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Steve has no idea how he looks — a luxury he would have enjoyed through fresh water in a bowl not given to him for a time — but he can guess. It’s not a good look, in the eyes of those surrounding him now. Unclean. Unkempt. Suitably monstrous. His face hasn't seen a razor in weeks, and were his hands not bound, he would feel a full beard under his fingers; his hair is long, falling on his eyes, unwashed and dirty. So are his clothes.
A perfect picture. The exact one every person attending the hanging — each of them clean, proper, richly dressed, appropriately bloodthirsty — imagines in their mind. A dirty pirate. A monster. A demon from a story.
Steve’s time is coming. The guard leading him to the execution grumbles and curses at him, his rudeness coming from fear, for they all fear Steve. They know his face, recognize him even now, unfamiliar under the layers of dirt and greasy grime from prison. They’ve seen the drawings and heard his name. Their rage, nourished by tales, fostered by fear, isn’t directionless. They want him dead .
To Steve’s surprise, he’s not the only one performing in the spectacle. There’s another man, around Steve’s age, dressed in the usual prison garb — unfitting, ugly, making any body appear deformed, humpback — but he still seems too out of place: too clean, too open-faced, too handsome. It makes him appear younger, displaced, or wrongly caught. His face, however, lacks fear, inherent in the first-timers Steve is used to seeing. He isn’t watching Steve with fascination, typical for those, too.
The crowd yells, drowning out the executioner’s announcement of Steve’s name and crimes. He waits and tries again, but to no success. Steve doesn’t watch him; he stands, spine straight and proud, looking above the masses. He hasn’t got his ship, his men, his clothes, and his weapons. But he has his dignity, and that’s not something he ever plans to let go.
In the periphery, he sees the other man watching him, eyes calm, considering. It’s a long and open stare, at least for a few minutes.
When the executioner turns to them, the silence falls, brimming with anticipation. Steve’s seen it before; he knows the script. The other man is the first. A warm-up.
“Sam Wilson, pirate of the Falcon, traitor of the Empire,” the executioner says, coming to him with two wide steps. “Do you admit your crimes, done with full knowledge of the laws of the Empire, vast and omnipotent, and its Emperor, wise, merciful, and just? Do you repent of them? Do you kneel before the vessel of the Empire, vast and omnipotent, and its Emperor, wise, merciful, and just? Do you swear to be loyal and humble in the face of the Empire, vast and—?”
“Man,” Wilson interrupts him, voice oddly cheerful, even with annoyance in it, “shut the fuck up. I’m not swearing anything to you.”
The executioner chokes in surprise. The crowd, turned somber and dutiful at the repeating words, fearful and trembling before the ritualistic celebration of their tyrant, wakes back up and bursts into screams, motion, chaos. Steve, delightfully surprised, snorts.
And then, just as the executioner, filled with rage, comes to Wilson, death in his stare, he breaks out of his rags, hands mysteriously unbound, and it’s not a hunch on his back, not a disfigurement of the robes — it’s a construction of wood and iron, dissimilar to anything Steve has ever seen before. Wilson kicks the executioner, spreads his arms, winks at Steve, and fucking flies into the sky.
It’s a perfect distraction for Steve’s men to run to the square, surround the gallows, and get him out in one swift painless action. It would have been smoother was it not for Steve himself staring wordlessly up.
“What the hell— Steve! Did they dose you with something?” Bucky yells in his ear, dragging him away, and that makes him come to himself.
“Did you see that guy?” Steve asks, still a little dazed, and turns to Bucky, who stops parrying the guards’ blows to look at Steve’s face with more attention.
After a second of consideration, Bucky changes his expression to a more familiar exasperation.
“Fuck my life,” he says, stabbing the guard who was attacking him from behind in the belly as an afterthought. “Was he even hot?”
There’s really no need to be that apprehensive about anyone Steve likes.
“He kicked the hangman in the guts,” Steve says with emotion. “And then he flew away.”
Bucky sighs and throws him a sword. Steve punches the lights off of another guard with its handle.
Steve stops them from getting to the ship right away. He finds the prison’s warden amidst chaos and pulls him into an alley.
“Couldn’t you’ve done that while you were in your cell, ah, Cap’n?” Dum-Dum asks, because all of Steve’s men are major insubordinate assholes.
“I wanted you all to be a part of the experience.”
