kiwisaurus121

Steve goes back because he feels like he was never supposed to be displaced 70 years in the future, and so he thinks if he goes back he can fix everything
He gets Peggy to help him rescue Bucky and they OT3 it up
Bucky follows Steve back (please, why else would we parallel that conversation) and then kills all of Hydra and dates himself
Steve tries to rescue Bucky but because he's working within the system becomes corrupted by it and ends up becoming Alexander Pierce
Steve went back and took a 70 year break but Peggy was like "you're 10 years older and I moved on already and I'm not a prize at the end of a story, plus I've got a girlfriend now" and so Steve matures and doesn't actually age but he didnt want to confess this to Sam so he went to a special effects makeup artist before walking to the bench
Actually maybe he tried to take a 70 year break but got bored and time traveled back to like 2023 a day early so he could get his makeup done. I don't know none of the plot makes sense anyway
My dad made an excellent point that if Thanos destroyed the infinity stones in 2018, as he evidently does, than by weird white-washed lady's explanation the entire timeline should just go patooy and everything past then is fractured beyond control which is excellent AU fodder
bandersnatch cucumberbund watching 800000000 takes of endgame "none of this makes sense. Mignt as well give thanos the stones so he can destroy them and then the timeline wont even have to, and I wont have to be around to deal with it, bye!"
Okay here's my current favorite idea for Steve:
He goes back to 194? determined to fix things. His first step? Freeing himself from the ice. While doing so, however, 2023!Steve ends up trapped in his own stead. 1945!Steve is the one who gets to go dance with Peggy, then, since he's the one that would narratively make sense for (yeah I'm gonna time travel to dance with someone I had a crush on for a month and ignore my lifelong buddy being tortured for 80 years haha bye). He changes his name to Grant Carter, grows a beard and wears glasses, and it's MCU so that works. He's become disillusioned with being a dancing monkey for the government as well as everyone wanting to experiment on his blood so he keeps a much lower profile, but still keeps up the vigilante superheroism. He grows old. In 2013, when Steve gets woken up from the ice, it's now 2023!Steve. Because being frozen in the ice is real fucking weird he just feels like he's having the worst deja vu for 10 years. He thinks he can do better though, so he goes back and once again frees 1945!Steve. No matter what he does, he can't change the timeline beyond freeing himself to do lowkey vigilantism and getting frozen in his own place. Sometimes he dies, or ages all the way out, and that resets us to the original MCU timeline. When 1945!Steve shows up at the end to give Sam his shield it's because he's watched the news and thinks he's probably the most responsible one. Listen I just love futility and a whumpy groundhog day time travel solution!!!