A Gift From: enigma731
Type Of Gift: Fic
Title:The Story of Captain America (and His Friends), as recorded by Lila Barton
A Gift For: scribble_myname
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: None apply
Summary/Prompt Used: Captain America wasn’t always Captain America. Before he was Cap, he was a boy named Steve, and he was very small.
Author's Note: So, your prompt about Natasha writing Captain America fanfiction immediately struck me as a fun challenge. I started toying with the idea of an in-universe context where she’d want to share stories with her friends and, well, this is what happened. I hope you enjoy it.


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October 12, 2011

Captain America--

No, Lila,I’m not going to start with ‘once upon a time.’ That’s old fashioned and cliche.

Yes, it’s still a story if it doesn’t start that way. Not all stories do. This one doesn’t.

Captain America wasn’t always Captain America. Before he was Cap, he was a boy named Steve, and he was very small. I don’t just mean that he was young. He was young, but he was also short and thin compared to other boys his age.

Yes, I know your dad told you the story of how they made Steve big so that he could become Cap. This is a different story. It’s one about Steve when he was still little.

Because Steve was smaller than the other boys, they liked to tease him. They thought they could be mean to him because they were bigger than he was.

Yes, like Gavin at school.

Anyway, the bullies thought that they could be mean to Steve and he wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. But Steve was smart, and he was very determined, too. He hated bullies, and he wasn’t about to let them pick on him or anyone else. So he learned how to throw things. He practiced a lot and got very good, so that whenever he saw a bully coming, he could throw something at them and knock them down. He knocked down a lot of them--

Yes, at least twenty of them. A lot.

After Steve knocked all of the bullies down, they changed their minds about him and began to tell other people not to mess with him, because he would get them back.

No, Lila. You can’t throw things at Gavin, or you’ll get in trouble. But you can be smarter than he is. You can use that, and work hard until you can do everything better than he can. That’s how you show people not to mess with you, even though you’re small.

January 3, 2012

Back when Captain America was in the army, there were a lot of men who were his fellow soldiers. I mean, there’s still a lot of men in the army, but back then, it was a lot of men. And a lot fewer women than there are now.

But, there was one woman who worked with Cap’s company. Her name was Peggy, and she was a complete badass.

No, you can’t call her that.

Because your mother will get angry at me.

Anyway, Peggy was in charge of training Cap and the other soldiers when they first got into the army. Some of the other men thought that they shouldn’t have to listen to her because she was a woman and they were men.

I know, that was very stupid of them. Most men are very stupid.

One day, when the men were supposed to be having a training session, a bunch of them got together and decided that they were going to make fun of Peggy instead of doing the exercises she assigned them. But Peggy was used to people underestimating her, and she had learned to never put up with it, so do you know what she did?

She punched them very hard, and then she made them do push ups until they couldn’t move their arms anymore.

Cap saw that, and he decided that he liked Peggy right away. He respected her and appreciated her, and they became friends. Cap believed that Peggy could do anything she wanted, maybe even better than he could, Super Soldier or not.

Why?

Because she was a woman. And all smart men know that women are better than they are at everything.

September 16, 2013

Steve--

Captain America had spent so much of his life focused on the war that he never really took the time to think about what he might want to do after it was over. That happens sometimes, when people dedicate their lives to fighting for something. Sometimes they become weapons, and forget how to be people.

Like me? No, this story isn’t about me; it’s about Captain America.

Steve hadn’t really thought about what he would do when the war was over. Or at least not since he had become Cap, and made so many friends in the army. In fact, towards the end, he was starting to feel more at home with the soldiers around him than he ever had before the war.

But then something terrible happened.

Yes, this is the part where Steve sleeps under the ice. Did your dad tell you that story already too?

Well, this story isn’t really about Steve taking a seventy year nap. It’s really about the fact that because he was sleeping, his friends had lost him all of a sudden. They were getting older and their lives were moving forward, but Steve was gone and they couldn’t find him no matter how hard they looked.

They weren’t alone, though, because they had each other. Steve had brought them all together to begin with, and they got even closer to one another after he was gone. They still missed him, but they were also grateful for the things he left behind.

It was a little bit different for Steve. When he woke up from being frozen, the world had become a whole new place. His friends had gotten much older, and some of them had died. At first he thought that he really was alone.

