remember when i said ive got steeb feels?
Here's the thing with Steve Rogers: he is a human.
In 1943, he'd volunteered his sickly body to be experimented on by the government to fight for his country and he'd gain pounds of muscles from it; along with expedited cell regeneration and heightened strength.
He was told: You'll be the first super soldier. Nobody said he'll be the only one.
That's fine. He never belonged anywhere, anyway.
But he had one friend at least; brought him back from Hell even if his hands blistered from yanking at the chains wrapped around his ankles.
It was worth it. More than worth it.
Then one day, that friend dropped from the train because Steve couldn't reach him quick enough.
All those sharpened wit and accelerated reflexes; nothing helped in the end.
That's fine, he told himself again.
Picked himself up from the rattling floor of the carriage, wiped his tears on his sleeve and forced himself to move on.
It was fine. He signed up for this; he knew going in, he wouldn't come out the same. Only, he didn't know he'd come out of it 70 years too late.
Much less, to an unrecognizable home.
That's… That's fine too.
For a while it wasn't, but he remembered his signature on the procedure form beside Erskine's so, when Fury came with a file, he accepted it.
The mission gave him a new team, and he felt he belonged once again; even for only a gruelling four hours soaked in alien blood.
Maybe that was why he returned after he left; pulled the key out of the ignition and declared his journey around America the end.
Steve is after all, a human.
Got a heart the size of his right fist just like everybody else; fitted behind his breastbone, full of blood and full of life. Even if his ribs are hard to break, doesn't mean they don't bruise from a strong punch.
Doesn't mean they don't rattle too violently sometimes; make his heart collide and the bruise expand, larger than life itself and then some.
And maybe his vessels burst and bleed then; ooze dark congealed blood from 1945 and they smell death from an age old infected wound.
Because when you store shit up for way too long, that's what happens to your inside.
Two weeks ago, he squeezed out the pus.
Found a hornet on his bed biting at his neck and when he picked at it, he discovered its nest underneath his mattress; going deep into the foundation of his apartment.
Lost the bed and a place to stay, so he took his bike and travelled again.
But the hornet's bite left a venom under his skin; changed his genome to never read the same. His spine shifted slowly, shaking every rib into a new alignment and then his cartilage and -
His body morphed first, and his brain could only try to play catch up with it.
It's always been like that with Steve; catch a cold when he was 10 and his lungs screamed first before his mind could fear death.
Yanking the mask off of the Winter Soldier was like that; a thousand needles injecting serum into his cells. It morphed Steve Rogers, permanently, into somebody else.
He is a human still, just with a brand new purpose.
