"His target is everywhere," Zola says, with a smile.
This happens away from the public's knowledge. Away from Captain America's. Of course it does. The world is too perfect, except, you know, the death - the "slaughtering each other in droves," if you will. People don't ever find out about Zola saying that. Or, well, they shouldn't. That's the plan.
The world didn't know that. They didn't know the circumstances of Captain America's death. They didn't know that they owed him their and their children's and family's lives.
Very few even knew that he died - they thought he went AWOL or missing, not that he was KIA. (Presumably - the public doesn't find out that not even the SSR knows what happened to him.) After a while, everyone assumed he was dead.
Nobody had heard from him in a while - and that guy in the Pacific Theater? A fake. The guy out in Vietnam? A fake.
The way Howard Stark talked about him? Dead.
For a long few years after Captain America's "death", people in the allied countries saluted him, claimed they knew him - even if the one doing the claiming was never in Europe, and was instead in Japan, or American waters or wasn't even American at all - and loved him.
Obviously, the Russians didn't. Well, two of them did. (The Winter Soldier and Natalia.) Then one of them. (Natalia.) Then, and only then (after the only two that were rooting for the guy were brain washed and mind fucked to the point of no return), not a one Russian praised Captain America.
Then, other, more important, things came about. Captain America was still an icon, but people lost interest in him.
He became a ghost.
Which is ironic, considering.
The Commandos, Peggy, Howard, Phillips, all of them, they still loved Captain America (not that Phillips would admit to it), but they knew more of the truth than anyone else.
To the public, Captain America died/went missing in the war, and didn't get to be alive/didn't stay long to see his good work. He didn't get to actually punch actual Hitler in the actual jaw.
To the people who knew what really happened, it went something much more like this:
Captain America gets on the plane that has explosives that will land on the eastern coast of North America.
The literal red-headed bastard dies - they don't know how or if it even happened - and Captain America takes control of the plane. Captain America is no pilot, so he's in deep shit.
Captain America says "it's my choice" and kills himself to save the world. Or America, and the rest of the world by extension/default, as HYDRA, and Nazis by extension, would have such a power force at their command.
It's terrible, really, because in his last moments, he knew he was going to die. He knew it.
He knew it and he did it anyway.
What can be said about a guy who does that?
Nothing. There are not enough words in any given language to even remotely describe him.
Captain America, to the public, was a big, huge, blond, very important part of the war. He was beneficial to the allies winning. He was the sole reason, to some. To others, he was a prop.
Captain America, to those who knew the truth, was a much better man than any of them could hope to be. (He gave his life to save everyone else's. He was planning a life as he did it. Howard Stark says that Cap was consciously pushing down the yoke - that he was the only one who possibly even could.)
Then, flash forward seventy years and the deaths of all but one of the aforementioned.
Captain America is nothing.
This America has Iron Man. They don't need an old-fashioned Army man.
So, Captain America doesn't try. The world doesn't even know he was found, much less found ALIVE, all caps, pun not intended. There's no point in trying to be favored in a world where you have been dead for about sixty years, legally. With a certificate. A signed certificate, dating about ten years after he went down.
If that isn't a killjoy, then he's going to eat his shield, happily.
Captain America doesn't cry, doesn't have a freak out and doesn't let his emotions show at all. He's strong-willed, yes, and all he's doing is trying not to show any emotion whatsoever. He knows that if he does, if he lets even a crack leak, the whole dam will break and he will go berserk.
Then, Fury shows up. Fury respects him - he knows the truth - but he's there "with a mission", "trying to save" the world.
As far as Captain America goes, the world doesn't need saving. Not this world, not with every little thing that it has now that complicates war in ways he'll never understand.
Fury claims it does, though, and makes him help.
There's something about Loki that sets his teeth on edge more than anything or anyone else ever has, including, but not limited to, technology and Tony Stark.
There's something about the whole team, the entirety of the Avengers, that makes him sick.
Cap's a strategist. He sees where this could go - he understands they can grow to be friends, to be family, but he only sees it ending with one of them dyeing, and being alone at their own funeral, because the rest of them are too drunk or too immersed in training to go. He can only see devestation.
They - the Avengers, though somewhere deep, deep in the part of his "never speak the words" brain-corner, he wishes it was the Commandoes - save the world. From aliens. An alien army. Lead by a Norse god.
Captain America really can't believe his life, sometimes.
Tony - he has to remind himself sometimes, that Tony is not Howard; Tony is more aggressive than Howard was, not to mention not-at-all subtle about his in-your-face's - invites him to stay at the big, ugly tower.
He turns Tony down. The face Tony makes doesn't make him feel any better or any worse, but Captain America's not going to stay in the house - tower - of Howard Stark's son if it killed him.
At least, not yet.
He might, in the future - and wow, what a phrase - stay with Tony, but only if he can't handle being alone anymore.
He's been alone a lot lately, though, so it probably won't happen. He goes on a trip, because he knows Fury isn't keeping tabs on him and won't be for a while, and he just wants to - definitely not brood - think about things in the peace of the not-bugged-everywhere-even-the-toilet-are-you-fucking-kidding-me world. Or, North America, really, not the whole world. How much of it he can see before SHIELD drags him back, well, that's the question.
