ordinary and extraordinary

[tielan]

Part 1 of 3 has been finished. Kind of. I have a scene that needs some fleshing out - there are notes, but that hasn't really been elaborated upon properly.

Here, have a snippet.

Steve finished his beer, took his plates to the kitchen and cleaned up after himself, scraping the bones into the trash. Then, since the bag was full, he tied it off and took it out to the bins.

His shoulders and back ached a little as he lifted the bin lid – a new and discomforting sensation.

A flash of memory – another brick wall, dusty and grimy, the scent of garbage and piss in the alley, and the feeling of helplessness...

He tensed.

Then paused as a car revved its way down the street, noisy music and loud kids screeching out the window. A couple of dogs objected to the noise, but the barking died down after about thirty seconds. And then there was only the distant sounds of someone having a party, cars coming and going in other streets, the breeze rustling the leaves of the trees and bushes in the yard.

An ordinary life.

Somewhere out there, the Avengers Initiative was still going. The world still needed protecting. The fight still needed fighting.

This wasn’t a life he’d ever wanted – not before he took the serum, not during the war. Only after he realised the years he’d lost had he yearned for anything like normality – for the end of the fight, for the things that Peggy and the Howling Commandos had gaine in the years when he was frozen with the Valkyrie: peace.

Wanda’s headgames had shown him the truth: he was a soldier, born of war, made for fighting. Normality was not for the likes of him.

And yet...

Now Steve was out here, lacking the abilities that had made him special, without his shield, without any responsibilities – an ordinary man in an ordinary world.

But that wasn’t a good way to look at it, was it?

...everything special about you came out of a bottle...

...before Captain America came along, there was this guy by the name of Steve Rogers...

And, behind Tony’s long-ago taunt and Maria’s dry reminder, he heard Dr. Erskine’s voice that last night before his life changed: This is why you were chosen...

He’d been an extraordinary man doing extraordinary things in an extraordinary world for so long, he’d forgotten what it was like to be the little man; the small cog in the machine with a big vision and a dream of being someone who did big things.

Bucky knew, he realised. Had to live with the memory of what it was to be helpless, unable to control his own future, or fight the strings that held him in place as the assassin for HYDRA. He had the shield now; had the chance to fight back. Steve didn’t grudge him that – how could he?

And Maria knew, too. Knew what it was like to come down from doing important, world-changing things to...staying up late on a Saturday night to sort accounts while waiting for her siblings to get home. Being ordinary and normal, rather than getting out there to defend the world when it needed protection.

That was important, too.