The warden’s scared. That shows how he thinks: for Steve’s people aren’t particularly cruel, and much more merciful than the Empire’s soldiers, so no actions of theirs are the true reason for his fear. It’s deeper, older, and it comes more from ignorance than facts. It’s rooted in their names. Steve’s name, the most dreaded pirate of the Endless Seas. This reputation is something Steve has an intricate relationship with: he hates it, and he uses it, and he feeds it. Now, though, isn’t the time for contemplation. Now, it helps him.
The warden talks.
“It isn’t gold,” he whimpers, cowered against a wall behind him, “in that ship. It’s a, a treasure. A secret. I swear, I don’t know what it is, the Emperor himself oversees its journey, and everyone who knows what’s inside is either there or already dead! I never had the honor to be near it!”
They let him go. They run to the ship. They sail away, their numbers unchanged.
Only after that they talk, and they decide, and fight.
“We followed that trail for months—”
“And it’s as cold and dead as my grandma, so—”
“What is this treasure even? How can we be sure he wasn’t lying?”
“If it’s the Emperor’s, may he be in hell sooner, then it must be something valuable—”
“Yeah, only nobody knows what it is, and if we spent another year chasing the old pig’s favorite toy or something—”
“I know what it is.”
All faces turn to Steve.
“And I know what to trade it for. Where to trade it.”
“Would that be gold, by any chance?”
“No. Something much more important.”
They stare at him, a long beat of silence, the silence full of hard, quick thinking.
“For the good of your mission, then, Cap’n?”
The apprehension is obvious. It is in your instead of our, in all their faces, grim and concerned. And yet, they’re here. Following him. Steve has no grounds to judge them.
“I’ve been promised an army in return for that treasure. Something that will bring us the win.”
It’s a hard speech to make and a harder one to listen to. The invisible, hidden war exhausted them all long ago. But Steve has to make it.
“We lose ourselves in little fights. Sinking the imperial ship, or getting the Emperor’s guards out of a village or two — they come back, they always come back. Like a mythical Hydra whose heads only keep growing. But this isn’t real freedom. This isn’t enough. It won’t be unless it’s permanent, unless not only there are no guards left in the world, but their uniforms are used as children’s costumes instead of a symbol of fear. I know it seems unattainable. I understand your unwillingness and your hesitation. So I don’t expect you to fight for me. I don’t ask you to lose yourself in this war. But the painful truth is that the war isn’t an ugly creature living a long way from us — it resides here, as it was here for a long time already, and we’ve all been forced to it, forced to our failure. Every one of you has somebody under the yoke of the Empire. Every one of you has somebody to free. And I swear to you that I’ll fight for each one of them, no matter your decision. I understand your fears. I get your reluctance. The hope is slim now, but remember: hope is the first thing we have. And with it will come the others.”
He looks at each of them for a moment, his stare hard but open, and turns to the sea.
“If you don’t want my fight, and my mission — you’re free to go. I will give you your last share, and any other captain will have you gladly. I won’t fault you for that. But if you stay — that’s our mission now. That’s our purpose, and that’s our life. Until the Empire’s fallen, and its people are free.”
Steve dismisses them and leaves for his quarters, Bucky on his tail.
“You think it’ll work?”
“You don’t believe they’ll listen?”
“Oh no, they’ll listen. Sans a couple of newbies, everyone will stay, you had them eating out of your hands, you master bullshitter. But whatever you’re planning? I’m here to do my job of reminding you of the real world. And its restrictions.”
“It’s gonna work, Buck. This time’s different.”
“Yeah?” He’s worried, mostly. Steve sees it in his eyes, in his posture. Worried for Steve to go too far, to forget that he’s not invincible. But Bucky’s mistaken: Steve knows he isn’t invincible. It’s just that he has better priorities. “Where the hell did you find an army for us?”
Steve smiles, a half-forgotten childish smile of foreseen success.
“I made a deal with the Queen of the Secret Lands.”
Bucky stares at him like he’s a madman.
“What?”
“What? Really? The Secret Lands aren’t fucking real, pal!”
“They’re real. And I’ve met her.”
Bucky watches him for a moment, then shakes his head and lets out a disbelieving laugh.
“Okay, even if— I can take you as the only person able to find the fairytale country and live to tell the tale, but I’m never going to believe that you met an actual royalty and didn’t manage to piss them off!”
Steve winces.
“Well, about that…”
“Oh, fuck my life.”
The first order of business in the Falcon is dealing with a mutiny.
