Traveling back in time to deliver the stones to their rightful homes hadn't be an easy feat. Time-travel meant seeing the friends of faces that, when he returned home, wouldn't be there standing at his side, ready and eager to clean up the mess that had been made of their home. Time travel meant years of loneliness all over again, not unlike the quiet days on the run as fugitive. Time travel meant coming home with years under his belt and a fatigue for war worse than it had been when he'd left.
So Steve Rogers throws himself into the day-to-day of cleanup on his own while his friends try desperately to rebuild their lives. Occasionally he pauses to glance at the news - a memorial to Tony Stark, a Spider-Kid roaring across New York City, a world slowly stitching itself back together. Steve can't shake that he's a man out of time, both figuratively and literally, as he stands among wreckage and carnage, tries his best to throw himself into the recovery of the people who depend on him to be strong.
So it's easy, when the time comes, to pass on the shield. To hand it to the rightful hands of a man who has America beating in the fire behind his eyes and between his ribs. Sam Wilson may not have felt ready for the responsibility, but Steve knows that the same fire behind his eyes might be fading, guttering out in century-old listlessness - a man with all the responsibility of his name, however tarnished, a man with legend standing behind him, casting the shadow of who his makers meant him to be.
He can't be that man. Not anymore.
He doesn't want to be.
Just as he thinks he'll leave the city, feeling restless and unmoored, he receives an unexpected invitation. Dr. Strange. It's not the person he expected to reach out in the entrails of war, and yet even he cannot resist the call of an ally, however unlikely. There is something great and terrible owed to the man who, from what he heard, could have seen them fail, and fail, and fail all over again in the hopes of finding the answer to the one time they wouldn't.
The New York mansion is unexpected and yet not - the man boasting his money and prowess, an ego that could rival even that of one Tony Stark, and Steve wonders now how the world didn't magically and technologically implode with the two being in close proximity.
He does the polite thing and knocks, but finds that the door creaks open, having been left ajar by some other visitor. It sets him on edge, but that could also be the very nature of the place he's come to visit. He steps inside with all the confidence of a man who has stared down far, far worse than an elegant, eerie old house.
"Dr. Strange?"
Or does he call him Stephen? How do you begin to qualify the lines of professionalism when you travel in space, travel in time, and defeat one of the most powerful, extra-terrestrial beings likely to be known in the universe itself?
Growing up, he'd never believe that this is what his life would have become.
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So Steve Rogers throws himself into the day-to-day of cleanup on his own while his friends try desperately to rebuild their lives. Occasionally he pauses to glance at the news - a memorial to Tony Stark, a Spider-Kid roaring across New York City, a world slowly stitching itself back together. Steve can't shake that he's a man out of time, both figuratively and literally, as he stands among wreckage and carnage, tries his best to throw himself into the recovery of the people who depend on him to be strong.
So it's easy, when the time comes, to pass on the shield. To hand it to the rightful hands of a man who has America beating in the fire behind his eyes and between his ribs. Sam Wilson may not have felt ready for the responsibility, but Steve knows that the same fire behind his eyes might be fading, guttering out in century-old listlessness - a man with all the responsibility of his name, however tarnished, a man with legend standing behind him, casting the shadow of who his makers meant him to be.
He can't be that man. Not anymore.
He doesn't want to be.
Just as he thinks he'll leave the city, feeling restless and unmoored, he receives an unexpected invitation. Dr. Strange. It's not the person he expected to reach out in the entrails of war, and yet even he cannot resist the call of an ally, however unlikely. There is something great and terrible owed to the man who, from what he heard, could have seen them fail, and fail, and fail all over again in the hopes of finding the answer to the one time they wouldn't.
The New York mansion is unexpected and yet not - the man boasting his money and prowess, an ego that could rival even that of one Tony Stark, and Steve wonders now how the world didn't magically and technologically implode with the two being in close proximity.
He does the polite thing and knocks, but finds that the door creaks open, having been left ajar by some other visitor. It sets him on edge, but that could also be the very nature of the place he's come to visit. He steps inside with all the confidence of a man who has stared down far, far worse than an elegant, eerie old house.
"Dr. Strange?"
Or does he call him Stephen? How do you begin to qualify the lines of professionalism when you travel in space, travel in time, and defeat one of the most powerful, extra-terrestrial beings likely to be known in the universe itself?
Growing up, he'd never believe that this is what his life would have become.
"It's Steve Rogers. Guess I'm a little early."