Chapter Text
Fundamental attribution error: The dual tendency of observers to underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the influence of dispositional factors on a person's behavior.
“Captain, has anyone ever told you that you were wrong?”
Caught off-guard, Steve dragged his attention away from the phone in his hand, and the newsfeeds he tortured himself with daily. “Your Majesty?”
T'Challa just looked at him. He had a strange way of looking at you, as if he knew all there ever would be to know about you, but also as though you were a curiosity presented to him without context. After a moment, the king sat down next to Steve on the leather couch, and turned to stare out at the stunning panorama of Wakanda at sundown. He repeated his question.
Steve cleared his throat and set his phone down. “Bucky used to tell me when I was being an idiot,” he said, with a faint shrug. “And Peggy was always willing to cut me down to size.”
T’Challa kept silent.
Steve frowned at him. “Are you… trying to tell me I was wrong?”
“That is not why I asked,” T’Challa said simply.
Steve wondered whether that was meant to be an answer.
T'Challa breathed in. “When the Accords were presented to you, Wilson joined your side in the… debate. Why?”
“Mostly because he disagreed with the idea of UN surveillance of the Avengers,” Steve replied frankly. “But you'll have to ask him.”
T’Challa’s brow dipped fleetingly into a deep frown. “And why was it that he then joined you in protecting Barnes?”
I do what he does, just slower.
“He…” To his dismay, Steve hesitated. Sam didn’t deserve to be doubted like that, but all Steve knew for sure was… “He's my friend.”
T'Challa didn't respond.
“What's this about?” Steve asked, wary.
“I acted rashly after the death of my father. I have forgiven myself for this,” T’Challa said, his tone factual. “I acted hastily, on poor information, and your friend could have died at my hands. I refused to consider the consequences of my actions until it was almost far too late, and I believed the very worst of your friend on the word of others. Does that sound familiar, Captain?”
Steve couldn’t fail to notice the censure, but he was too tired to get angry about it. “With all due respect, at least I was protecting my friend.”
“You see yourself as a protector, then?” T’Challa prodded.
Steve’s hand clenched against his will, tightening against the strap of a shield that was no longer present.
“I used to,” he said through his teeth. He looked out the window at the murky landscape. “But then I hurt Tony. More than I—more than was…. I was angry, and I hurt him.”
“I am not trying to lecture you, Captain.”
“You aren’t?” he burst out angrily. “Forgive me, but what are you doing then?”
“I am simply talking to you, Captain Rogers. We have hardly spoken in all the time you have been here, in my country. In my home.”
Steve snapped his mouth shut. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know if anyone has ever told you that you were wrong.”
Steve grimaced at him, not sure how to politely point out that he had already answered that question.
But T’Challa shook his head slightly. “Not if anyone has teased you about being wrong, or corrected you when you became arrogant.”
“Arrogant?” Steve repeated sharply.
“You are an excellent fighter, Captain. I know you have spent most of your life fighting simply to be seen. You were given the opportunity to lead, but you were not given the tools. The serum,” he added quickly, sensing Steve’s protest. “Your strength, your capabilities, all of it is nothing to a leader.”
Not a perfect soldier.
“But people often do not understand the power in weakness,” T’Challa continued, rising to his feet. He stepped over to the enormous window, clasping his hands behind his back.
But a good man.
“Do you feel more like yourself, Captain, now that you are once again… weak?”
“What do you want?” Steve snapped, slamming one palm down on the leather of the couch. The sound was overly loud in the sparsely-decorated hallway of the palace.
“Are you still a protector?” the king asked him, more firmly.
Steve pressed his lips together, but couldn't find the words to answer.
“You do carry a shield.”
“I don’t anymore.”
My father made that shield!
He closed his eyes, trying to swallow down the tightness in his throat.
“And why not?”
Steve breathed in and out, slowly. “Tony—I hurt Tony. I told myself… that I was protecting him. That it didn’t matter now anyway. But I was really only protecting Bucky. And myself.”