Sam expected this. Hoped that it wouldn’t come to it, but expected this. It was his own fault, in part: too much time spent in prison, talking up the warden, away from the ship, not enough attention for his people. A rookie mistake. One he foresaw, too, and let happen, sacrificed for his true purpose. Sam doesn’t regret the choice, now, but he is saddened by the result. By what it led to. By what is happening now.
Batroc is the one leading it. A clear suspect, an obvious choice for all the discontented. A great sailor, and a moderately good speaker, somebody who has the respect of others. Too cruel, sometimes, and too greedy — not somebody Sam would choose were he gathering a crew for a longer period of time if he had the luxury of choosing loyalty.
“The people are dissatisfied, Captain,” Batroc says, disdain obvious in the last word. “It doesn’t have to end in a fight. You know this is what we need.”
Sam considers him. The crowd of his crew, waiting, breath held, desiring blood. It can go in different ways. If he accepts Batroc’s claim, it’d be a peaceful vote. But there’s a big chance more of Sam’s people grew tired of him in his absence, and the results of such a vote are unknown, unpredictable. And people will be disappointed by the lack of fight. If he does not, there will be battle. Friend against a friend, his own people, divided, with unavoidable losses. The people who followed Sam here from their common home, his core, will stay loyal and fight the others twofold, but Batroc can still have the rest of them.
Both options aren’t acceptable.
“The fight’s inevitable, I’m afraid,” Sam answers, slow and sad. “But let’s not involve the crew in it.”
“What do you suggest, then?” Batroc chuckles. “A battle of wit?”
“A duel.”
That makes him silent.
The crew, relaxed and muttering before, freeze as well, anticipation brimming, and there are only sounds of waves and somber shrieks of gulls.
“Alright.”
Batroc’s acceptance has no amusement in it, which shows he’s not a fool. Many before him didn’t see Sam as a worthy opponent in battle. Many were wrong.
The fight is short, and brutal, and raw. Taking a more prolonged time would only play against Sam, anger the people. He’s efficient; he does not hold back. Batroc is on his back three minutes in, his face in shocked surprise, not even smudged by pain from newly broken bones. Sam presses his fingers, restless with adrenaline, to his own dislocated shoulder — on top of his injuries — and turns his stare to the silent crowd.
Yuusuf, his quartermaster, the man whom Sam knew from birth, who left with him, ready to follow him to hell and back, needs one silent stare. He nods, and Batroc’s dragged away.
“Now, if any of you have another problem with my way of running the ship,” Sam says, “just come and talk like a normal person, not start a bloody mutiny.”
When Sam steps into his room, Torres is on his knees, face pressed against the door. At Sam’s amused chuckle the kid flies to his feet and reddens.
“What’s it looking like out there?” Sam asks him, mercifully not commenting on the picture he made.
“Like they want someone’s head on a stick, Captain.”
“Right.”
A crowd, hungry for a trial. Now fully on his side, at least, but with their thirst for blood not quenched, the resolution of the fight too quick and clean for their spirits.
“What's it going to be?” Torres asks, hesitant, anticipating, excited.
He is but a child. Sam saw kids like him, witnessing their first executions, hyped by the masses, by the thinking of the crowd. Always somber and lost, afterward.
“What would you do?” Sam asks in lieu of answering. “If you were the captain?”
Torres frowns and thinks.
“Something serious. I mean, I have to show strength, but it’s— I don’t know.” He grows more uneasy with each thought and adds, quietly, “some of the guys who went after Batroc, they— we lived and fought together. Side by side.”
Sam nods.
“We’re half a day from the nearest port. I’m leaving them there.”
“You’re not— killing them?”
“Killing a man is never something you should do easily.”
“But— he was a traitor. Don’t you have to? So they’ll believe in your strength as a captain?”
“I’d be a horrible captain if that was the thing required for their loyalty.” Sam smiles at Torres’s look of annoyance, typical for every time people around the kid talk in a too philosophical way for his liking. “There are two kinds of people that are eager for the death sentences: those who have never killed themselves and those who have with too much enjoyment. It’s better to avoid advisors of both kinds when you’re in a position of power.”
“Right. Good to know for whenever I have to judge people’s lives,” the kid mutters sarcastically, and Sam has to hide his amused expression.
It’s not too much of a reach. Sam can imagine Torres, a few years older, leading people — the kid has a good heart and a quick mind. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to see him as the next captain of the Falcon. Sam is certainly trying this whole mentoring thing.
“What are we going to do next, then?” the kid asks, all anguish forgotten. “Are we hunting anything big?”
“Not in size. I got a private mission.”
