it's more of the same—no actual evidence, just a lot of speculation and insinuations, to the point that it might not even be actionable to somebody without Tony Stark's lawyers.
"Wow," Clint says. "I gotta say, I did not see that one coming."
"To be completely fair," Tony says, "they don't actually say Nazi, just HYDRA."
Oh look, now Steve's glaring at Tony. Well, it was nice while it lasted. "Goddamn close enough. They're both fascists, the Nazis were just a lot more public about it so they got infamous. And unlike any of you, I've actually fought both, so believe me when I say that anyone who really wants to make that argument is full of shit. Schmidt broke with the Nazis in the first place because he decided Hitler wasn't ambitious enough, for fuck's sake."
"Okay, also fair," Tony says. "But I'll be honest, I'm a little surprised this is your rage-button issue—I mean, I don't blame you exactly, but it's a hitpiece in a tabloid, not, I don't know, the president coming out as an anti-vaxxer or something. Usually I'm the one worrying about my public image. No, wait, that's mostly Pepper, and even she doesn't really sweat what the tabloids say about me."
Steve looks at him like he's an idiot, which isn't much of an improvement. "That's not the point. It's not—this isn't about me. Steve Rogers is just a mouthy kid from Brooklyn and it doesn't matter what anybody thinks about him. But Captain America matters, the symbol matters, and that's what this is tarnishing." He glances around, apparently doesn't see enough comprehension on their faces, and exhales sharply. "Okay, look, the person I used to be, HYDRA and the Nazis probably would've stuck me in with the other undesirables because I was a sick, scrawny piece of shit. And then Project Rebirth came along and made Captain America this specimen of Aryan perfection—"
"Brag much?" Clint says under his breath, and Natasha nudges him.
"I was already blond and blue-eyed, and then the serum made me a damn superman. What else d'you wanna call it? Hitler was drooling after the serum. He would've pumped half his army full of it if he had the chance, and sure, they wouldn't have started as Irish immigrants, but you can bet most of them would've looked a hell of lot like me—and yes, he would've held them up as examples of Aryan superiority. I'm not bragging, I'm trying to explain why the symbol fucking matters."
"Sorry," Clint says. "I'm not trying to be an asshole, honestly, just…making a bad attempt at breaking the tension a little. Keep going."
"You were a classic Aryan Übermensch created explicitly to take out Hitler," Natasha says.
"Exactly. Yes. Thank you. I'm glad someone is paying attention." Steve starts pacing, and Tony privately wonders if Steve's sarcasm only comes out when he's this mad. "It wasn't just some 'rah rah, go America, we're the best' cheerleading thing, either—well, it was for a while, because Senator Brandt didn't want to use me for anything else and he mostly thought I was a good PR stunt, but that was never…that wasn't what Erskine wanted, or what Howard wanted, or what I wanted once I had some time to think about it. The point was taking Hitler's ideal, a symbol of hate and bigotry, and using it against him. Making it stand for something better. Maybe you can't see it anymore, but that mattered."
"The symbol's not just about America to you, is it?" Bruce asks.
"No." Steve huffs out a short, unhappy laugh. "God, no. I love my country, don't get me wrong, but it's never been about that for me. Especially now, Captain America has to stand for—hope, and equality, and doing the right thing when it's hard, and helping people, and—everything we're supposed to be but aren't, and people don't get that. I mean, hell, you know how much some of the really right-wing pundits wanted to get soundbites from me, they figured I was a relic who would pop out the stuff they wanted to hear."
"'Oh my stars and garters,'" Tony says in a half-assed imitation of Steve's voice, "'what is this country coming to, back in my day men were men and women knew their place, and now there's brown people everywhere who can't even speak American and don't even get me started about the gays just gaying up the whole place with their gay lifestyles instead of staying in the closet where decent folk don't have to think about them—'"
"Yeah," Steve says, and now he just looks tired. "Yeah, something like that. I've never stood for any of that shit, and I'm sure as hell not going to let anybody pretend Captain America stands for it either. That's not—I won't give more power to that kind of hatefulness. If people want to be bigots, fine, that's on them, but they do not get to use this symbol to spread and validate their hate."
