A/N: Guess it's time for me to stop ignoring Civil War, huh? (Ha.) Okay, here we go.

Not a Perfect Soldier...But a Good Man

I'll let you in on a secret. Steve's always hated being a national symbol.

He hated it from the beginning, when Captain America pranced around sweating into heavy wool tights in the stage lights to rack up war bonds for the country. He didn't become a hero for the glamour or the fanfare or to have important people in nice suits slapping him on the back. Hell, if anybody became a hero for that reason, I'd say he wasn't fit to be one at all.

He became a hero for me. And if it isn't true, he hasn't made any effort to deny it.

Infiltrated the lines and parachuted himself thirty miles into German territory because he'd heard the 107th was captured, and all he wanted to do was save his best friend's life. He wore the stage uniform under his trench-coat because he hadn't had the brains to take it off. So he saved seven hundred men while wearing blue tights and a big, ridiculous star on his chest.

I heard the story a million times over, from Dugan, from Falsworth, from all the guys who were there and loved giving him a hard time about it. How he stood on top of the cage of prisoners in his ridiculous blue wool, having just knocked the guard unconscious underneath him, and when the confused boys asked who he was he said, "I'm Captain America."

There's something you have to understand about Steve. He'd never ask for attention, or for recognition. It would never have to be explained to me that he did that not for himself, but for them. Not because he was proud of it, but because he wasn't.

Here were men who'd been to hell and hadn't gotten back yet, and when he said "I'm Captain America," what he meant was, "If an idiot good-for-nothing dancing monkey like me can get in here with just my fists and this outfit, then all you mud-splattered idiot good-for-nothings can get out."

And he would've let it fade into the background of the noise of the war and die in the memory of those men if he could.

Looking back, I think I might have made a mistake. After all, you know who started the whole Captain America thing? Me. Hollered it out for all those guys to hear, got them all shouting and clapping and throwing helmets in the air, what who still had them. It was fun, there in the dirt and the sweat with death maybe one march away and six feet down in a trench.

It was fun for me, getting my best friend (and the guy who saved my neck off of an operating table) the recognition that he damn well deserved. It was fun for him, hearing cheers and seeing smiles from a grime-streaked crowd of survivors. It was fun for those guys who were beleaguered and weary and needed something to believe in again.

It hasn't been as fun when all the people are rescued; when they've forgotten what sacrifices we make because they don't make any themselves; when they're confusing what they want and what they need; and when the nice suits and the brass in their safe little holes just want somebody to take the fall for their big, important, diplomatic crud.

That's why I know—that's why I understand—why he dropped the shield, and he's not picking it up again.

I've seen it. It's everywhere. There's no one to sugarcoat it for me. Broadcasters, internet sites—anywhere there are tongues to wag and screens to show toppling buildings and flaming carnage—people are angry. I can't turn on a TV without turning it off again, it's gotten that bad. Makes me sick.

The question that's got everyone spitting is how dare their hero turn on his job, his country, his reputation? How dare he shrug off the funny little box they shoved him into?

I have a solution for them. Make a robot. Dress it in red, white, and blue. Have it report to every crisis with perfect accuracy, every order with perfect submission, and every bout of emotional backlash and toil on the job with perfect tact and diplomacy. And wonder, ladies and gentlemen, at why you no longer love nor respect nor give a crud about your perfect, flawless hero.

The problem is that what they got for this go-round was Steve Rogers. And Steve Rogers has always come with a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, golden boy reputation, with the face to go with it and the will in his skinny gut to swim upstream as hard as he must to live up to it.

The miracle is that he almost did.

But the downside is that he didn't come with the "not recommended" label on his chest that some people have in bold print.

So when he tricked everyone into believing that his stellar leadership and reputation was the norm and not something he fought every fiber of his being to live up to—when he tricked himself into believing it—they piled on more and more of what they thought he could handle and he broke under the strain of it all, leaving them disillusioned. And disillusioned people get angry.

I don't entirely blame them, but I could have warned them who they were choosing for a leader. I could have warned them in detail, written an essay on it, and published it with citations, after seeing for the two-millionth and fifty-fourth time him with his skinny butt and bleeding knuckles and black-eyed glory just trying to stay upright in some back alley.