“A private mission?”
“Yep. Something for my family. And I gotta retrieve it before it’s too late, and it’d be extremely dangerous, very adventurous, and won’t pay off at all.”
Torres tries to make a dubious expression, but Sam sees his eyes firing up at the word adventurous.
“How are you going to persuade everyone to do it?”
“Make a speech. It’s mostly speeches, being the captain, you have to know that by now,” Sam laughs, dodges the kid’s swat, and doesn’t tell him more.
He will make a speech. He’ll leave his quartermaster in his place, take those who agree to follow him, and go by land. This life was never planned to last, filled with men waiting for quick income, not an inch of loyalty. But not all of them are such, and Sam will go to the next and final part of his journey with more people than he started with. He’ll go, and while he’ll never return to this — piracy, captaining the Falcon — he left something in his wake, an unexpected legacy.
It’s better than he hoped. His only wish, for now, is to see it with his own eyes, succeed in his search, get what he’s looking for and come back alive.
Meanwhile, with the most vital information obtained, Torres gets to other questions of his heart.
“Is it true that you met the actual Captain Rogers?”
“I have. We got almost hanged together.”
“That’s wicked. What was he like?”
“Pretty much as he’s described. Only more handsome.”
It’s a little too close to heart, and, judging by Torres’s unsatisfied look, not what the kid expected. But Sam has no other answer. He hasn’t seen the man in action (a pity, if he’s truthful: he longed to see that), and only watched him for a few minutes, with his fame masking the real person underneath. Still: in person, Rogers was magnetic. Unbothered by death threats, fearless and unashamed, and oddly gorgeous even after a long imprisonment.
Sam should forget about him, banish all thoughts of him from his mind and concentrate on his purpose. He doesn’t quite manage to (he absolutely fails at that).
Luckily, Torres doesn’t press. Instead, he dips his head in Sam’s chest of more private belongings and asks eagerly, “Can I fly your wings?”
The market’s busy. Steve, wearing simple clothes, with his hair and beard way longer than they’re drawn on the wanted posters, so that he—
(“Are you sure about this look?” Bucky asked, smirking like the asshole that he was.
“It’s a good look. And I’m doing it for the disguise.”
“Yeah,” Bucky drawled, “but if, hypothetically, we bumped into the Falcon, and a hypothetical somebody— let’s say, its Captain, famous for capturing the best quality prizes of last year, said that he didn’t like the hair, or the beard… Would you shave?”
Steve glared at him, feeling his blood rush to his face. The insinuations were annoying, and the quoting was completely unnecessary. It was normal to check up on the competition. Or potential allies. Many captains probably spent their free time researching vital information about other captains and retelling it to their not-as-ungrateful first mates.
“Disguises can vary. That’s the point of them.”
Bucky cackled.)
—is unrecognizable.
He is alone. Groups attract more attention than lonely strangers, and it’s easier to navigate the crowd; thus, Steve’s alone, with Bucky manning the ship somewhere in a secluded bay, and some of his crew scattered along the market. Their search is for a needle in a haystack: a scavenger hunt for a clue of a clue that will bring them to the schedule of the imperial ship they’re hunting. It’s not a kind of work they’re familiar with, and after half a day of it, following weeks of chasing a mirage, everyone’s tired, and frustrated, and only held together by Steve’s will. But he feels they’re close. A hunter’s instinct of sorts; a foreboding. Steve knows they’ll find it. They have no other choice.
That’s when it happens. Steve sees a man — unknown face, familiar posture — in a more awkward disguise crossing the street. An Emperor’s guard. A rarity, in these parts, on the ruleless island, with laws of the street more prioritized than the Empire’s ones. The man is dressed in rich clothes, his face expressive, scornful, not a typical brainwashed low-guard-like. He's a big deal. He knows something. He’s the one Steve is looking for.
Steve follows him, trying not to attract attention (with Bucky’s sarcastic commentary about his inability to do so live in his head). He watches the guard’s movements intently, afraid to lose him in the busy streets, and for that reason only he sees it happening. Another man — a kid, really, gangly and tall but with a childish face, hairless and naive-looking — bumps into the guard; a common occurrence in a crowded market, and it’d be insignificant if not for the quick trick of the kid’s hands. Something leaves the guard’s pockets without his knowledge. The kid, a triumphal smile on his face, walks away, almost jumping with joy.
He might be just a common pickpocket. There’s no guarantee it wasn’t a wallet, an expensive trinket, or a useless item. But the chances are fifty-fifty, and Steve, alone, with his crew far away, follows his intuition. He goes after the kid.
