summary: in which steve is on the moon, and he meets an astronaut that reminds him an awful lot of bucky.
word count: 1,439
warnings?: this is incredibly stupid, don't take this seriously, i just really hate steve's endgame ending and i'd rather him be on the moon
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Steve had long since grown tired of being a superhero. While he enjoyed saving people and stopping the bad guys, he knew that he could never rest. Not really, anyways. There would always be a fight. There would always be another battle. And, even worse, there were governments to deal with. Paperwork to file. Protocols to follow. Rules, rules, and more rules. He became a soldier to make a difference, to stand up to the bullies. To show that, no matter your size, your background, whatever set you apart from the rest, that if you saw an injustice, you should set out to make it right. But goddammit, he was tired.
All he wanted to do was rest.
And, for the first time since he came out of the ice, he might have had the opportunity to do so. Or, at least, come a little bit closer to resting.
After returning the Infinity Stones to their rightful places in time, Steve made the decision that he was done with fighting. Death, destruction, and loss would always follow in their wake. And, while he didn't mind making the sacrifices, there was only so much sacrifice he could make before he had nothing left to give. Did he even have anything left to give at this point?
When he returned to his own time, he knew what he had to do. He'd already talked it over with Bucky, when he was still unsure of what he wanted to do with his life. He knew that he couldn't just leave this all behind. Not without knowing that there would be someone to look out for the little guy. And, really, there was only one option. Sam Wilson was the only person worthy of carrying the shield. Sure, there wasn't any sort of magic behind that determined who was worthy. But Steve knew who was worthy. The words of Dr. Erskine still rung through him even after all of these years.
"Not a good soldier, but a good man."
And Sam Wilson was a good man. Steve could trust him, and he did. After he finished his last mission, he passed along the shield to Sam. He knew that Sam would do the right thing. After all, he'd already been doing the right thing in all of the years that Steve had known him.
But retirement was weird.
Steve really didn't know what to do with himself now that he wasn't fighting. Was there anything really left to him? He'd been a soldier for so that it felt like that was all he was. Since the serum turned him into a super soldier, he'd never really known rest. He'd never had time to figure himself out. Sure, he liked to draw. He was good at it. But even that became mundane after a while.
