open post (steve rogers)

[assembles]

steve rogers / captain america open post.

※ looking for a thread with an all-american super soldier?
※ respond with any character, canonmate or otherwise, and a prompt.
※ open to any format (prose, brackets, commentspam).
※ open to any canonpoint (within marvel cinematic universe).
※ if you don't have any prompt ideas, feel free to throw the ball into my court!
※ you can always refer to the random scenario meme for inspiration.

Comments

[assembles]

[ It's a relief to hear that Sam didn't have anything too rough happen to him while growing up. Steve had also been raised in an impoverished area so he's aware of how bad it can get, though he'd also been the one who'd gone out ready to pick fights.

Steve's mouth twitches into a smile as Sam goes on about bridge. He doesn't actually have that much of an interest in learning; sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

At the question, Steve glances over and then nods slowly. ]

Whatever I could get my hands on, yeah. Needed something to keep my mind busy during the downtime, you know?

[wingedman]

God, yeah. Civilians think war is constant fighting, but it's a waiting game more than anything else. We passed all our books around, too.

[They'd been fighting an enemy that didn't follow conventional rules of warfare; most of their time had been sitting around and waiting for information to trickle down to them. It was a weird combination of boredom and constant readiness, one that Sam's found himself slipping back into recently. That isn't necessarily a good thing.]

I hear it's pretty fancy over in Afghanistan these days, though. They got dorms and wi-fi and all that kinda shit. You shoulda seen how happy we were to get goddamn porta-potties.

[assembles]

[ The waiting had always been the worst part for Steve, too. When it was time to spring into action, that's when he'd thrived the most. Putting together battle plans and talking strategy had also come to him easily. But when all the prep was done and there was nothing left save to wait? That had worn on him.

The evolution of war is a strange topic to try and interface with, but Steve would rather discuss it with Sam than most other people, if given the choice. ]

Some things about it change... other things stay the same. Or that's the impression I got, anyway.

[ He's done a lot of catching up, studying the wars that have affected America during his time in the ice. It's not a particularly fun subject by any means, but it seemed important to be informed on all of it. ]

[wingedman]

[Sam's done his fair share of studying, too - not just in the history classes he took in high school and college, but on his own, when he had Vietnam vets with decades of PTSD walk in and he realized he needed to be able to understand what they'd gone through, how their experiences differed from his own. They're the generation that's most vulnerable; by the time Sam signed up, they'd developed an entire briefing and debriefing process to handle mental health during war, taught them psychological coping mechanisms. The older vets are the ones killing themselves, the ones too afraid to seek treatment. He catches echoes of that in Steve sometimes, when he's not repressing his emotions. But Sam's not here to psychoanalyze his best friend.]

I won't get into the way MREs are nearly edible now, then. [He offers Steve a wry grin. They've come a far way from the C-rations of his war, that's for sure.]

Worst thing about pararescue is that you wait even after everyone else is done waiting. You sit there listening to the radio to see if it all goes to hell and they'll need you for evac, and you know that the other guys are trying to listen in on your transmissions to plan an ambush for when you show up to get the others out. Tryin' to clear enough room for a chopper to land, hoping that you aren't somewhere in the fucking mountains where you gotta carry bodies for a mile or two to get 'em out and you're exposed the whole damn time. Most of the time, Riley and I did a lot of scouting and cover fire from the air, trying to keep the guys on the ground safe.

[Sam drags a hand over his face. That's just regular duty - not his work with Riley on recon flights, not any of the special missions he'd assisted with. Normal, everyday pararescue work.]

[assembles]

[ Nearly edible. Steve huffs out a small laugh at that, as he doesn't think either of them want to get into how horrible the food quality is when you're out on the front. It's probably true that the regulations were a lot more humane these days, but Steve still wouldn't expect too much improvement.