It’s a quick scene. Steve asks, “Did you steal something from that man?”
The kid reacts smartly — doesn’t stay and pretend he’s innocent, but runs. He’s fast, but not fast enough.
Steve gets to him, and with an intimidating stare and a short gesture, there’s a piece of paper in his hand.
In a second, it’s not there anymore.
“Haven’t heard assaulting children in your list of crimes yet,” Sam Wilson says in a calm, amused voice, standing in the alley with an air of a person unbothered, the page disappearing in his pocket.
The kid makes a quiet indignant sound (Cap!) at being called a child. Steve loses his footing, probably looks like an idiot for a second, and mostly wishes he isn’t as red as he feels. Sam, dressed in a white shirt and well-fitting pants, watches him with a curious expression. It’s incredibly unjust. Everything about this situation is.
Steve breathes in, out, and wills himself to calm the fuck down.
“After stealing from an Emperor’s guard, he’s safer without that paper than with it. Is he yours?”
“Not by blood, but sure. And now he’s relieved of his cargo. Everyone’s safe.”
“You aren’t so much.”
“What, you think I can’t stand up for myself?” Sam asks, and while there are traces of amusement in his voice, Steve’s not so sure Sam isn’t offended.
He freezes. His brain empties. There’s no good answer to that one, is there, he thinks with desperation, and wishes he was back at the hanging, or for Bucky to come and hint to him what to say (even with the consequences of being ridiculed after). Sam lets him marinate in the awkwardness for a little more and then laughs.
He’s got a great laugh.
Steve’s so fucked.
“It’s an improbable feat to go against the Empire, even for the greatest warriors,” he says, forfeiting all hope to seem impressive and going for sincere. “The smart thing would be to go the other way.”
Sam’s eyes soften.
“Have you ever gone the other way?”
“Ah, I’ve never been called smart, though.”
Sam snorts.
“Somehow I doubt it, greatest strategic mind of the century,” he says, clearly quoting, and oh, Steve hasn’t heard that one, but he’s too busy being flustered to question it.
This is why he isn’t as quick, why he doesn’t react immediately when the inconspicuous carriage rushes into the alley, in which Sam and the kid jump on, apparently having waited for it all this time.
“You shouldn’t follow that trail! You have no idea where it leads,” Steve yells after them in a desperate attempt to stop them, both from getting away and looking at what’s written on the paper, but the only thing he gets back is—
“Oh, I know where. And I’m getting there first.”
Fuck.
That’s an option Steve didn’t think of; his own fault. It should be impossible, the route and its purposes that carefully guarded. But Sam was in the same prison as Steve, talked to the same warden. Maybe he heard rumors before, just like Steve; maybe he suspects what’s being concealed.
All questions aside, it is now obvious: they’re hunting the same exact thing, and for now? Steve’s losing.
Or so Sam thinks. For Steve had the schedule in his hands for a whole second, and while it might be nothing to anyone else, for him, the writing on that page is as clear as if it was written on his own flesh. His perfect memory was always a handy secret of his.
Fate loves joking.
Sam spends the weeks after his chance meeting with Steve in a frenzy. And it is Steve now, in his head, and while the over-familiarity is a bit unfounded, it’s hard to call the man his last name when you keep thinking about his ass that much. Sam’s just a human, after all.
Aside from reminiscing and dodging Torres’s questions, Sam’s very busy.
He finds a temporary ship, more inconspicuous than the Falcon, and he and his people (in lesser numbers, with more assurance of their loyalty) board it, settle in it, and start their chase. The exhilaration wraps him in its webs, catches him with no return — he’s so close. After years of looking, after failures and desperation, he’s finally just inches within his treasure. His success.
Sam doesn’t worry about the competition. The schedule had to be a single copy, and even if the rumors flew, nobody had it but Sam after that guard; nobody but Steve, too, but what can be read in a second?
The treasure’s his. His long journey, years away from home, every compromise, every hard decision, the rise and the fall of his pirate career, which changed from simple goal’s means to something more and thus a loss to grieve, every battle he led since day one of his pilgrimage — it’s almost over. It’s almost done.
And it should have been an easy operation. The imperial ship, while heavily guarded, is alone, masked in the secrecy of its contents, and clumsy, with its captain more valued for his silence and the skill to shoot without questions than any sailing talent. Sam should have had it. Sam would have, if not for the sea storm that had it first.
