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They’d been having a nice team meal until Tony brought up something he referred to as Cap conspiracy theories and told him he was also an urban legend. “I don’t know what that means,” Steve said.
Tony waved a hand in the air, calling up one of those magical screen doohickies. “Huh, yeah. Looks like ‘urban legend’ was coined sometime in the ’60s and ‘conspiracy theory’ really doesn’t show up much until after your war.” He said that like the war had been Steve’s fault or something. He twisted the picture to face Steve.
“People are saying I’m fake?” Could they really not compare his recent photos to the newsreels and article photos and his films from the war? “They’re saying I was never found and I’m just…some guy wearing a Cap uniform?”
“Well, that and lots of other things. You can find all that stuff online,” Clint offered.
Nat’s eyes went huge and she immediately cut in with, “Oh, no, no, no. Do not do that, Steve.”
He sighed. “Believe me, I won’t.” But of course, that was all he could think about for the rest of the night no matter what direction the conversation went. When he got back to his place, he simply had to scratch that itch, damn him. He asked JARVIS to bring up a search for conspiracy theories on his computer.
“May I filter the results, Captain?” JARVIS asked. There must be a pretty good reason to ask such an odd question, so he said yes. “The results might still be…somewhat unpleasant, even filtered.”
“Yikes,” Steve said aloud.
The top results all appeared to be variations on a theme, related to his recent reappearance in the Battle of New York. “Cap wasn’t IN ice, he was ON ice,” one read. “He’s been kept in a bunker in the USSR while they tried to build themselves an army of super” —and there was no way Steve was going to click through to see more. Another result claimed Steve had been held in an underground bunker at SHIELD, cryogenically frozen first by Peggy and Howard and then later by Nick Fury and some senior officials at the DOD, including Secretary Pierce. One that caught his eye read: “Cap didn’t go down with the Valkyrie, he switched sides. Why do you think they covered it up with a death report? Schmidt was literally the only one just like hi…” Steve quickly moved past that one. For Christ’s sake.
There were more in a similar vein: they’d concocted the Valkyrie story to cover up his death by friendly fire; the U.S. had botched a military operation that led to his death and an entire division being wiped out; Steve had killed a superior officer in an argument so they had to cover up a kangaroo court and dishonorable discharge. Well, he supposed he had been difficult to manage…
Something in the middle of the third page caught his eye: a Captain America forum that didn’t seem to be active anymore, archived on a portal housing older, early websites. Mostly benign topics, except this page titled “Cover-ups?”
howlingcommandog said, “People keep focusing on the wrong things though. Its not that they’re trying to coverup the way he died or that he flirted with socialism as a young guy so he became a commie or whatever. It’s that the whole story of Captain America is a fake, all of it. He really was just a comic book character they made up for morale and they found some jacked actor to convince people. Why do you think they didn’t declassify the freakin Ghost Army til 1996? Bcause they knew people would put two and two together and realize Captain America was as much of a phony construct as inflatable tanks and spoof radio traffic. Every newsreel, every photo, its just a fake. Faking a war hero is a lot easier than faking a moon landing.”
Steve blinked. Holy shit. People truly did believe he’d never been real. People today were nuts. He scrolled through a few responses, mostly agreements and “good point about the ghost army” sentiment, until a lengthier reply caught his eye.
realagentcarter: “Listen, I’m going to stop you guys right there. As I’ve alluded to here, before I retired, I worked in intelligence with organizations whose initials you all know. I got into the intelligence service after the military. I enlisted because of my deep respect as a kid for Capt. Steve Rogers. My whole career was because of Capt. Rogers and his heroic service and sacrifice.
“I had a high clearance, and trained recruits to the intelligence service. Every year, some of these kids—who were devoted to their country—washed out because they divulged secrets. Not even big secrets, but stuff they were instructed not to discuss. No matter what we told them, every year a couple of guys had to tell their mom about where they were being stationed so she wouldn’t worry, or some gal felt compelled to let her fiance know her phone number so he could call in case of emergency. They were excited, or scared, or thought they were the exception to the rule, whatever.
“I saw it all the time in country in my service too. You simply cannot keep more than two people quiet about *anything.* Even if their lives or their careers depend on it. If you can’t make a handful of highly dedicated people maintain opsec in top secret scenarios, what makes you think you can keep something like a phony war hero quiet? There is no way the handful of people who would have worked with Stanley Kubrick or whoever to fake the moon landing would keep such a huge secret all those years, so what the hell makes you think the literally thousands of people who’d be involved in faking Captain America for articles and movies and newsreels and meeting all those servicemen would be able to keep that a secret? People knew about the Ghost Army before it was declassified, even without official government recognition. So the Cap story would have come out way, way before that was declassified, believe me.
