Steven G. Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thekidfrombrooklyn) wrote2013-04-01 08:40 pm
thekidfrombrooklyn) wrote2013-04-01 08:40 pm
Entry tags:
OOM: I just wanna go home
Steve has been planning this trip for a long time. With the help of JARVIS and everyone else who'd contribute, he had found funky motels and roadside attractions, as grand as Graceland and as silly as the world's biggest thermometer.
Now, he throws all those maps away.
JARVIS is able to find the information he needs in a matter of hours. All it takes, then, is to pack a bag, say goodbye to his friends, and get on his motorcycle.
And then, he heads west.
***
Someday he'll go to Europe and visit Falsworth and Dernier. For this trip, there are only four stops.
Four places to pay his respects.
Jones.
Morita.
Dugan.
Bucky.
***
They were both New Yorkers, born and bred, but Steve at least got to see most of the country--its train stations and theaters, anyway. There's a lot he didn't see, has only heard about, and he would talk to Bucky about those places sometimes. He wanted to see those places. He wanted Bucky to see them, too.
(He wanted to see them with Orpheus. But he's trying to let that dream go.)
He'd seen the Grand Canyon in a newsreel, the sheer size of it barely translated by the film and cheerful narrator, and he'd tried to describe it to Bucky. He had always been good at painting a picture with words, but even he couldn't describe the grandeur, the awe it had filled him with, to know that a place existed that was so ancient and so beautiful.
"We'll see it," he promised Bucky. "When we come home, after the war."
But Bucky had never come home.
Really, neither had Steve.
***
There's a fee to camp in the canyon itself, and the park ranger looks skeptical at Steve's minimal provisions. But he has the proper permit and the recommended amount of water (and then some), and so they give him a map and he rides his motorcycle into the canyon as far as he can go.
He finds his assigned campground without trouble, and sets up his bedroll and a fire before sundown. He spends what little light there is finishing the drawing of Bucky he'd begun in the bar after he got Lt. Gaeta's letter.
The sun goes down.
The moon rises.
And Steve holds up the drawing in the light of the moon and stars and says, "There it is, Buck. I promised you'd see it.
"I had to keep this promise."
Now, he throws all those maps away.
JARVIS is able to find the information he needs in a matter of hours. All it takes, then, is to pack a bag, say goodbye to his friends, and get on his motorcycle.
And then, he heads west.
Someday he'll go to Europe and visit Falsworth and Dernier. For this trip, there are only four stops.
Four places to pay his respects.
Jones.
Morita.
Dugan.
Bucky.
They were both New Yorkers, born and bred, but Steve at least got to see most of the country--its train stations and theaters, anyway. There's a lot he didn't see, has only heard about, and he would talk to Bucky about those places sometimes. He wanted to see those places. He wanted Bucky to see them, too.
(He wanted to see them with Orpheus. But he's trying to let that dream go.)
He'd seen the Grand Canyon in a newsreel, the sheer size of it barely translated by the film and cheerful narrator, and he'd tried to describe it to Bucky. He had always been good at painting a picture with words, but even he couldn't describe the grandeur, the awe it had filled him with, to know that a place existed that was so ancient and so beautiful.
"We'll see it," he promised Bucky. "When we come home, after the war."
But Bucky had never come home.
Really, neither had Steve.
There's a fee to camp in the canyon itself, and the park ranger looks skeptical at Steve's minimal provisions. But he has the proper permit and the recommended amount of water (and then some), and so they give him a map and he rides his motorcycle into the canyon as far as he can go.
He finds his assigned campground without trouble, and sets up his bedroll and a fire before sundown. He spends what little light there is finishing the drawing of Bucky he'd begun in the bar after he got Lt. Gaeta's letter.
The sun goes down.
The moon rises.
And Steve holds up the drawing in the light of the moon and stars and says, "There it is, Buck. I promised you'd see it.
"I had to keep this promise."
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"Oh, this is gonna be good."
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He tells it all. The last assault on the HYDRA base. The plane crash. The long sleep under the ice.
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Bucky shivers again at the mention of the Arctic ice and settles in closer still to the heat baking out from the fire, leaning back on an elbow with his legs stretched out, his gaze intent on his best friend's face as he listens.
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Being brought back to the world.
Loki. The cube.
And the team.
From what Steve says, it sounds more like a family.
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He's lying on the ground by now in almost a mirror image of the way Steve had been earlier, his own hands behind his head as a makeshift pillow, eyes closed and his breathing slow and even as he mulls over the team Steve's describing.
It's a good image, one to hold on to.
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He left out a few things--the talk shows, being the public face of the Avengers, the occasional loneliness that even his new friends can't take away--but he left in everything good.
He lies down too and reaches for his sketchbook. He's drawn them all, their beautiful, fascinating faces, and he thinks that in a perfect world Bucky would know them too.
"Even with all of that," he says, holding the book open on his chest, "all the--the superheroing--there's one thing that has never stopped.
"I have never stopped missing you."
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The sky over the Grand Canyon is impossibly clear, the stars specks of icy fire against the deep black of space. But for that and the quiet peace of the night itself, they could almost be back in one of the makeshift campsites the Howling Commandos had occasionally used, jawing back and forth by the fire while the others slept.
"Just like always."
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The moon is so low he feels like he could reach up and brush it with his fingers.
In the morning, he wakes up alone.
There's no sign of a visitor around the campfire.
Of course there isn't.
Steve packs up his things, makes sure there's water within reach, and gets back on his motorcycle.
It's time to go home.