Oh yes, fate loves her jokes.
They find the wreckage. The dead bodies. Unrecognizable remains of what once used to be a ship. A shadow of a fire, human-made. Survivors’ trace.
The island they are on isn’t big but uninhabited, with woods claiming the majority of its ground. It can still be there. Saved, too, pulled out of the sea, the most valuable passenger. Sam commands his people to divide and search the forest.
The work is dull. The woods are heavy and cramped, and easy to find yourself lost in. There’s no simple and quick solution, no smart battle, just walking. Sam, sword in hand, goes alone. The forest here is nothing like the forest in his birthplace, and yet something about nature, woods, a quiet path, brings up the memories. He chooses to walk alone, then, rely on his own senses, not muted by another person’s steps, breathing, or voice. He looks for traces in the leaves, the birds' patterns — the forest’s tale. In the end, that is what brings him to it.
It’s a quiet clearing. A comfortable meadow, chosen to be a shelter by men who never had to find a place to sleep in the woods. There are, yet again, remains of the fire, and traces of human presence: clothes, a makeshift lodging; and covert signs of fight: disturbed leaves, things left in a hurry. And, most importantly, a heavy chest, locked but alone.
It sings to Sam.
He closes the distance in hurried steps and breaks the chest’s lock apart with a swift movement of his sword. And there it is.
Two years of searching. Two years, long away from home, obsessive, mad, incredible years, and Sam’s here. Sam found it.
The shield looks as it always did. Its own long journey hasn’t dimmed it a bit, hasn’t changed it. When Sam touches the surface, it’s cold, unyielding, indifferent, and for a moment, he’s filled with contradiction: both joy at his success and sorrow at the cost. Sam knows where the need for it comes from, remembers all his reasons just as clearly as he did two years ago: the shield is, most importantly, a symbol, a token of other meaning, and in the right hands, its influence is gargantuan. And yet, all history aside, it’s just a piece of metal, and there’s no escape from the somber fact that it’s a thing, an unliving, soulless thing, and it got people killed.
Sam feels the urge to leave it buried. Alas, he doesn’t have the luxury to do so.
He straps it to his shoulder, the weight lifted from him and replaced by a different one; he moves, planning to gather his people quickly and leave this island. It doesn’t happen.
It doesn’t happen, for just as Sam leaves the clearing, another man gets to it, and, in a quick moment of action, Sam finds himself face-to-face with Steve Rogers.
Steve’s battle-ready, or, perhaps, came from mid-battle, and it is quite a distracting sight. More so, when Steve says, voice low and dangerous, you shouldn’t take that with you, it’s inconveniently hot.
Sam really shouldn’t have shrugged him off from the situation, huh?
Still.
“I don’t think I agree with you here,” he answers, matching his tone.
“That doesn’t belong to you.”
Sam scowls.
“I have more rights to it than you.”
The meadow’s filled with tension; Sam feels like prey before predator, and yet, he’d been in the prey’s shoes before, all of those times ending with him winning.
“You don’t understand—” Steve’s voice softens, and while the dangerous threads are still there, it is more pleading, more desperate.
“I understand perfectly—”
“This could bring us, all of us, more than you ever—”
“Steve. No. Whatever you heard of it, whatever you know, it’s not— it isn’t a thing that should’ve been sold.”
They move, the distance between them still enough, but closing.
“I’m not planning to sell it.”
There’s a certain kind of determination on Steve’s face at those words, and it’s what clues Sam for his next move. Sam draws his sword just in time to parry; the metal clicking echoes through the forest.
“I like you,” Steve says unfairly close to him, voice hoarse and low, “but this is about the future of the whole world. I can’t let you go with it.”
“I like you too,” Sam pants as the tip of his sword brushes Steve’s chest, “but you know nothing about the shield and how it connects with the world. And I’m not losing this.”
They fight; the excitement and the adrenaline of fighting his equal get Sam for a moment, in which he forgets the circumstances, in which he’s joyful to have this, to go strike for strike, move for move. It passes. Sam’s better trained, more careful, but Steve’s a killing machine: unyielding and unbreakable. Merciless.
It’s probably wrong to enjoy it.
It’s more wrong to do so in the context of Sam losing. And he is: the exhaustion is taking over him, his still-wounded shoulder aching like hell, and the carefulness with which he treats the shield, irrationally afraid to harm it, unused to its presence, worsens his chances. Steve strikes, and strikes, and strikes; Sam loses his footing.