“On a personal note, I joined this forum because Cap and Sgt. Barnes and the Commandos were my heroes, and Agent Carter was one of the reasons I became interested in intelligence (we share a last name, too). I really hate seeing this forum become a hotbed of conspiracy shit and urban legends and what have you. They all deserve more than that, show some respect. I wish the mods would delete these threads.”
Steve wished he could reach through time and the internet to shake that guy’s hand. He noticed there had been no replies—he wasn’t sure if that was because the fella had so effectively shut them down or he’d been shut down himself.
Before he clicked out of that page, he saw a “related topics” link at the bottom that said, “Cap and Barnes are still alive and together,” and his heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. His finger hovered over the pad—he knew he shouldn’t look—until he gave in to his curiosity and clicked. It landed him in another section of that forum, where someone had posted a link to a site called Tumblr and a user called srxbb. At the top of the page was a still from one of the newsreels where he and Bucky had been talking to a reporter, and he could feel every muscle seize up. All the months out of the ice, trying desperately not to think too much about Bucky, not to give in to his grief—it was bad enough trying to cope with Peggy’s age and deteriorating memory, but reliving losing Bucky was asking way too much.
But that image… Underneath the photo, the person had written, “So you know how we learn about this guy, Captain America Steve Rogers, and his trusty sergeant sidekick Bucky Barnes in school? You know what they never tell us? They’re gay. Gay, gay, gayety gay. I mean look at that pic. I was reading something and next thing I know I’m going down a rabbithole and looking at all the writing about them and it’s clear they were sweeties but none of these writers will admit that. Its not like they could have let their rainbow flag fly and be the Queer Icons they were meant to be, not back then.
“But if you like read through the histories, you start to realize that there’s probably some reason for all the urban legends about cap and those stories about how bucky didn’t really die in the Alps. How every time some unidentified object that looks old enough to be from his plane washes up on shore the media goes apeshit thinking they’ve finally found cap now, but they always come up with bupkus.
“It’s because they are living their lives together somewhere. Steve died right after Bucky supposedly did. Coincidence? I wonder. Just look at them. There have been cap sightings ever since the end of the war but no one has ever found his location, or the remains of bucky barnes. Tell me that’s not a cover story so the USofA government wouldn’t be embarrassed.”
There was another photo of him and Bucky, and he remembered the day it had been taken—they’d both been sitting on the ground leaning against a jeep, one leg drawn up, one leg outstretched, pressed against each other from their shoulders all the way down to their ankles. Bucky had been handing him a chocolate bar; they were covered in grime from the battle they’d just fought and Bucky’s rifle was slung across his lap, partly in Steve’s. Even with Steve’s helmet on and his eyes slightly shaded, you could see how he was fixed on Bucky, how close they were.
A few comments had been appended below that, most of them talking about something called World War II historical RPF. They seemed tame enough, until he saw barnesbabe12:
“Not to be horny on main, but the fact that this guy chose to follow around Steve Rogers for most of his life whether he was a skinny lil bitch or a giant slab of pure grade A American beefcake says all you need to know. If they are out there living their best life together, I’m here for it. Before he was Captain America, Steve was a trained artist and I think this says everything you need to know about them.”
They used a drawing he’d made of Bucky once, in his service uniform. He hadn’t known it had survived and Steve felt like all the air had left his lungs, seeing it again. Archivists must have gotten their hands on the stuff he’d left behind in his apartment after the serum’s success; he knew a lot of his possessions were in the hands of museums or worse, collectors. But it was jarring this way, something that had been intimate and shared, not for public consumption; here it was, though, used as evidence of people talking about his and Bucky’s romantic life.
Another person had weighed in. “I think there’s a legitimate reason that so many people have, especially in recent years, become obsessed with conspiracy theories or urban legends about the two of them, or even the three of them when you include Steve’s documented relationship with Margaret Carter, one of the founders of SHIELD (and I mean, they called the organization SHIELD and Cap’s most famous accessory? His shield). I’m not necessarily saying I believe the stories, but we’ve seen queer identities being erased or denied countless times, even post-Stonewall and gay people being allowed to openly serve in the military. For instance, every biography of Cary Grant I’ve ever read refuses to admit he was in a long-term relationship with Randolph Scott, as if the dudes who wrote them have to defend his ladies’ man reputation because it will hurt them.
“And that was just an actor, so imagine what they would be willing to do for the symbol of American patriotism and military power!
