Chapter 6

By: MysticFantasy

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"Tony, I swear that if this is anything like the mission in Italy..."

"It's not." Tony assured. "We're still in the same country. Relax."

"Gee, Tony Stark has me blindfolded, leading me somewhere and he's telling me to relax. I can't find any fault in that." Steve remarked sarcastically before he heard a door open and felt a rush of wind hit him.

Finally they stopped walking and the blindfold was removed. Steve opened his eyes and blinked to clear his vision. He was confused and surprised when he saw the remaining members of the team standing in front of what looked to be a fourth of July buffet line.

"What's going on?" the super soldier asked.

"This is for you." Tony answered motioning to the display before them.

"Why?" Steve asked. "My birthday was two months ago."

"You heard him." Tony declared to the others. "We know his was born in July."

"We'll got on that later Stark." Natasha said walking over. "Steve, this is our way of showing you how much we appreciate you and are glad to have you here. Not just as our leader, but as our friend."

"We know that being thrown into a new time isn't easy for you." Bruce continued. "We've seen that you're trying to learn everything as quickly as you can because of it. We see that you put things aside in order to work out a plan that would work during both in and out of a battle. You give your all just to hope that none of us get hurt in a fight. You care about us and we want to show that we care about you."

"Not to mention that you never really got to accept what's really happened since you woke up." Clint added. "Can't imagine going through what you did and finding out what happened to everyone you knew. We want to let you know that you've got all of us to talk to Cap."

"We just want to show you that you're doing a great job being here, keeping us in line and being a great friend." Tony said.

Steve lightly smiled.

"I...I don't want to say. Thank you."

"You've earned it old man." Tony said with a smirk. "Come on. There's hotdogs that Thor's been staring at since we made them."

"I enjoy these delicasies." Thor replied innocently as the group moved to the table holding large amounts of food.

"We know big guy." Clint said patting Thor's shoulder. "You can go ahead and dig in now."

Steve stood back a second to admire the scene before him. He really was a man from a different time who had been tossed into a new world he didn't know about.

Though he had done his best not to show it, Steve had been scared out of his mind when he had been told what year he'd woken up in and and learned what had happened to the world during his absense.

At first he hadn't been sure that he could handle something like being tossed into the future and leading a team of people that he had only known for two days at the most. He had been so close to telling Fury that he wasn't going to be part of the team because he didn't feel like he was the right person to lead the Avengers.

Yet when the battle came he found himself formulating a plan and the others were actually listening to him, following him. Soon battles after that turned out the same way.

He formulated the plans and the others followed it. Very rarely did anyone object to any of his plans or act out something different.

He'd been amazed to find out that people still looked up to him despite the fact that he'd basically disappeared from the face of the Earth for seventy years. He'd been amazed to see people walking around with his picture on their shirts, children holding Captain America toys and fan clubs having been formed that were dedicated to him.

He wasn't so sure what the big deal was about him that made people look up to him. During the war he knew that people looked up to him because he'd been leading the armed forces against some of the deadliest enemies while destroying weapon factories, saving countless lives and bringing down the enemy who wanted world domination.

In this time he'd come to learn that he'd become a national icon and treasure. The army had grown in numbers because of his legacy and even grown men weren't afraid to admit that they were his fans and collected his trading cards.

Honestly, Steve wasn't too concerned about his popularity in this century. He was most concerned about getting to know the people he works with. He had to know how they are in a battle and when they have their own time. It had been a sort of personal mission to get to know his team as best as he could.

Know their boundaries, their strong and weak points, the level of their skills and other things.

Steve once saw his team as people he would just call co-workers and nothing more. Now after everything they had gone through, he could safely call them his friends and maybe even his family.

This new century was loud and confusing with new things that Steve never would have dreamed possible. He'd lost so much when he crashed the Hydra plane into the ice.

All of the friends he'd come to have, the one woman who'd captured his heart, the possible future he could have had...

But being here, with his new family, Steve realized that this was a new chance for him to have that perfect life he wanted.

And he had the perfect people to help him with that.