He falls like a ton of bricks. There’s a sword in front of his unprotected face.
“You have to understand,” Steve says, “people’s future lives depend on this shield.”
Sam laughs, a sad and tired sound.
“I don’t know about your future. But my family’s— my sister’s and her kids’ — my people’s lives depend on it now.”
Steve withdraws the sword.
“Your family?”
“This shield,” Sam says, words hard and heavy in his mouth, “belonged to my family. Yes— I won’t fault you for not knowing this— you’d have no reason to. It’s not a widely spread story. And now, because of its loss, we’re nothing. We have nothing. They might be dead already. I haven’t seen them in years.”
He closes his eyes and takes a breath. He ignores what he just said, doesn’t let himself think about it, sort through every what-if, every morbid possibility. His sister’s fine. His sister isn’t just their parents’ legacy. She’s fine.
“I’m not expecting you to believe me,” he adds, morphing his voice into something calm and unbroken. “And you won fairly. Finish it, then.”
Sam doesn’t look at Steve and waits for the final blow.
It doesn’t come.
“Take it.”
It’s as if the voice comes through fog, distorted and quiet; still, Sam’s certain of what he heard.
“I’ll find another way,” Steve says, putting away his sword, and there’s a strange expression on his face, but he helps Sam up, and he believes him. He believes him.
“You’ll give up?” Sam still asks, dumbfounded.
“You’re right. No future is worth it if we come to it by letting others die in the present. We shouldn’t trade lives.”
Sam nods. They spend a second — an eternity — with their gazes locked, solemn but with something connecting them, a different kind of tension, an understanding and regret.
Sam straightens the shield and walks away, leaving Steve alone, looking lost but determined.
It’s unlikely they’ll ever meet again. Sam won’t get anything of Steve Rogers but a bunch of stories, retold so many times there won’t be any truth in them.
But he doubts he’ll ever forget him.
The Secret Lands are a maze of islands, interconnected, hidden, and peppered with traps. It’s built this way: no outsider should come on their own and survive. For visitors, those who attracted the Queen’s attention, those who are welcome, there’s a special place, a friendlier bay, the neutral grounds.
Steve waits there for his audience.
Bucky’s with him. He’s a little jittery and very frustrated. Mostly with Steve.
“I’m not saying we should run,” he starts, and Steve’s scorching look doesn’t sway him. “But can’t we, I don’t know, have a discussion about the merits of going to the actual freaking Queen and saying hey, so remember how we promised you a thing? We don’t have it!?”
“I’m not running away from this. It would be dishonest.”
“No,” Bucky drawls with a familiar too-calm voice that means he’s on the verge of his patience, “that would be not suicidal.”
The doors open with a loud clang, interrupting their conversation, not letting Steve answer. Not that he would. He wouldn’t budge on this, and, anyway, here isn’t the place to change their minds. Bucky knows it — his words are a mere sign of his anxiety. All is decided: the search has ended, Steve has lost, and now he has to face the consequences.
He does not regret it, his loss. Doesn’t lament over his choice to renounce the quest, to let Sam win — Steve knows in his heart it was the right one. But he’s haunted by his next steps: the journey lying ahead, his war against the world, the Empire, his mission that has no support, no army, and no resources. It will be the path he’ll go, but oh, will it be so much harder.
He does regret that he’d never have the chance to see Sam again.
“The Queen is ready to see you,” a man says, and Steve stands to action.
It’s different from their first meeting, when Steve got to her lands by accident, was imprisoned, and somehow managed to impress her with a mix of rudeness and sincerity enough to be freed. Today, she stands, regal even in her common clothes, in a quiet, simple room, and looks into Steve’s eyes. If somebody can be called the opposite of the Emperor, it’s her.
“Captain Rogers. Did you come to me fruitful after finishing your quest?”
“No.”
“No?” She sounds half-surprised and half-amused. Steve’s taking this as a good sign. “Will you assure me that you’ll continue your work? Make some promises?”
“No.”
“No again. What do you have to say, then?”
“There won’t be a success on this quest. Not from me, not from the others. I found it. I know where it went, and while I can’t say where it is now, I can assure you that was the fairest outcome.”
She studies his face for a long silent moment. Steve waits and tries to do the same, but she’s inscrutable.
“You’ve come to cancel our agreement.”
