Enjoy this Christmas drabble (a fic I wrote that actually stayed below 1000 words! This could be considered a small Christmas miracle!) and have a Wonderful, Happy, Merry Christmas!

Of Importance

I'm dreaming tonight of a place I love
Even more than I usually do
And although I know it's a long road back
I promise you . . .

When the Rogue Avengers finally got their first real clue that maybe, just maybe, they'd been wrong, it wasn't the result of a trial finding them guilty and giving them severe sentences. There wasn't any heartrending, gut-wrenching testimony that made them rethink things, and it wasn't a brutal ambush by an anguished survivor or family member that got through to them.

All those things happened, of course, but none of it made any actual difference. Not a single member of Steve Rogers' team felt anything but justified in their actions, despite the overwhelming amount of proof and evidence that showed otherwise. It was shocking and frightening to the vast majority of the public to see such stubborn, blind, willful self-righteousness, but even being pelted with eggs, fruit, and a remarkable array of vegetables when they went out in public didn't make a dent in the group's dogged refusal to be wrong.

So what tipped the scales, you ask?

Well, it was something so insignificant, most people wouldn't have noticed, or considered important.

One day about a month after the pardons had been forced through and the terms for house arrest had been set — and four days before Christmas, with one of Tony's favorite songs playing unobtrusively overhead, the title shocking Steve into actual silence when he'd found out — the Rogues were going back to their floor from their mandatory training session at the gym. Per Steve's orders, they were in full costume and weaponry, as it only made sense to train as if they were really fighting. Bruce was the exception, since he didn't transform unless the Hulk was actually needed, but he still attended the training sessions in case anyone ended up needing a medic for accidental injuries. It was mid-evening on Friday, a time the building was typically empty, when the elevator stopped several floors early. Surprised, Steve automatically took a protective stance in front of the doors, assuming it was a security breach, only to blink when he was met by the sight of Peter Parker, Tony's personal intern (and massive pain in the ass for the Rogues, whom he utterly despised, to their confusion and more than a few hurt feelings), and his best friend, a boy whose name Steve didn't know.

But he did know that the kid — both of them, actually — was extremely excited, even awestruck, about superheroes, as he'd witnessed a few occasions of stuttering and the boy dropping things when Rhodes and Vision and that van Dyne woman had been present. Garbled sentences about action figures had also been overheard, too, though they made no sense to Steve.

So he was expecting a gasp of recognition and a burst of enthusiastic babbling when the boy recognized them . . . especially Bruce, he grudgingly admitted. Both kids were science geeks and Bruce was a hugely important person in that area, even though Steven didn't understand the attraction.

Instead, to his bewilderment, they both simply blinked back at him before Peter turned away.

"Come on; there's a testing room I don't think you've seen yet on this floor," he said to his friend, who nodded and followed Peter as he walked away, to the group's collective confusion.

But they all heard the next words.

"Who was that?" Peter's best friend and frequent visitor asked, sounding genuinely puzzled . . . and Steve's heart stopped.

Who was that?

They were the Avengers! They were in the Avengers Compound, all of them wearing their full costumes and armed with their traditional, highly recognizable weapons!

And this child had the audacity to ask who they were?!

"Nobody," Peter replied calmly. "They aren't anyone."

"Oh," his friend replied blandly, only to immediately perk up. "Hey, do you think we can talk to Dr. Cho later? I had a thought about our macro-biology project."

They undoubtedly kept talking, but Steve heard none of it. He was simply unable to process the fact that Peter Parker, who knew perfectly well who they were, had just told his friend that the Avengers were nobody.

And his friend, who Steve also knew damn good and well had recognized them, had gone along with it.

The Avengers, Earth's Heroes, had just been completely and utterly dismissed as inconsequential by a pair of teenagers.

Behind him, Sam quietly choked on nothing and Clint was growling something unintelligible under his breath. But it was Bruce who forced them to face the ugly truth they'd ignored for so very long.

"What have we become?" he asked, looking so disheartened that Steve's heart ached even as his own pride shuddered under the brutal honesty of the question.

There was no answer.

I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams . . .

~~~
fin