caraldanvars:

i love the first avenger so much because that’s the only time steve rogers ever gets to be steve. no one has any expectations for him. no one has turned him into a legend, or written his story in a history book. he’s so fresh and eager and bright. he jumps on grenades, he loves his best friend, he thinks fondue is a euphemism for sex. he draws pictures of himself as a performing monkey on a unicycle, and can’t talk to girls. he doesn’t know how far he can jump, he doesn’t know what he can survive, but he’s limitless because he needs to be. he smiles so freely. he doesn’t like bullies. he asks a group of men to be his team after knowing them for a day, trusting them immediately, and they become a family. tears stream down his face in a bombed bar when the most important person in his life dies, and he vows to avenge him. he flies a plane into the ocean bc there really is no other way. he wakes up and knows immediately that something is wrong, because that game was from 1943 which he’s certain of bc he’s a big fucking baseball nerd. he’s so soft and golden and expressive. the first avenger is the last time we get to see him as steve rogers, and not what the future molds him to be. while he always retains his core, lost friends and the heavy burden of lost identity, altered over 70 years of dormancy, leaves him untrusting. hardened. cynical. no one knows who steve rogers is except maybe steve, but everyone has an Idea and Image in their heads he cannot live up to. he spends years fighting that mold, and redefining himself. I truly don’t think we see tfa steve again, undiluted, until he’s reunited w bucky in wakanda, smiling wide