Yeah, I could have warned them.

They say that in organizing the League of Nations after the First World War, Woodrow Wilson placed on America's shoulders a mantle of world leadership that didn't fit quite well. Hot on its heels comes the 20s, and then the Depression, and then World War II, and then Steve Rogers gets on his shoulders a mantle of leading America that—if only for the mantle the nation itself wears—fits worse, even if his shoulders are bigger this time.

He manages for a while, not having the benefit of being an emotionless robot when his world, his love, his friends—when I leave his life. And then, to the surprise, shock, and disillusionment of everyone who didn't look close enough at his small print to see the "not recommended" that comes with every human being, he collapses.

I could've warned them. But I wasn't there—no, not mentally, anyway. So they couldn't ask me.

Looking back, I think I might have made a mistake, because I had a part in thrusting on him the responsibility and the recognition that he never wanted and never asked for. Of course, I was just one voice in a whole ocean of voices, but I know that I was the one that meant the most to him and was still alive to say something at the time.

Guess it was just a baton handed down—a senator put the tights on him, we put the expectation on him, and seventy years later a director would put the responsibility on him—but for my part of it, I think if I asked he'd forgive me, because there are just some wrongs only those we care about are allowed to make, and with all I've done wrong I'm just glad to call that the least of my sins.

Captain America.

I shouted it.

I was so proud of it, at the time.

Captain. America.

Has anyone been allowed to laugh at it in about a generation? Well, I'm about to take my chance.

HA.

...God, he never wanted this.

He never, ever wanted this, so why we required it out of him is beyond me and in a way I both feel sorry for it and not sorry at all.

That's why I knew the answer before he gave it, when I asked him just this afternoon—when his jaw went stiff and his eyes hardened like ice, like I'd seen so many times before.

He's impossible to reason with like that. But somehow I felt, for I don't know why, that whatever he was about to say, I wouldn't end up wanting to reason him out of it at all.

"Bucky," he said. "I dropped that shield. I'm not picking it up again."

And I knew. I just knew. I knew before he shifted his gaze from the floor and to me with the look on his face that meant "please understand," and the whole essay of his reasons just rolling out of the look in his eyes. God, those Irish baby-blues could tell his whole life story if a guy just sat and looked for long enough.

And I said, "Okay."

Okay.

It's okay.

He'll be annoyed if I continue this for too long, because I've got the light on while he wants to sleep. So I'll end it here, but for the record—Steve, if you're reading this, I understand. All right? I understand. You don't have anything to prove—and even if you did, Cap wouldn't cut it, so you're okay to let him go—and you don't have anything to prove because the best of you was already there when you were scrappy, bruised, and ninety pounds soaking wet.

Why do you think I hung out with you, bonehead? You were honestly pretty great since day one.

I loved you then. I love you the same now. And you know that's not altogether easy for me to say, so pay attention, all right? I know my opinion counts for something, at least to you. With all the times you've saved my sorry rear end, I'm actually starting to think you still care to have me around.

You've always got something to swing back at anybody who swings at you, no matter how much bigger he is. Let's say words are punches. So here's one to throw back at all those guys who don't get you, all those guys taking a swing at you, be they dead or brass or that little voice inside your head that hasn't caught on yet. Here's the honest truth, coming from the guy who still cares enough to be your best friend—after all this.

You are and will always be a punk.

Don't be anything else.

fin

A/N: I write this because I'm late to every bandwagon I jump on, and I've just seen the videos announcing that Steve will not be Cap in Infinity War. I'm fine with this because Bucky is, and Bucky is fine with this because he knows and forgives Steve, and since I'm having trouble with both of those recently I just let Bucky talk for a while to see what he had to teach me.

And he had a lot to teach me. I'll second what a friend of mine said—we all need a Bucky, somebody who will forgive us for anything...after chewing us out about it to the end of time.

I really like this rambling, kind of open-journal style. I might do it again, who knows. But now I actually need to get to that list on my profile. (Gah.)

Have a great one, guys. Reviews are the exact opposite of terrible blue tights.