“Still no, Your Majesty.” Steve takes a deep sigh and goes into the battle; the hardest he’d ever had. “I come to plead my case. I have nothing to offer but myself, with no shield. I still ask you for your people. I know we are of the same mind about the Empire. And I know your plan of action is to hide and defend your lands. But the world changes. The Emperor’s forces roam freely in places we wouldn’t believe to find them yesterday. People grow afraid, and tired, and more lost each day. One day, his army’ll come to you. One day, his ambition won’t be satisfied by anything but surrendered lands. And if you don’t fight him before that, all of us die.”
There’s an expression on the Queen’s face that breaks through her usual impasse. She stares Steve down.
“You’re truly one of a kind, Steven Rogers,” she pauses, and Steve has a feeling it is to make him sweat. “You know, if anyone had told me months ago that an outsider would break his promise to me, wouldn’t apologize for it, and would have the gall to ask for the reward nonetheless, I would’ve thought I should throw you in a fire pit.”
“Will you do that now?”
She laughs.
“You’re free to go, Captain. Regarding your request, however, I will say this: you talk with passion. And you talk with sense. But I’m not sending my people to die for your idealism.”
Steve nods. There’s finality in the Queen’s words, a choice made and unwavering.
“I do have compassion for your cause,” she adds. “I ask you to have it for mine, too. You aren’t privy to our inside politics, but just days ago — literal days — there was a civil war brewing. We managed to unite the lands and get them under one rule — with no small hardship — but there’s still unrest. I can’t afford to help you. I need to help my people first, to get them ready to defend our home. Today, we can’t allow ourselves more.”
It’s an unexpected honesty. Steve values it and hopes the Queen hears it in his awkward gratitude.
“Go with peace, Captain,” she says, walking him to the door. “However, you may find it helpful for your purpose to stay a little longer.”
Steve turns his head to her, curious.
“I may not give you support,” she gives him a surprisingly mischievous smile, “but my younger brother is similar to you in his beliefs. You may find him more open to your plead.”
“You have a brother?”
It’s not in Steve’s right to know, but the way she says it, calm and casual, takes him by surprise.
“I do. I’m afraid he was away during your first visit. He was quite busy returning my symbol of office to me. But I’m sure you two will get along.”
The doors open. Steve, mind racing, turns to the waiting room, and there, in unfamiliar richer clothes, looking incredibly gorgeous, stands Sam fucking Wilson. Looking at him with an inscrutable expression, a mirror of his sister.
Steve freezes.
Bucky, standing behind Sam’s back, mouthes did you bag a fucking prince, which isn’t helpful in the slightest for Steve’s upcoming blushing.
“You finished chewing him off?” Sam asks his sister, the actual Queen, because he is, in fact, a fucking prince.
“He’s all yours.”
Steve doesn’t know what words are. He likes the sentiment, however.
“I think I owe you an explanation,” Sam tells him, a little guilty, with a soft smile. “Care to spend more time with me?”
“Always.”
Sam nods, and walks him outside, with Bucky’s I’ll just stay here again I guess following their backs. Sam offers Steve his hand. The touch is unsure at the beginning, soft, heart-racing; a huge contrast to their last meeting, the fight. Sam moves his thumb along Steve’s hand, and Steve feels like a teenager again.
“First, I need to say I’m sorry for lying—”
“You didn’t.”
“I didn’t tell you who I am—”
“You did. You told me enough. And I had no right to your private life.”
“It still has to be weird to you.”
“It is,” Steve shakes his head and lets out a disbelieving laugh. “We had the same purpose, in the end.”
“We did. Still do,” Sam smiles at his surprised look. “I know your goal. This isn’t a war you should be fighting alone.”
“You’ll come with me? Even if you are— your sister was insistent about sheltering here.”
“Sarah hopes it’ll stay a safe haven. She’s probably right, with everything under control here now— but we can do more. I can do more. And there’s no better reason to get back on the ship than you asking.”
Steve breathes out. The relief and joy he feels are so enormous his body feels almost alien.
“You alright?”
“It’s been a while since I got truly good news, I think.”
“Oh, you should work on that if it gets you so.”
“Should I?”
“Of course. We will win this war, Steve, but in the meantime? You do deserve to be happy. Live your life in between the fighting. Smile. Hang out with kids. Flirt with good-looking guys in the streets.”
He winks at the last one, and Steve can’t contain an awkward laugh, flustered anew.
“Can, ah, kissing good-looking guys during nature walks be a good example of such activities?”
Sam looks him in the eyes, open, and joyful, and mischievous.
“Oh, this one is more than good.”
And he kisses him. And no matter what lies next, what their war will bring, here, right now everything is good in the world.