“It makes sense, with our puritanical approach, that history books and bland documentaries and biopics would only talk about Rogers and Barnes as devoted friends, eliminating the possibility of a queer relationship between them or even a poly one with Agent Carter. And that means it makes sense that a lot of people would be just as suspicious of what they’re spinning as their eventual fates. I don’t necessarily want to diminish their heroic sacrifices or make their deaths sound any less honorable, but I think people who look at photos like the ones above in the OP, or some of the footage in this Buzzfeed Unsolved episode, and see something different between these historical figures are coming from this place of learning, over and over, that history was a lot gayer than the resources ever want to let on. The fact that the powers that be have spent hundreds of years telling us queerness can’t be true is exactly what breeds these sorts of theories and legends, and conspiracies that the government covered up Steve and Bucky disappearing together shortly before the war ended are a natural outcome.”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to watch this video clip; Steve’d been avoiding looking at film footage and photos as much as possible. But he found himself tracing his index finger around the charcoal edge of Bucky’s face, wavering. Maybe this experience would cure him of curiosity about his reputation in modern times. Almost everything today was something he was better off not knowing.
The video clip’s still image showed Howard Stark, on what Steve had learned were regular trips up to the Arctic Circle to locate Steve’s body. Despite himself, he pressed the Play button.
Two young men started talking about Steve’s disappearance and the stories that had sprung up in its wake; he wasn’t entirely following their commentary because they used so much current slang, but there was film of various attempts to locate him—you could see Howard aging and the style of his hair and clothing changing with each successive segment. The young men’s theories sounded a bit like the text comments: all Howard’s attempts had failed because neither Steve nor Bucky were really dead. Before they could begin listing all the Cap sightings that might support this contention, Steve hit Pause.
It was too grotesque. Like his personal life was a story they’d written themselves.
Still, he couldn’t help laughing at the comment under the video: “History side of tumblr ftw, but……Wait—Cary Grant was gay????”
And then it came full circle when the original person who’d started the page added something very recent: “WHAT DID I TELL YOU CAP IS ALIVE. He was ‘discovered’ in the ‘Arctic circle’ right when gay marriage became legal in New York. OKAY MY DUDES. SURE
“You know Bucky’s hiding somewhere waiting to be ‘discovered’ too”
He sucked in a deep breath and took a healthy swig of his scotch. Times like this, he really missed being able to get drunk; maybe he’d have to take Thor up on his offer to try Asgardian mead. Using the back button, he returned to the original forum page where he’d found the Tumblr link. At the bottom was a boldfaced line: “This thread is frozen, no comments are allowed.” Yet someone had dropped in some links to Twitter before it had been frozen, though Natasha and Clint had already drilled it into his head never, ever to go to Twitter, so he kept hitting the back button. As loathsome as it was to see himself discussed this way, he couldn’t seem to look away…
He rubbed his forehead. There had been conspiracy theories when he was young; they’d probably always been around, people being what they were, even if they hadn’t been called that. Most of the ones he remembered were pointedly loathsome. But like everything he’d seen since he’d been awakened, they were somehow much uglier these days.
The words “urban legend” had kept popping up on these pages—he wasn’t sure what the difference was between conspiracies and legends, but he was in it now… The top search result led him to Buzzfeed again; he’d done a brief interview with someone there after the Chitauri battle, but he didn’t recall much about them.
The 10 Most Famous Captain America Urban Legends
Steve couldn’t help noticing that “Most Famous” in there—a dispiriting thought, but he wasn’t going to look up just how many stories there actually were floating around out there.
1. Nothing will grow in the area of the near-Arctic tundra where Captain America’s plane went down, and some years, the actual outline of the crashed plane can be seen from the air, which has been photographed hundreds of times by airplane passengers.
Steve snorted. He’d been nowhere near tundra when the Valkyrie—and it was not his plane, he thought—had gone into the ice. The people who’d written the article were of the same mind:
This one’s been passed around for decades, but it suffers from one glaring problem: no one, including famed inventor Howard Stark, who helped create Project: Rebirth, has ever found where Cap’s plane went down, and it did so far above any areas of exposed land. Wreckage would be far easier to locate on land, and search parties had been dispatched almost immediately after his disappearance yet all came up empty-handed. Cap searchers have been hunting for signs for decades; the changing landscape of ice and water is what’s made locating the Valkyrie more difficult, especially as global warming has affected the polar region. Despite claims of photographs taken from airplanes, no one has ever come forward with documented proof. The rumor that nothing will grow on the ground—or that the outline of the plane can be seen in the dead area of tundra—probably makes Cap hunters feel better about their lack of success, though, so it persists.
He smiled. Well, a story like that one beat seeing himself talked about as though he were an impostor.
2. Cap’s half-frozen body washed ashore on the Irish island of Arranmore, where he was revived and then lived as a light-keeper, staying to himself and all the local inhabitants helping to hide him.
That one, he could have actually enjoyed. His ma’s people had come from Donnegal; it would have been like going home.
3. Similarly, Cap washed ashore with no memory of who he was and eventually became what was known as The Wild Man of Kalaallit Nunaat, a feral hunter roaming the high Arctic tundra of northern Greenland. Anything that lives there is well adapted to extremes, which Steve Rogers would have been after the serum—he’s said to be spotted most often in the summer months of the midnight sun.
