Casualty #6 – Steve Rogers
Steve Rogers threw punch after punch into the bag in front of him. It wouldn't take much more for it to break, he knew, but it seemed to be the only way he could keep his temper in check. Darcy's video had touched a nerve. It had thrown him for a loop like almost nothing else had since he woke up to find himself so far away from his own time. So much of the world had changed while he remained locked in ice, but it wasn't the buildings or the cars or the technology that threw him. He couldn't understand why so many people seemed to think he should be shocked by computers or fancier cars or whatever advances in the various forms of technology. Jules Verne predicted a lot of these things in his stories, and Steve had devoured those tales as a kid. His health problems meant he spent more time idle than most of the boys, and books were a way for him to live out adventures he simply could not manage physically. The fact that the modern world finally caught up to the fictional was not really all that surprising.
What threw him were the people – the people he lost in particular, but also the way people behaved. They were more open about things…open to the point of being vulgar. Subtly and manners had given way to what Pepper called a 'shock value'. They left nothing to the imagination and thought themselves better because of it. He wasn't sure he agreed or approved.
Darcy went out of her way to make the modern world a little less crass.
She took control of movie nights after watching him grow more and more uncomfortable with the first two. From then on they progressed slowly from his favorites as a boy, now considered classics, through the decades. By the time they finally reached the original movies, he was much more comfortable with some of the overtness even if he still preferred the subtle suggestions of earlier films. Darcy admitted she preferred them as well because while Hollywood might be good, they had nothing on her imagination and she hated them stealing the opportunity from her.
Her understanding had relaxed something inside of him, a tenseness he never realized he was carrying until he found someone who saw part of the world the way he did. It meant a lot to him, especially when she got into a resounding argument with Tony over the special effects of the past versus the computer-generated animation of the present. Her stance on the older being better for drawing on the imagination as opposed to the new stuff spelling everything out showed him a connection to this new time, this new era that he had never expected.
And he had never said thank you...not for that connection…not for that sense of belonging. One final punch and the bag flew across the room.
"Okay, soldier," he told himself. "It's time to make this right."