"Nobody's actually gonna believe you're a Nazi, though," Clint says. "I mean…that's just dumb. You're in the history books, fighting Nazis. If you were a Nazi then, you would've just joined them. And HYDRA, that's even dumber. Is everybody forgetting they tried to kill you like five minutes ago?"
"Seriously though," Tony says, "much as I hate to say this, Legolas is right. It's a publicity stunt, nobody will actually believe it, it'll go away. Nobody believes the tabloids anyway."
"That's not the point," Steve says again, heavily. "The suggestion's out there now. You know, that maybe even Captain America isn't what he says he is, even he thinks fascism and oppression aren't that bad. And you know that HYDRA and Nazis didn't go away, right? They're not—boogeymen who look like Hitler and Schmidt. They evolved. And now they're going to see this, the skinheads and neo-Nazis and the alt-right or whatever else they're calling themselves these days, everybody who thinks fucking 'white genocide' is a thing, and they're going to think, 'hey, maybe Captain America actually agrees with me. He can't say it because the PC police and the social justice warriors will go after him, but secretly even he knows I was right all along.' And sure, most of these people aren't going to go out and shoot up a church of black people or burn down a synagogue or beat somebody up for wearing a turban, but they'll be that little bit more sure of themselves, that little bit more effective at infecting other people with their bullshit, and eventually somebody will get hurt, all because a tabloid thought it was worth some cheap publicity to give these people Captain America as a weapon."
"…oh," Clint says. Tony can't really add anything to that. (Natasha doesn't look surprised, and Bruce is grimacing, because…yeah, okay, both of them have probably seen and experienced something like this themselves.)
"And," Steve says, "and, it's not just them, the ones who actually call themselves Nazis, it's all the other people who would probably deck you for calling them fascists or bigots but who agree with some of that shit anyway—you know, 'I'm not racist but crime sure seems to be a bigger problem in minority populations,' 'I don't hate gay people but they shouldn't throw it in everyone's faces,' 'I'm not sexist but don't you think she was kind of asking for it when she decided to dress like that,' whatever. If they respect Captain America then that's great, I can use that, maybe get a few people to examine their prejudices, but now with this, how many of them are going to decide there's no reason to bother trying, because Captain America's a hypocrite just like everybody else who preaches about not treating other people like shit?"
"That's not your fault, Steve," Natasha says.
He sighs. "Yeah, maybe. But I carry the symbol, so I'm responsible for trying to use it for something good, and I can't help thinking that means I'm still responsible if assholes try to hijack it and I don't stop them. And this is—this is going to hurt kids. I keep getting these letters—like, there's this one girl, Megan, she's 15 and practically everybody in her life treats her like shit because she's transgender, and she's been collecting Captain America stuff since she was little. She told me sometimes that's what keeps her going, what keeps her alive, just the idea of Captain America backing up the little guy and standing up to bullies, and she'd never felt more hope than the day she realized not only was I still alive and fighting, I actually cared about people like her. She needs this symbol and somebody decided it was okay to—to taint that, just to make a quick buck."
"You could visit her school," Bruce suggests.
"I already have," Steve says, "her and a few others," because of course he has. "But I can't do that for every single person who needs some hope—they don't all write me letters, I wouldn't even be able to find all of them—and now it's going to be twice as hard anyway. And maybe some struggling kid having a really dark day will need that extra little bit of hope and won't get it because it's been poisoned with doubt, and…maybe that's not my fault either, but it's…it's still mine." He finally sits on the couch, shoulders slumped. "The worst thing is, I don't think there's much I can really do about it. I ignore it, people start speculating that it's true. I make a statement, I'm drawing attention and giving it a little more authority just by responding. I go after this rag for libel, well, then I'm definitely hiding something, right? Plus I'm a public figure and a historical figure, and they didn't outright state anything, so I don't know if I'd even have a case." He looks so defeated and sad that Tony wants to fix the problem right now, somehow, but Natasha beats him to it.
"You know," she says, "lies are powerful, but that doesn't automatically put you on the defensive. A lot of it's framing and presentation, regardless of how much or how little truth is involved. With something like this, how you respond might be more important than what you actually say."
"Yeah," Tony says, perking up. "My PR division can help—"
"Uh, I don't think it's actually going to help if people think he needs an entire PR division to fight the idea that he's a Nazi," Clint says.