4. Those cryptid-style tales of an amnesiac Rogers going feral appear in many other places, too, all over the Northern Hemisphere. Some have even said he’s the origin of the Bigfoot legend because of his physical appearance and superhuman strength.
“Oh, come on,” Steve said aloud. “Even I know that’s from before my time.” And as though he’d be anywhere without access to a decent deli.
5. Rogers parachuted out of the Valkyrie over Iceland, where he has lived for decades. No one knew who he was there, because he blends in among the population so well, as evidenced by blurry photos purporting to show him. He’s said to have fathered numerous strapping blond children through the decades due to his longevity from the serum.
6. The crash was a hoax to cover up that the serum was failing and Rogers was returning to his prior smaller, sickly self. He was supposedly taken to a secret scientific facility, where he eventually died at the end of the war.
7. Rogers didn’t disappear in the crash—he was instead rescued and taken to a secret site by either the US government or the Soviets for study. He is still there, cryogenically preserved and studied to find the formula that created Captain America.
8. Or instead, the Soviets found him after the war and brainwashed him, turning him into an agent of either the USSR or a version of Hydra that thrived under the secrecy of their totalitarian government. He is still alive but unrecognizable—a real-life Manchurian Candidate.
That one hit like a slap in the face. He couldn’t even find the humor in reading the short paragraph that picked the theory apart. What the hell was the difference between a conspiracy and an urban legend, anyway? While some of these were hilarious, the others were just as terrible as what he’d read at the beginning.
9. The Ghost Soldiers of Azzano are the infantrymen taken prisoner at the Battle of Azzano—who later died either on the march to Johann Schmidt’s fortress or in his prison. Among them are said to be James “Bucky” Barnes, Cap’s best friend, who was rescued from the prison in Rogers’ first mission as Captain America. Their ghosts are said to regularly appear marching from Italy to Austria.
10. Speaking of ghosts: The Valkyrie is a phantom plane that can still be seen on some nights when weather conditions are right, flying over the Arctic Circle before disappearing on the horizon near Greenland. Numerous expeditions have hoped to spot the ghost plane and follow its path to the actual wreckage.
11. Why not end on a lighter, more romantic note? One recent legend gaining in popularity as anti-gay legislation topples across the U.S. maintains that Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes were more than just best buddies, and that the government (or Howard Stark) made up the stories of both their “deaths” so the two could ride off into the sunset and live out their lives together.
Obviously, the person from before was not the only one who had latched on to that theory. Or maybe she’d been the originator, who knew. The historical photos included with the article were the standard-issue history book-type pictures, but the one that went with Number 11 punched him right in the solar plexus—it was from the interview right after the Krausberg rescue, when Bucky was still wearing his ragged sweater, his head dotted with bloody wounds, and Steve still wore his battered leather jacket. Yet somehow they gazed at each other like they were the happiest couple on earth, and how had he never seen it before, how obvious their feelings were? He would say this for the modern age: their openness to different ways of loving allowed them to see it, to acknowledge and support it. What he and Bucky were, what he and Peggy had been, and all the ways they each intersected with the other.
“Oh no,” Steve heard a voice say behind him, “you did it anyway, didn’t you? Looked at the urban legends.” Natasha shrugged when he turned around, startled out of his reverie. “I knocked, but when you didn’t answer, I had JARVIS let me in.”
“I apologize, Captain. You seemed lost in thought,” JARVIS said, sounding sheepish.
“No, it’s…fine. I was sort of…not paying attention.” He closed the laptop screen; he hoped his eyes weren’t red from being on the edge of tears. “You were right, this was a bad idea. I can’t tell the difference between an urban legend and a conspiracy theory, they all sound equally awful. Some of them are hilarious, I can’t lie, but most of it is pretty…well. The less said the better, I suppose.”
She cocked her head. “Everyone’s up on the party floor,” she said, using Tony’s name for the communal space. “Care to drink about it? I’m buying.”
He didn’t really want to talk about it—especially about Bucky or Peggy, and Steve hated it when Tony brought up Howard and his search for Steve’s location—but he appreciated her kindness, so he just said, “Sure.” Sometimes it was easier to simply go along than explain.
As they were getting into the elevator, Steve asked, “So, were you all aware I was actually a fake impostor?”
“Well, we’ve been trying to be polite. It seemed like a harmless delusion.” Her smile was cute and crooked, and he found himself smiling back at her. “Was that your only takeaway?”
“I suppose I could take some comfort in the fact that people are odd and they’ve always been odd, which hasn’t changed in all this time, even if I don’t like much of how they show it now.” He paused. “Hey, what’s a Manchuria candidate?”
She pressed her palm to her forehead. “We have to start keeping a list of stuff to indoctrinate you with to this brave new world. Tomorrow, we’re getting you a notebook.”