He doesn't get very far, at least, not by his standards. He makes it to Florida - he'd always wanted to go to the beaches there, ever since he was Steve Rogers, tiny asthmatic who was too goddamned brave! - before an agent, dressed as a burn-out surfer dude, tells him it's time to re-pack his shit and go home, duuuuuude.
Home, as in New York. Right.
He stayed there a while, to appease the World Security Council, the four people he'd heard so little about. Apparently, they were more powerful than Fury - they were his boss, maybe? - and they thought they owned him.
There was an apartment, in Brooklyn, that he'd wanted at first, but didn't anymore, not after the battle of Manhattan, because it was time to get with the times and leave the past in the past and all that stupid apartment did was remind him he was not in the 1930's, because it's too clean and too new for it to be legitimately from then.
In the time he stayed in New York, Fury sent him and Natasha on missions - he didn't know where Clint was, honestly, but didn't bother to ask - and he started to detach himself from his past and attach himself to the future - which was now the present.
He cut his hair. He started to wear clothes that didn't resemble most people's grandfather's. He went to Steak & Shake's, a place he'd been too poor to ever eat at, and paid the outrageous bill himself. He watched a woman do the same thing, and thought of how the past would've had a heart attack and then died right after at the show of independency - even more so because she was wearing pants and her hair was short and messy.
Then, he moved to DC, just to spite the WSC and Fury, but Fury didn't really seem to mind. It had occurred to him, as he moved his marshmallow bed into a new apartment, that Fury should want to have him on base and not somewhere in the city.
Though, Captain America stayed there and an agent stayed in the room across the hall.
Captain America wasn't stupid - he acted ignorant of the agent's being an agent to be nice. She couldn't be fired or be kicked into a desk job if he pretended that he was the moron everyone seemed to think he was.
He watched on the TV in the new apartment as Tony "died." He'd watched as the mansion he might've stayed at had he accepted had the shit bombed out of it.
He watched as Thor did stuff in London, stuff he didn't understand.
He called Clint - "Hey, you've reached Hawkeye. Obviously, I gave you this number, so you know what I do for a living. Let's hope nobody dies. I might call you back... Unless you're Tony Stark, then you can fuck off."
Clint must not like Tony, he thinks. Actually, he thinks, I wonder what Tony said this time, but he can't just be that smart, right?
He left a voicemail - "Clint, do you know what's going on with Thor? I can't get ahold of Tony or Bruce and Natasha's ignoring me... Call this number back, it's my non-bugged phone number. I'm in DC. Be safe, I guess... bye."
Natasha lied.
He's surprised that he's surprised, actually.
There are more helicarriers. Three more, to be exact. Steve's disgusted. Captain America agrees.
The lines between good and bad blur, then - they used to be so easy to see.
America, good. Europe, specifically Germany, bad. Very, very bad.
Segregation? Not enjoyable for either side, not really, but tolerable, apparently. Antisemitism? So extremely bad it was brown, crumpled and laughing at death.
Cap overhears that Insight, the stupid ass helicarriers, the line-blurring-inducing actions of SHIELD, is stalled.
He's relieved.
He's actually relieved.
He's an idiot.
"Hey, Cap, I'm with Bruce right now, and we're not gonna talk for a while, I think. Sorry you missed the call. I heard that Tony died, but, like, didn't, ya know? As for Thor... I haven't heard anything. And, yeah, Tash's like that. Get used to it.
"No, Bruce, I'm trying to-"
"Steve, hi, uh... check on Tony, please. For Clint and I. We'd both appreciate it. And be careful... Something doesn't feel right about this."
When Steve sees that he missed the call, he frowns and nearly throws the phone through the nearest brick or cement wall.
Wait. Clint's with Bruce. Bruce was with Tony last time he checked. Cap calls Tony and gets the other man's voicemail.
Don't heroes know how to answer their goddamn cellphones?! (He doesn't count - he's ninety.)
"So, Mister Stark-" the interviewer, an older man with dark blonde hair that falls into his eyes, starts.
"Call me Tony," says the man himself. "'Mister Stark' makes me feel older than Cap," he laughs.
"Speaking of, this is your first interview since the Battle, nearly two years ago. What's up with that?"
"I had some business to attend to." Tony shrugs, like it's no big deal, like he doesn't know something and sure isn't keeping it from everyone. "Hung out with Hulk, sassed Hawkeye, the works. Cap, if you're being a good leader, interested in team support, you'll be watching, and you should come over for some drinks soon."
He sends a smile to camera and goes on with the interview, smiling the whole time.
"Capsicle - shit, no, Steve, see how serious I am? You need to come the fuck over. You're not safe. I'm serious. I'm trying to get Clint out, but it's taking a while. Find out if we can trust Nat, okay? And, seriously, come over asap - that means 'as soon as possible,' by the way."
"Steve, I'm not fucking around here. You're not safe!"
"Tony, I'll be fine. I'm a big boy, I can handle it."
"Not alone! Goddamit, Steve, this is bigger than you, or me, or Thor, or all of us smushed into one super-hot-superhero puppy pile, cuddle puddle!"
