so this is like… one of the first times, if not the first time the mansion is destroyed in comics. and not like, a wall is knocked down, but having major structural damage with parts of the actual floor missing. and this is all from a fight with some villains baron zemo gathered, all with the purpose of hurting the avengers, but steve most of all because he killed zemo’s father.
and this is just… heart-wrenching. i mean, steve didn’t grow up with a lot. his mom pretty much supported the both of them by herself. and then he joined the army and pretty much didn’t keep a lot then either, because he was constantly on the move, going to the front lines. then he dies, and who knows what happens to his belongings, because there’s no one to ship them to–so more than a few of them, i imagine, end up in a museum, or bought and sold in auctions for collectors. so when steve comes back, he pretty much has only the things he was wearing–his ripped to shreds army fatigues, his cap uniform, and his shield.
so anything of his he had from before… if it was in a museum, he probably could’ve requested it back, and he might’ve pulled a few things, but not everything, especially with the classification of his missions and identity, a lot of the things in the museums were probably general captain america things. the army probably held onto his things bc hoarding is the biggest government guilty pleasure, a portion of them classified, again, for being about steve rogers and cap’s missions, and he probably got all or most of that back upon waking. and then there’s all the things that went to auction, to varying degrees of sentimental, but like. once it’s at auction, there’s not a ton you can do to get it back aside from buying it. which… he has no money. which probably means that like. tony had to buy it back for him.
so all the things he has here–they’re mementos, but they’re important to steve. he’s had to work, in one way or another, to get them back. all his earthly belongings, all the ties he had to his memories, boiled down to the contents of one room. that was it. pictures of his friends, old journals filled with his thoughts, clippings of his and bucky’s adventures–all of it, all the good things he loved about his life, gone. gone.
and it’s irreplaceable, right? he can’t replace a picture of his mother. she’s dead. and sure, he could tape it back together, but now every time he looks at it, he’s going to see zemo ripping it in half all over again. and what about next time? is this–are his belongings–going to keep being used against him every time a fight comes to the mansion? like… it’s no wonder that after this, steve doesn’t really… nest, anywhere else. his bedrooms are all rather plain and functional–i think the most i’ve seen are some pictures of friends, or a few posters, but never to the extent that he had here. i think this makes him so afraid to personalize things again that he just… doesn’t. he can’t handle the loss.
