#oopsie doopsie wrote a fic instead of a hc post

[steverogers-against-disney]

this is a moon knight post BUT

quick context here before i explain the rest of this headcanon, basically i have an ongoing and ever expanding alternate captain america universe (that i just call redux!verse) where… a lot of stuff happens but one thing that happens is that bucky barnes’s little sister rebecca (mildly) edits and compiles some of his war letters into a book to act as a sort of memoir in his own words type thing (i’ll probably end up putting details from redux! in this, which i’ll mark with an asterisk)

ok now that that’s out of the way, as i said, this is a moon knight post

i think, for a very long time, steven grant had no clue who captain america was. he got lots of jokes, of course, from apparent captain america fans about his name. it usually went like this:

steven: hi~ i’m steven grant. that’s, uh, steven with a v :)

them: ha! steven grant! like captain america!

steven: erm, haha, yeah

eventually, though, his curiosity gets to be too much, and steven finds himself checking out a biography on captain america from the library (which, in the moon knight show, he really has in his apartment). it’s a pretty good biography, if you’re into urban legends and conjecture. it describes a morally upright man, willing to do the right thing above all else. the author seems to be very interested in how good and moral and tenacious this other steven grant is, rather than who he is.

the author notes that steve rogers went to art school, but not what he studied specifically. he notes that steve rogers became a school teacher*, but not what he taught or if his students liked him.

steven found himself more interested in what the author never said. who did steve rogers love?

(more under the break)

steven gets quite hung up on all this, the missing pieces. it feels real to him. there’s so much missing, and his heart aches for the idea of this man. he finds himself re reading this biography, trying to read between the lines, trying to piece together what he’s missing from what he knows.

after he renews his copy the third time, he decides he ought to just buy it.

there’s a very nice person at the bookshop, who suggests several other books to him. they also tell him there’s a whole collection of comic books about captain america. he decides to get a bunch of it. he ends up with the entire original series of comics, a different biography than the one he went for, the biography he went for, and a book called Yours, B, which, while not about steve rogers, apparently revealed more of him, according to the person at the shop.

the comics were rather disinteresting (except the few with a writing credit to one R. Barnes*), and the new biography as lacking in detail as the first one. but the third book is actually a collection of letters sent by one bucky barnes. according to the forward, barnes’s sister was the one who got the whole thing together, though she admits to “slight edits” to preserve some semblance of anonymity for the people he wrote to.

it’s pretty clear to steven when bucky barnes is writing to steve rogers.

he ends up talking to his mom about it a lot, or, well talking at his mom. she’s such a busy lady, and they’re always playing an extended game of phone tag. it goes something like this:

“hi, mum~! sorry i missed you again, but it’s hard with the time zones, haha. hey, i got your card from egypt! i’m really jealous, you had better send me a load of photos. anyway, i’m feeding gus right now, he says hi, don’t you, gus?

“hey, do you know who captain america is? i figure i would have known about him sooner if we were american. but, yeah, he’s a real myth of a guy. though it’s a bit sad reading about him. everyone seems caught up in all that mythology, they’ve forgotten he was just a guy. they always seem to skip over days, and months, and years he probably thought we important. i would like to know what he painted… if he even painted at all.

“oh! but i found one book- i guess it’s more a… i don’t know, collection. it’s letters this captain america fellow’s friend wrote. well, i think —now, don’t get shocked, mum— i think they might have been more than friends. not all the letters are to him, but i think that makes it a bit sadder. it’s like he’s just talking to himself. you don’t ever get to see what anyone says back, or… or if they replied at all. they must have, right?

“…well… anyway, it was good catching up, mum. love you loads. okay, laters gators~”

steven knows, of course, that someone is listening to his messages. he assumes it’s his mother, though he can’t recall the last time he heard her reply. but someone must be listening…

right?