Then, Fury started to pull away. The other man hadn't been exactly close in the first place, but still. He'd distanced himself even further, for unknown reasons. It was, what?, tripping Natasha out.
He met a guy named Sam, who worked at the VA and thought his morning run is cool. Or surprising, he's not real sure. He used to be so good at reading people...
And then, Fury came to his apartment and lied and told him to trust no one and got himself shot and bled out on his carpet whilst Cap ran after the guy who'd dare shoot Nicholas J. Fury, director of SHIELD, and all around, all-seeing, badass who was dying on his fucking carpet.
Turns out, he knows the guy.
Turns out, the guy who he knows has a metal arm.
Turns out, the guy who he knows - that has a metal arm - is working for HYDRA, the thing that Cap had spent years trying desperately to destroy.
He doesn't find this out until later, of course, but still.
Captain America's life is awesome. It really, really is.
On top of all of that - Director Fury dying and the guy who he will find out that he knows catching his shield - HYDRA is SHIELD and SHIELD is HYDRA.
Life is good.
The sun is out a lot and there's little clouds, meaning lots of sun.
Twenty-thousand plus people are going to die if he doesn't save them. (Tony and Bruce were part of that amount - he wasn't sure about the Fantastic Four and X-Men being on that list. He's sure they are. They're threats to HYDRA. He didn't know where Clint was or where anyone was because they were cut off and wanted to be killed by people he'd saved and being hunted by their own people oh god oh god oh god.)
He's got a new friend.
An old friend wants to murder, actually kill, him. Because he's brainwashed. That's nothing, though.
Maria Hill isn't as bitchy as he thought.
His whole world is falling and crumbling down around him and on his shoulders, heavy like the now non-existent Iron Man suit.
(That reminds him - he needs to call Clint back, if he can even reach the other man.)
Life is goooooooood.
It really is.
He figures he can trust Natasha - she seems just as devastated.
Cap's life is a blur from there, just him and Natasha and the weight of several million people's lives. And Sam, too. And Bucky. And SHIE- HYDRA. (Wow, he thinks, that really shouldn't be the hardest thing to get used to.)
He and Natasha pretend to be engaged, and walk-run away from everything that the both of them had known since after being woken up/being rescued from the KGB.
There's the whole Camp Lehigh thing and Zola and the bombs and the memories and the pain and the embarrassment and the fucking really's and all of that.
He goes to Sam. They're going somewhere when they're attacked, on the highway, with lots of innocents around. He gets separated - he's almost shot so many times that it's just going over his head like he's underwater.
Bucky.
Bucky.
Bucky.
Bucky is with HYDRA.
Bucky!
SHIELD - no, HYDRA, oh my go- - arrests him (it's Rumlow, that bastard) and it's on live television, which he doesn't understand. They almost shoot him in the head, in front of people, on television.
Cap just feels numb.
"Can we even confirm that is Captain America?" A host asks as a picture of Captain America being detained, with a gun to his head, is shown on the television. "Most polls say that people don't believe that's really, truely him."
Tony, Clint and Bruce are all in states of either slack-jaw or clench-jaw, which is always the worst case senario for the Avengers.
"How the fuck did we let this happen?" Clint asks eventually.
Bruce just drops his head into his hands and Tony starts pacing and ranting.
Fury's alive! Fury's alive!
Steve had thought that the man was a pain in the ass, but after he'd died... Steve'd wanted him back, wanted him making the shots, because he himself couldn't comprehend how to deal with what was happening.
But, oh my god, Fury's alive and Maria is a saint.
With that euphoria and the depression of Bucky's return, everything that comes after is flash-bang, all leading up to him and Bucky in a helicarrier.
He doesn't regret throwing the shield - he doesn't and he won't.
Cap tells Bucky, after he's gotten into the helicarrier for Maria, that it's the end of the line - because he knows he's going to die, that maybe Bucky will kill him, because Bucky doesn't know any better.
Cap doesn't remember getting to the hospital, not at all, ut he's relieved.
He's alive. Bucky didn't kill him. Bucky's still in there.
He can make it.
Tony, with Clint and Bruce rushing on his tail, comes barging in when Steve's semi-awake and only half lucid, and also in a lot of pain.
"You jackass," Tony says upon entering, but it's said affectionately, and Steve doesn't mind.
"Steve," Bruce says, looking like he was Dumpty, cracked into shards, and completely broken.
Clint clenches his jaw, his eyes searching. Not a man of words, no siree.
"Hey," Cap rasps. "Gu-guess-s what?"
Tony comes forward, reaching for the cup of water at his bedside. "What," he asks, placatingly.
"Bruc-ce. You're t-he first-t to call me Ste-ve."
Clint takes a ste forward, too, bending down to hear better. "What do you mean, 'first'?"
He swallows. "To c-call me Steve, since I wo-k-ke up."
Bruce's eyes flash green like a 'go' light. Clint rushes to get him out, but he looks just as pissed.
"Guess what, Steve?" Tony asks, his voice tight. "I know someone who'd love to call you anything you wanted, just to make you comfortable. How's that sound, man?"
Steve grins shakily. Finally.