"You're telling me that you got Captain America-the War Hero, Steve Rogers-to become best friends with a thirteen-year-old kid? What, is this supposed to slowly introduce him to how irritating Generation Z is? Project Training Wheels or something?"
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(is this helpful?)word count: 9743 me: posting this and dipping
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𝙉𝙊𝙏 𝘼𝙉𝙊𝙏𝙃𝙀𝙍 𝙏𝙀𝙀𝙉 𝙈𝙊𝙑𝙄𝙀.
───○☆✸☆○───
𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐋𝐔𝐃𝐄 1.2: Partner-In-Crisis
𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐄𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 ─ 𝐒𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇𝐖𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐏𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄
𝟏𝟔 𝐅𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐘 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟕
───○☆✸☆○───
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☆
People cherished innocence because of how easily the virtue could be lost, and most tragically, the cause was usually not by one's own hand. For most of Steve Rogers' life, his innocence was just a means of his own making. He never had parents who taught him what morals were. The closest thing that ever came to such a thing was Bucky Barnes' family members, and even then, he still felt like an invasion to their routine life. He had to build his own understanding of life from scratch. With history books reciting his story as a notable historical figure and not a person, not much felt his own anymore. Not his name. Not his life.
But one thing was his.
Emily Culver entered his life without his permission, but she never felt like an invasion. Instead, she presented a different path for him, one where he was just Steve. Just Neighbor Steve. But the choice had truly been made when he found out that Emily Culver didn't exist, and the tiny tempered, stubborn, brown-eyed little girl had a different name: Elizabeth Jay Carter. Whether the former thirteen-year-old girl knew it at the time, she gave him the only thing he had left to himself. A life of being just Neighbor Steve, one that was not written about by anyone or shared without his permission, with a family his heart always found its way back to somehow.
But thirteen-year-old Lizzie Carter turned into sixteen-year-old MJ. Somehow a distant reflection of who he met back in D.C., but forever the same to him. Steve truly understand for the first time in nearly a hundred years what it looked like to see innocence ripped from someone. Someone he loved. A hardness wrapped itself around her nowadays, unyielding to anyone or anything, and while stubbornness had always been a trait of hers...anger festered deeper underneath. Haunted by what she would never speak about. Steve worried every day about her physical health, but he worried every second about MJ's mental health. He saw the beginnings of the trauma that haunted his best friend, and that was not a battle he could go into swinging for either of them. Not this time.
