The instant he saw that badge, Stark looked up at Steve. Though the emblem was obvious enough, he still needed an answer from a veteran who had lived through World War II.
Steve took the medal from his hand, his eyes filled with shock and nostalgia. He ran a finger over its surface and said, "The Soviet Order of the Red Banner..."
Steve's expression could now be called complicated. He read aloud the Russian inscription above the red banner on the Order of the Red Banner: "Workers of the world, unite."
Stark looked slightly surprised. He had not expected Steve to know Russian, but then he remembered what he had seen in Steve's Consciousness World. There had been no shortage of traces left behind by Soviet people.
Seeing Steve's expression again, Stark found it vaguely familiar. Suddenly, he remembered that when Obadiah had first awakened and gone in his place to negotiate with the military, telling the story of Howard and Anton, he had worn the same expression.
It was not just Obadiah. Even the old General across from them wore a very similar look.
Yet Stark, born in the post-Cold War era, found it somewhat confusing. The previous generation, who had been the Soviet Union's opponents, did not speak of that country with nothing but disgust and rejection.
If anything, the nostalgia on their faces outweighed all their other emotions combined.
Perhaps, like Steve, they missed that special era, because it had held causes they had fought for and proof that they had once existed.
Born in the seventies, Stark had been a teenager during the Cold War. He found it difficult to understand that emotion. He wanted to make a joke to ease the heavy atmosphere, but before he could, Steve broke free from that state and said: