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“The enemy is always evil. You have to dehumanize him in order to destroy him.”
Sam turned to stare hard at Steve. Steve’s eyes were fixed on the table. His hands clenched into fists. This wasn’t the Steve that Sam knew. This wasn’t the Captain America he followed. “Steve, you can’t believe that.”
Steve lifted his head. Sam stepped forward when he saw tears in Steve’s eyes. “That’s what we told ourselves, Sam, all of us, even me. I promised Erskine I didn’t want to kill anyone. I promised him.”
Sam thought about his grandpa, the way he’d go silent and stiff if any of the grandkids dared to ask him about Iwo Jima. He thought about Fallujah, shooting an insurgent point-blank in the face. “It’s hard.” The only reason his voice didn’t shake was from a year of practice at the VA. He sat across from Steve slowly. He didn’t want to spook him. “Why do you think you broke your promise?”
“I like being able to fight.” Steve knocked his knuckles on the table. "I like not being weak anymore. At first, that was it. And then the Commandos and I, we had a rhythm, we worked together, we were a team. Taking out Hydra bases was almost a game. And then—and then I went under, and I came back, and there was New York, and then there was SHIELD. And.” Steve swallowed. “I wanted to hold someone accountable for what happened to me, but they told me Hydra was gone, so I fought. Just—blindly. I toyed with people when I worked for SHIELD. I knew I could take the enemy out easily, but I let stuff play out. Picked fights. Like a bully.”
“You weren’t capturing schoolkids.”
Steve shook his head. “They were still somebody’s kids. Still human, right? But I rose to the bait. If one of them challenged me, I proved them wrong, all right. All for Hydra.”
“You didn’t know SHIELD was Hydra. You were following orders.”
Steve’s head jerked up. His expression was terrible, absolutely wrecked. “That’s what the Germans said when we found out what they did at their camps.”
“Steve, no.” Sam felt sick. Captain America shouldn’t have been saying this. Steve, his friend, shouldn’t have been saying this. "Do not compare yourself to them. Don’t go there.”
“Why not? I was working for Nazis.”
“You didn’t know! Even Fury didn’t know, and he was at the top of the damn thing!”
“It doesn’t matter. I had an obligation to know exactly what I was fighting for. Don’t you get it? There’s a difference between being blind and being ignorant. I chose not to see.”
“You can’t lay all of that on yourself.”
“I can. I have to. I’m Captain America.” Steve’s voice cracked. Sam reached out, his hand falling just short of Steve’s arm. “Erskine asked me if I wanted to kill Nazis, and I said no, but I do. I want to kill every damn Hydra agent. I want to—” Steve slammed his fists into the tabletop. The dishes rattled. “—every one that did that to Bucky—Jesus, Buck. They turned him into a Nazi.”
Sam barely touched Steve’s arm. Steve tensed. “Hey. Okay. We’re looking for him, right? That’s why we’re here. I wouldn’t go to St. Petersburg on vacation. We’re looking for Bucky so Hydra can’t have him anymore.” How much of Bucky was actually left in the Winter Soldier, Sam didn’t trust, but like hell was he going to tell Steve his doubts. He’d follow Cap wherever he went.
Steve shook his head. “No. They’ll always—it won’t erase what happened to him. I should’ve caught him. I should’ve—”
“I should’ve caught Riley.” Sam squeezed Steve’s arm. “You can’t always catch your wingman. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do.”
Steve put his head in his hands. He didn’t shrug Sam off, so Sam kept the gentle touch on his arm. If he had been there, Riley would have made a halfway-insensitive joke and then stayed quiet, just waiting. Sam just waited.
Steve trembled. “How do I know the good guys from the bad?”
If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad. “I don’t know. You gotta trust your instincts. And you gotta know this, Steve: You’re not a Nazi. Know how I know? ‘Cause Nazis don’t give a damn about picking the good guys from the bad.”
When Steve was quiet for too long, Sam got up to get him a glass of water. Steve needed something to steady him. Sam set the glass in front of him. At the VA, he usually followed that with pills, but he didn’t have anything to help Steve. Steve wrapped his hands around the glass. His eyes focused on nothing. The glass cracked in his hands.