TM-252: Innuendo (Don't Ask, Don't Tell)
Innuendo
When he gets the letter, the first thing Steve thinks is that he’ll have to buy a tuxedo for his wedding.
In the other world, he’d been married in his dress blues. He probably still could, in this one. No one would stop him. But it would feel wrong - defiant in all the wrong ways - to wear them here, in a world where the laws have yet to change. A world where he’s been discharged from the military for the very same reason he’d be entering the wedding chapel.
The letter is full of innuendo. This is not a standard-issue discharge. He’s Captain America, not a fresh-faced army private. The letter thanks him for his loyal service over the past sixty-eight years, and celebrates all that he has achieved with the military to promote the well being of the United States of America in that time. The words dance around the reason for the discharge, dance around even the discharge itself - as if, until the end, these weren’t discharge papers at all, but simply another piece of praise for Steve to file in an already overstuffed folder.
And then there it is, at the end of the letter: the information that, pursuant with Pub.L. 103-160 (10 U.S.C. § 654), Captain Steven Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, is hereby honorably discharged from the United States Army for making statements describing himself as a homosexual. They didn't ask, but he told.
Steve sits very quietly at his desk as he finishes reading the letter. He folds it up carefully and slips it back into its envelope. He’d known this was coming. This is a huge part of the reason he decided to come out in the first place - to challenge this policy. To show the world the absurdity of a law that would drive even Captain America from the Army’s ranks. But however just he might feel in his decision, he can’t quite stop the feeling of emptiness that’s burrowing into his chest.
He remembers that day, so many years ago, when he first tried to enlist in the Army. How the recruiter told him he was too frail, and how he wailed and argued, fighting tooth and nail for the chance to serve his country. He remembers the devastation he felt when he thought all his hopes were dashed, and his relief when he found out he could join up after all. Relief enough to submit to any crazy experiment the Army could dream up. Relief enough, even, to suppress the one remaining part of himself that might keep him from service - a suppression so successful it would last for over sixty-six years.
Steve can make plans, now. Plans to challenge the policy in court. Plans to combat the homophobic backlash he’s already seen in the media and on the internet as a result of his confession. Plans to buy a tux for his wedding. Everything is happening just as he expected it to, and he knows where to go from here.
But inside, he can’t help feeling like his twenty-year-old self, standing at the recruitment table once again and listening to a bored recruitment officer tell him all the reasons he could never be a military man. There’s no Super-Solider program to save him, this time. And he never thought that would hurt so much.
When he gets the letter, the first thing Steve thinks is that he’ll have to buy a tuxedo for his wedding.
In the other world, he’d been married in his dress blues. He probably still could, in this one. No one would stop him. But it would feel wrong - defiant in all the wrong ways - to wear them here, in a world where the laws have yet to change. A world where he’s been discharged from the military for the very same reason he’d be entering the wedding chapel.
The letter is full of innuendo. This is not a standard-issue discharge. He’s Captain America, not a fresh-faced army private. The letter thanks him for his loyal service over the past sixty-eight years, and celebrates all that he has achieved with the military to promote the well being of the United States of America in that time. The words dance around the reason for the discharge, dance around even the discharge itself - as if, until the end, these weren’t discharge papers at all, but simply another piece of praise for Steve to file in an already overstuffed folder.
And then there it is, at the end of the letter: the information that, pursuant with Pub.L. 103-160 (10 U.S.C. § 654), Captain Steven Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, is hereby honorably discharged from the United States Army for making statements describing himself as a homosexual. They didn't ask, but he told.
Steve sits very quietly at his desk as he finishes reading the letter. He folds it up carefully and slips it back into its envelope. He’d known this was coming. This is a huge part of the reason he decided to come out in the first place - to challenge this policy. To show the world the absurdity of a law that would drive even Captain America from the Army’s ranks. But however just he might feel in his decision, he can’t quite stop the feeling of emptiness that’s burrowing into his chest.
He remembers that day, so many years ago, when he first tried to enlist in the Army. How the recruiter told him he was too frail, and how he wailed and argued, fighting tooth and nail for the chance to serve his country. He remembers the devastation he felt when he thought all his hopes were dashed, and his relief when he found out he could join up after all. Relief enough to submit to any crazy experiment the Army could dream up. Relief enough, even, to suppress the one remaining part of himself that might keep him from service - a suppression so successful it would last for over sixty-six years.
Steve can make plans, now. Plans to challenge the policy in court. Plans to combat the homophobic backlash he’s already seen in the media and on the internet as a result of his confession. Plans to buy a tux for his wedding. Everything is happening just as he expected it to, and he knows where to go from here.
But inside, he can’t help feeling like his twenty-year-old self, standing at the recruitment table once again and listening to a bored recruitment officer tell him all the reasons he could never be a military man. There’s no Super-Solider program to save him, this time. And he never thought that would hurt so much.