notyourgerbil | Bio and brief personality notes

So you probably know Steve Rogers as a kind, nice guy with a good moral compass who saves the world from Nazis and HYDRA. Well, things go a little differently in this mirrorverse.

Here Steve's earliest years are pretty happy, he has Bucky to stand up for him and protect him from the bullies at the orphanage. But then Bucky gets adopted by a nice family and Steve is left alone to fend for himself. Sure, they still remain friends, for a while anyway, but Steve can't help but feel bitter about it, especially because his final years at the orphanage are made worse without his best friend. And he only manages to save himself from further torment by doing whatever the older, stronger children tell him to do.

Still, he tries to put all that behind him when he eventually leaves and heads to college to study art (one of the few joys he had at the orphanage), and mostly remains a good person. When the war begins, his love of his country compels him to try and join the army, but he is rejected constantly, a fact that doesn't help his bitterness.

And then he manages to get himself chosen for the super soldier program, much the same way that we're all familiar with, and he is chosen to take the serum. But something goes terribly wrong, somewhere a mistake is made, and instead of amplifying all his good traits, the serum takes everything negative about Steve and makes it worse. But still, he is eager to serve his country, even if he suddenly takes great delight in all his new found power.

But the army doesn't give him what he wants, they don't let him fight, instead they make him sell war bonds and dance for them on their puppet strings as they conduct lab experiments on him to see how well the serum worked. In fact, they know something went wrong with the serum, Dr Erskine had known it, too, before he'd been murdered by the HYDRA spy. But Steve doesn't believe it, no matter much they insist he's unwell. He feels great, better than he ever has, and everything in him says he's better now. All he wants is to fight for his country.

But Steve being unwell doesn't stop the government from turning him into Captain America. Because in this universe he still stops the HYDRA spy and actually manages to keep him from committing suicide, all in the public view. It doesn't matter that Steve beats the spy up pretty badly for killing Erskine, he still saves a kid and foils a Nazi plot in the public's view, inspiring people to enlist. So of course the government can't resist using Steve as part of this propaganda coup. It's not like they know exactly how wrong Project Rebirth really went; only Erskine knows that, and he's dead.

But when Steve goes out of his way to prove himself by attacking a HYDRA convoy, he is reprimanded and thrown in the stockade to await court martial. As far as he's concerned, he's been betrayed, used by the officials of the American government like a puppet. And not only that, but Steve is now convinced that the government in charge of the country he loves so much is incompetent and fighting the war all wrong, not least because they refuse to let him, a super soldier, fight for them.

So instead of facing punishment, he deserts and joins the Nazis, but not because he believes in them. No, he has something else in mind. Hailed as the ideal Aryan man, he is embraced by the Nazi elite and eventually manages to take control of HYDRA, where he is worshipped. He uses these new resources to secretly sabotage the Nazi regime from the inside, helping the Allies win the war, though they don't know it. And he doesn't think for one second that those idiots in charge of America would praise him for his actions any more than they did when he attacked the HYDRA convoy before. Especially since he's been attacking the Soviets, too, though to a lesser extent, because he knows communism will be the next big enemy.

And, he decides, when the Allies have won the war (or rather, when he's won it for them), he'll turn his sights on the United States. Because there's no way America can defeat the Soviet Union if its being run by idiots. Steve can do it better than them, he can save the country he loves, and defeat the Soviet Union, too. And he'll never be anyone's puppet again, either.

So if you do meet this Steve, you'll notice he still speaks like that kid from Brooklyn, you might even confuse him for his good counterpart from the other reality, since he can pretend to be nice to get what he wants, or just when it suits him. But he is extremely bitter, so if you say the wrong thing, you might find yourself exposed to his temper. He can be pretty damn vindictive, too. He has morals, but they are few; he has a goal he's working toward, and he isn't going to let things get in the way of it, even if it means he has to kill some of his fellow Americans, or anyone else who gets in his way. He's not so shy around women anymore, either; why should he be, after all those months he spent in Berlin, and all the ladies who swarmed around him as the new Nazi Aryan ideal?

Well, ok, he'll probably still be awkward around one Peggy Carter. Because he has feelings for her, and he might even be in love with her, enough for him to refuse any other relationship offers.