But eventually he found a new mission and new friends and, before too long, he realized that he had things to fight for again. He had a new home, even though it wasn’t one he’d ever thought about having.

What he realized was that the friends we have never really leave us. They might be far away--They might even be dead. But they’re still with us, in the things that we do, and the new relationships that we build.

What?

No, I’m not telling you that you should make some new friends because Lindsey moved to California. But Cap would probably tell you that.

May 4, 2014

When Captain America woke up in the future, he noticed that there was a lot of work that needed to be done in the world.

Well, no. That part wasn’t really new -- There had always been a lot of work that needed to be done, and he had always been able to see that.

But when he woke up in the future, Cap realized that a lot of the problems from his old life still needed fixing. And he’d always thought that things couldn’t get better unless people dedicated themselves to making a better world.

So, Captain America signed up to keep working for the government, just like he had during the war. He swore an oath to protect people’s freedom and their safety too.

He was still very good at his job, even though there were a lot of new things that he had to learn.

Yes, like how to use a smartphone.

He learned it very quickly.

No, not like Mr. Wagner. Cap may have been alive for many years, but he wasn’t afraid of new things. You don’t have to be afraid of things just because they’re different from what you know.

Captain America and his new team went on a lot of missions that he thought were making the world a safer place for everyone. Sometimes he had to do things that were painful and hard, but he was okay with that because he’d been told they were for the greater good.

But then one day, Captain America discovered a terrible secret. Some of the bad people he thought he’d defeated in his old life were still around, and they were part of the same government Cap was working for. They’d been lying to him all along, telling him that he was helping people when actually he was hurting them.

Yes, that made him very sad.

But do you know what he did?

You’re right, he didn’t give up. Because, Cap had been alive for many years, and he’d seen and learned a lot of things. He knew that sometimes good people did bad things, but that doesn’t suddenly make them bad people.

What Cap knew was that being good doesn’t mean always doing the right thing. It means learning from your mistakes, and changing what you do when you realize you’ve done something wrong. So that’s what he did. He decided he would just have to change some more, like he’d been doing all along. He decided to keep fighting and making things right.

Yes, that’s why he was on the news last night.

I’ll tell him you said good job.

November 27, 2014

Captain America and his friends don’t always get along.

Yes, like you and Cooper. But with superpowers thrown into the mix. So, sometimes things got messy after Cap and his friends decided that they should all live together so that they could respond faster when the world needed them to do some saving.

They were all people who’d learned to be alone for most of their lives, and they didn’t trust anyone else very easily.

Me? No, I meant his other friends.

Yes, like the Hulk. The Hulk had a lot of trouble working with anyone else, and he didn’t like it when anybody touched his things. Plus, he and Thor could be very competitive. They turned everything into a game to see who could do things better, even though neither of them would admit it. Iron Man liked to tease Cap about being old, and about being old-fashioned. And your dad loved to sneak in when they were having target practice to show off how he’s better than all of them and their superpowers combined.

Sometimes it got more serious than that, when they disagreed about how to save the world. Sometimes they got into real big fights and hurt each other’s feelings, so Cap had to make sure they talked it out and apologized to one another.

But mostly? Cap was just happy to have a home with all of his friends. He knew that you have to enjoy the time you have with your family, even if sometimes they drive you crazy.

Why?

Well, because you never know when someone in your life might decide to take a very long nap.

April 30, 2015

Once upon a time--

Yes, I’m starting with that tonight.

Because sometimes you need a little old-fashioned tradition.

Once upon a time, there was a princess named Lila. She lived in a beautiful castle in the countryside with her brother and her parents.

One day, Captain America and his friends were out working together to protect the world. They had fought very hard, and they were feeling very tired and sad. It seemed like all of the good they were trying to do somehow just ended up hurting more people. They had started to wonder whether maybe they had been villains instead of heroes all along.

They needed a place to rest and decide what to do next, so they decided to visit the castle.

While they were there, Princess Lila gave them hugs and precious pieces of artwork. She thought that Captain America and his friends were still pretty amazing, so she cast a spell on them to make them see only the good parts of themselves.

They went back out to fight, and with her magic’s protection, they had no trouble keeping the world safe anymore. And they all lived happily ever after.

Go to sleep now.

I’ll see you again soon.

I promise.