"No, come on, this isn't my first rodeo or even, like, my fifth. Different situations need different handling. Pepper's good at that stuff. We don't have to turn this into slick press releases and official spokespeople and whatever. Loads of other ways to manage public opinion."
Steve's expression twists. "I don't…I don't want to manage people. I just…want to keep Captain America from being used to hurt anybody."
"Nothing wrong with a little manipulation in a good cause," Natasha says. "The things you want people to know, those aren't any less true just because you take a little extra time to figure out the best way to present them. It's a matter of emphasis, too—get people to focus on who you are, not what you aren't."
"Okay, yeah, I'm having some brilliant ideas," Tony says. "First thing, don't actually respond to this shitty excuse for an article, but start making related statements without mentioning it. Write an op-ed about what Captain America means to you, for one thing. All that stuff you just told us? Tell everybody that, straight up. You know what, actually, a Reddit AMA could be perfect, we can set that up too, get lots of questions from the public, you can probably talk about the article after all without being the one to bring it up because I guarantee somebody's going to ask. And then you want to show people you mean what you say. You need people to know you're not a Nazi, okay, I can hold a fundraiser for the Holocaust Museum and you can publicly present the check or something. Or like, you need to show you're not anti-immigrant, same thing but with a refugee organization, or—I don't know, maybe something more hands-on, I'm sure Pepper will have ideas. Same thing with all the other stuff. Donate to GLAAD, make an 'It Gets Better' video, lots of ways to show you're not what the awful people want to make you. We can set you up on social media, too, get you retweeting other people saying the kinds of things you really believe. Build something with Habitat for Humanity maybe, they'd love you. Volunteer with the Special Olympics. Loads of possibilities."
"I'm not gonna help people just for attention," Steve objects. "That's exactly the kind of hypocrite I don't want to be."
"It's not fake if it's something you actually care about," Bruce says. "Not if you actually do the work."
"Really though," Tony says. "Make a list of some causes that are important to you and we'll start brainstorming the best ways to hook you up. People get helped and you make sure Captain America still means what it should, all while flipping off Nazis in the most wholesome way imaginable. Win-win."
"Bouncing around a bunch of different places for publicity isn't gonna help anybody," Steve says, but at least he looks a little more thoughtful now instead of crestfallen.
"No, see, that's why you start with a long list of whatever you can think of," Tony says, "and then we'll narrow it down and figure out where you can do the most good. Like, actual good, not look-pretty-for-the-cameras lip service. Honestly, you've got this. We've got this."
"Okay," Steve says finally, and stands, giving them all a wan smile. "Thanks. I'll…get started on that soon. First I think I need to destroy a few punching bags."
"You break it, you bought it!" Tony calls after him, and Steve waves without looking back as he leaves the room.
Natasha leans forward as soon as Steve is out of earshot. "We're all good with backing him up on this, right? Not all of us have a good public reputation, but he does—Steve and Captain America both—and he deserves to keep that if he wants to. There are probably things all of us can do that he can't."
"The Hulk's word isn't really good for…anything," Bruce says, "but behind the scenes, sure. I can…I know some people he could talk to. Anybody who meets him will want to say good things about him."
Clint nods. "Yeah, man, I'm on board. Fuck HYDRA."
"And actually I think the Avengers as a group should sue the tabloid," Tony says. "Shows we're backing him up, and I've got good lawyers."
"There is one other thing," Natasha says, her tone measured. "I don't think we should rule out the possibility that the source for this story was somebody from HYDRA to begin with, trying to discredit Captain America."
"Well, shit," Clint says. There's really nothing to add to that, so no one does.
"I don't think it's likely," Natasha adds, "especially because money is a powerful motive on its own, but we can't count it out entirely. I'll do some digging."
"Seriously," Tony says. "We've got some ideas already, let's get some more. Big team brainstorming session, right now, Operation: Say No To Hydra Cap, a.k.a. Steve Should Not Be a Sad Puppy, no idea too outlandish. Hit me."
Title is from, yes, the Lana Del Rey song, which would not be relevant at all except for lines like "money is the anthem of our success," which, hey, very relevant to this conversation! As mentioned earlier, the AO3 version of this fic has a bunch of links to good articles for additional reading on this issue, which I would also link here except, you know. FFN.