#talking about how worried they are about how he'll adjust to post-retirement life as if they aren't the same people putting

[agnesandhilda]

lionel messi this lionel messi that how about you clean up the MESS that's in your ROOM

[adriennestar]

F*ck you endgame. I've given it time but honestly I'll never not be mad about this.

Sometime after Steve goes back to the 40s

...

Peggy: Steve what's your spirit animal?

Steve: *sweating* why?

Peggy: Just for fun ☺️

Steve: *guilty tone* ...ostrich

Peggy: Haha, why??

Steve: *opens up the encyclopedia, turns to ostrich, and points to this picture*

***

Get it??!

***

Seriously though, they really expect us to believe that Steve would just sit back and let all of the bad things he knows are going to happen unfold without doing ANYTHING to stop them, knowing full well he's more than able to??! Really?? Steve if-I-see-a-situation-headed-south-I-can't-ignore-it Rogers, would never. Even if he tried, he'd go absolutely stir crazy after just a month of "resting".

It's an alternate timeline! So he doesn't need to worry about closing a time loop because loops are not how time travel works in the mcu. Endgame establishes this many times through out it's runtime. But that's a can of worms I won't dig into in this post.

I understand that he doesn't have to stop every single bad thing from happening but he'd at least help the people he cares about, like Bucky (aka his best friend since childhood and literal soulmate).

His entire trilogy is about saving Bucky ffs. From the beginning, Bucky is Steve's most important relationship whether you ship them or not.

Also, saving Bucky would already eliminate half the problems that were going to happen because he would never have become the winter soldier who helped "shape a century". Not to mention at least a version of Bucky would have a chance at a life without 70 years of trauma. Nobody worthy of mjolnir would ever let somebody they care about suffer like that!

***

Any ways, here's my head canon ramble:

In my head, endgame Steve didn't stay in the 40s. Instead, he retrieves and unfreezes his 40s self and that's the Steve we see dancing with Peggy at the end of the movie.

That at least seems fair, because 40s Steve is the person she had feelings for. Not endgame Steve who is 12 years older so therefore has been through more than his younger self and is a different person as a result.

And who knows, MAYBE after finally going on a few dates they figure out they're not that combatible and later on Peggy ends up marrying the person she married in the original timeline lol. But while that's happening, endgame Steve saves 40s Bucky and brings him home.

Finding out that Bucky survived the fall and suffered even more at the hands of Hydra, 40s Steve is furious. Both at Hydra for hurting Bucky and even more at himself for feeling responsible for that. He mentally kicks himself for not at least going back to get Bucky's body after he watched him fall. His drive to keep fighting until all of Hydra is dead or captured is reignited and he embarks on a mission through SSR/SHIELD to completely eradicate Hydra. With Peggy's help he succeeds. They also eliminate the red room and keep Hydra from infiltrating SHIELD.

After saving 40s Bucky, endgame Steve makes another stop to the 2010s and gets a few things 😉. He returns to his original timeline just a few seconds after he himself was meant to return after returning the stones. He sets his "time turner gps" for him to be sitting on the bench. That's why he appears so suddenly their. After passing the new shield to Sam, he takes Bucky to a private room and peels off his wig and the face tech that Natasha used in Winter Soldier to make herself look old from his face. He let's Bucky know that he really is retiring and where he'll be staying if Bucky wants to find him.

Bucky visits Steve many times. The first few times, they talk casually and joke lightly about how alien it feels to adjust to a new century. Then they talk about the war and their other traumas; about how they are both changed forever because of them. Many tears are shed as they revisit these painful memories but they help each other through the pain and heal together.

Finally they talk about the old days before the war, about how happy they made each other. It seems like everything since then has changed except their bond. It's still the only thing that makes them feel safe in a way that feels like home. They knew from the moment that bond was made back in their youth, it was unbreakable. So, they stay together, until the end of the line, like they swore they would.

I also have the image of young retired Steve secretly helping with future missions from the sideline 😁.

***

I'll say this a million times. Endgame Steve deserves a happy ending. He deserves to settle down, live a peaceful life. He's been fighting for so long that perhaps he has forgotten who he is without a fight. Losing his family/home (Bucky) probably played a huge part in that.

We all have our battles to fight whether they're on a literal battlefield or in society, but family helps to keep us anchored during tough times.

Steve had to watch his family die, twice.

Steve retiring in his present (the 21st century) where he doesn't know what the future holds, is much better than him running away to the past and burying his head in the f*cking sand to all the suffering he knows is going to happen to the people he loves. Again, nobody worthy of mjolnir would take the second option.

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I know that endgame was forever ago but I have a fix it fix coming soon!