Work Text:
Sam came across the Captain slouched over on a bench in Central Park, sketchbook lying forgotten next to him. He sat down on the other side, meeting Steve's eyes. "You all right?" he asked.
Steve gave a sharp, bitter little laugh. "Suppose you could say that."
"Wanna talk about it?"
Steve sighed. "We never leave the war, do we? Not really."
Sam inclined his head. "A lot of us don't. It is what it is, we deal with it."
"It's hard to explain, though, to most people. I try to tell people, but... it's not what they expect out of me."
"Well, sometimes it's hard to believe you're as human as the rest of us, that war did the same things to you that it did to us mere mortals. But I saw it, first time we met. You don't have to play Captain America with me."
"I'm supposed to be so much stronger. To stand for so much. But I can't...." He shook his head, looking at his hands like alien things. "Jesus, this body. This body isn't even home. It's like a uniform I put on to go to war, and I can't take it off. I don't want to. And you know it's been since before... all this, it's been what, three quarters of a century since being comfortable felt right? Since feeling safe was a thing I knew the taste of? Sometimes I think this stuff, this serum, it let me adapt too well. Do I even want those things anymore, the things I used to want?"
Sam frowned at him. "Man, something shook you up bad. What happened, with the Ultron thing?"
"God, it shook everyone up. The girl we found, the enhanced, she slid right into our minds and pulled out our worst fears and played it all out in front of us. You know how strong Natasha is. Whatever she saw, it left her shaking like a leaf."
Sam shook his head. "Can't even imagine what could do that."
"So Stark came up to me after, while we were hiding out, said I seemed to have come through it okay. That he couldn't trust someone who didn't have a dark side. Thought just because I wasn't showing it.... Fuck, I wanted to make him shut up. Break something. Good thing there was already something in my hands, because he wouldn't have survived what happened to that log."
Sam took a breath, ignored most of that, and cut right to the crux of the issue. "So what did you see?" he asked. "If you don't mind my asking."
Steve lowered his face into his hands. "I saw Peggy," he said, and then he let that hang for a minute. His voice changed as he spoke of her now, sounding bright and hearty and false. "You know she got married, had kids? Grandkids, even. And it isn't like anyone coulda made her do anything she didn't wanna. So home, family, that must've been what she wanted, right?" He shook his head. "I don't even remember being the guy who wanted that, too."
"Hey," said Sam, knocking him casually shoulder-to-shoulder to get his attention back. "What did you see?"
"We were celebrating. The war was over, wine and dancing, music and laughing, but all I could see, all I could hear was blood and fighting, shells and screaming. And Peggy, she was grinning from ear to ear like everything was right with the world, and she turned to me, and she said, 'The war's over. We can go home. Imagine it.' And everything stops. Suddenly I'm in an empty room, alone." Steve laughed again, and it had a little something of hysteria in it. "Can't even imagine what it would look like, to go home. What am I even trying for?"
"War will change you," Sam replied, unfazed. "Not just how you react to things, but your beliefs, what you want. You remember what I asked you, first time you came down to the VA?"
"Yeah," Steve said, looking down at the ground with a bit of a frown. "You asked what made me happy."
"And it's okay not to have an answer," Sam assured. "Just so long as you keep looking."
Steve looked up at Sam again, thoughtfully, watching for reactions. "And what if my answer is... to keep fighting? To be in the middle of things, helping people however I can?"
Sam smiled, bright, crooked, friendly. "That's as good an answer as any," he said, "'long as it's true and not just a way of avoiding the rest of your life. 'Long as you've got people around you who you can call family."
"Yeah, I've got people," Steve said, returning the smile. "I've got a team."
"That's good. And you've got me. So just lemme know if there's anything I can do."
Steve raised his eyebrows at his friend.
"Well," he said, "you ever think about becoming an Avenger?"