Then Sam starts to go into more detail about his experience in pararescue. It's not a subject Steve has pressed on much in the time that they've known each other, figuring that Sam would bring it up when he felt ready for it. Given that he'd lost Riley, it wasn't something that would be fair to mention without warning. ]

Yeah. I mean... [ Steve draws a hand over his mouth and releases a small sigh. ] The very nature of your job was precipitated on things going bad. You guys were doing some of the hardest work out there. Can't imagine some of what you had to see.

[ If a soldier had to be taken off of the battlefield via pararescue, it meant that they were in awful shape. Blown half to hell by an explosion, missing limbs, possibly on their way to a long and painful death. No doubt Sam had seen people breathe their last on the chopper after they'd already risked everything to get them out.

But having a body to take home to the family was better than having nothing, wasn't it? ]

[wingedman]

It was- [Sam sucks in a breath and blows it out slowly.] They didn't care who got caught in the crossfire. They'd take hostages and use 'em as shields, trap buildings with IEDs, take out unarmed foreign aid workers if they had the chance. Everything we established that we thought made war humane was ignored.

[Not that Sam's ever thought war was humane or civilized or anything like that, but no amount of briefing could have prepared him for the ugliness.]

It's goddamn brutal out there. Just...this senseless violence that chews everything and everyone up and spits 'em back out. When my second deployment was up, I couldn't take it anymore. They were mothballing the project anyway, and I needed to get the hell out of there.

[assembles]

[ That's the long and short of it, isn't it? Trying to make war civilized or humane is something that's going to fail every time. No matter what laws or unspoken rules might exist, there will always be a group extreme enough to break them. Like Hydra. They hadn't thought twice about taking humans and turning them into weapons against their will.

Steve hasn't fought as a foot soldier in any of the modern wars, only as an Avenger, and he's well aware that there's a difference, having lived through both. So he can't fully relate to what Sam's been through, but he has an idea. And he doesn't blame him for one second for his decision to get out.

If anything, it just fills him with a new wave of guilt, and he's quiet for longer than he should be, staring down at his hands. Steve is aware that with his legacy and with the power it affords him, that he influences people in both good and bad ways. He doesn't ever want to forget that, or take advantage of it.

Eventually he looks back to Sam, his expression frayed in a way he can't hide for once. ]

That's why I didn't want you to get dragged into all this. Into my mess. You should be back home now, safe.

[ But Sam isn't, and that's on Steve. ]

[wingedman]

Pretty sure Ross would still have me locked up if it wasn't for you.

[Sam just snorts and shakes his head. Sure, it's a better quality incarceration than most black men get, but it's still prison, still solitary confinement apart from the occasional interrogation - and he's not stupid enough to think that they wouldn't have moved on from casually roughing him up here and there to other methods if Steve hadn't broken him out. Clint and Scott might've been able to work out plea deals, but Sam's in too deep.]

Besides, everything I did was my choice from the moment I strapped the wings back on. You know that. [And the look he gives Steve almost pleads with him to not diminish that. Enough people think of him as just Captain America's sidekick that he needs Steve to acknowledge that they're partners, on an even footing - that Sam chose to fight at his side, not simply followed him blindly into this.] And if I had to go back, I'd make exactly the same choices.

[Well, okay, he might have tried harder to keep Steve from that goddamn airport fight.]

[assembles]

[ While Steve had been referring back to earlier choices, the decisions that had come before Ross had gotten involved, Sam is quick to cut him off on that point too. Yes, Steve knows that Sam had made his choice two years ago when this all started, when the Winter Soldier crashed into his life so unexpectedly, but...

It's true, a part of him has wondered if Sam regrets that now. If there are times when he lays in bed staring at the ceiling and asks himself why he ever got so involved, wishing that he could go back and undo it all. So to hear that that's not the case is some kind of weight off of Steve's shoulders. ]

All right.

[ Steve closes his eyes for a moment, his hand smoothing over the scratchy motel bed comforter as some tension leaves him. ]

Sorry. I won't bring it up again.

[ Most likely a lie, but he's going to try. ]