6. Always the Good Guys
Dear Bucky,
It's always the good guys who take the hit for the team: the guys who go running in, doing something stupid when they should just stay back. But if they hung back, then they wouldn't be the true heroes, would they. They wouldn't take the hit and inspire the rest of us to swallow our pride. They wouldn't inspire us to put our lives on the line in the same way. I'm not being ridiculous, Buck, I'm being honest. If you hadn't fallen down that mountain, I don't know that we would have ended up going after Schmidt when we did, or how we did. I wouldn't have felt like I had nothing left to lose, that's for sure.
We lost Phil. We nearly lost the whole helicarrier and crew too, all because we let Loki play us. I feel especially responsible. I let Tony get to me, too; SHIELD wanted the cube not just because Loki means to overtake the earth, but so they could make weapons with it. Again, all I can see is that blue blast of light that took my best friend, and the closest thing to a brother I'll ever have, away from me. Fury said it was to protect the earth from visitors from another realm. All I can see is a person hoping to harness power before someone else does. It kills me to admit that Tony was right, especially when he told me that everything that made me special came out of a bottle.
Part of me worries that he's right, and I let it get to me; when it did, we lost Phil and some other good men and women, people who probably believed in SHIELD and that they were working for the greater good. In that moment I was just Steve again, the skinny kid from Brooklyn. You once told me, very sarcastically mind you, that I had nothing to prove. I never answered you, but I think it's because I was scared to admit you were right. I had everything to prove, and I still do, especially if Howard Stark's son thinks my worth only lies in what was pumped into me.
That stings a lot, so I have to prove to myself that Tony's wrong about me. That Phil didn't die for nothing. That as a team, we are more than just a group of misfits randomly pulled together as a last-ditch effort to save humanity. We're going after Loki, and we're going to defeat him. I didn't take on Schmidt, or survive in ice for seventy years, to let another power-hungry crazy man with aspirations of world domination succeed. Not on my watch.
Maybe it's stupid, but don't forget: you took all the stupid with you.
Natasha, Tony, Clint and I are heading to New York. I can only hope Thor and Bruce meet us there. It would be a mismatched fight to begin with, but those two at least help bolster us a bit more in terms of power. And then again, you know me. I love an unfair fight. I could do this all day. So if this is finally going to be the end of me, at least there will be this letter as a record that I went down fighting, avenging the human race, and one truly good guy named Phil.
I'll get him on the ropes,
Steve