His words cut off at the remembered sound of the shield striking Iron Man's helmet, over and over again. Steve had wanted to see Tony’s face – his pain, his anger, to refuel himself and remind himself why he was fighting, what Tony was trying to do to Bucky and feel… feel…
But all he saw when the helmet came off was fear. Wide eyes, white visible all the way around his blown pupils, sockets framed with red blood on skin going blue with cold, looking up at Steve like…
The arc reactor had flickered like it had years ago in New York. Steve was gasping for breath in Siberia, his body flooded with adrenaline and horror as the sound of his final strike echoed through the bunker. Steve was watching Tony fall like dead weight out of a portal Steve had closed on him.
“Who do you want to protect, Captain?” T’Challa asked.
He shook his head. “I can’t protect anyone. Not anymore.” Maybe not ever.
“Captain Rogers,” the king said in a low voice, persistent. “Who do you protect?”
“The little guy,” he forced out, after a moment. “The ones who need protecting.”
“And what if they do not wish for your protection? Do you protect them anyway?”
“Of course.”
“Do you protect them no matter the cost to you?”
“Yes!”
“Do you protect them no matter the cost to them?”
Steve's response caught in his throat.
“If they fear you. If they look at you as if you were a monster. If you sacrifice their free will and their right to choose, do you protect them?”
Steve realised he was shaking, slightly. His hands clenched against his thighs.
Don't bullshit me, Rogers. Did. You. Know?
“And what lengths would you go to to protect the people you care for, Captain? Would you die for them? Would you kill for them? Would you hate them? Would you fight them?”
Steve looked up, his jaw set firmly. “I would.”
T’Challa nodded, unruffled. “Would you tell them that they are in the wrong? Would you listen to them?”
Steve… had no answer. The answer was obvious, should have been obvious. Of course he would listen to the people he cared for. If they spoke up, he would…
If we have one hand on the wheel we can still steer.
… He didn't even know where Nat was right now.
Stay home. You'll only make this worse, for all of us. Please.
Tears pricked suddenly at his eyes. Nat was right. He had kept both hands firmly on the wheel and driven them off a cliff. And now he was left in a ravine with no clue how to rescue himself or his friends. They had followed him. They had trusted him.
He must have lost a bit of time, because the next thing he felt was T'Challa's hand settling on his shoulder. He didn't even have it in him to flinch. His eyes were clenched shut.
“Steve,” T’Challa rumbled. His hand was warm through Steve’s shirt. “This is not completely beyond repair. But you cannot go back unchanged and expect a new outcome. There is bravery in accepting compromise. If you enter every fight determined to be the last man standing, you will eventually end up standing all alone on a pile of those who dared speak up against you. So you must ask yourself – why do you fight? Who do you fight for? When you know why you fight, you will know who you stand against. And who you stand by.”
Steve had to swallow a few times before speaking, trying to wet his desert-dry throat. “Is that what you're trying to do?” he asked, his voice not much more than a murmur. “Repair this?”
T’Challa squeezed the hand on Steve’s shoulder, once.
Steve just nodded in answer. He had fought everything, had fought the whole world for what he knew was right, just like Peggy had said. He had planted himself, and told the whole world “No”… and he hadn't once considered that maybe the whole world had been right.
And maybe he had been wrong.
He had always thought that a shield and armor were fundamentally different: a shield could be used to protect others, whereas with armor you're only ever protecting yourself. But what use is one shield when the whole world needs protecting?
Then he remembered something Tony had said at the Ultron Inquiry, something about building a suit of armor around the world…
He remembered being in an alley with a trashcan lid and a bloody lip, and a friend who fought for him when he didn’t want it. Bucky had loved him – he protected Steve because he loved him.
And Steve…
Steve hated the world that he woke up to. A world where Peggy Carter could die and her life’s work could be contaminated by Hydra. And where the Commandos were all dead already, all except Bucky, who had suffered a fate far worse than death.
This world was death and disappointment, and he didn’t care what it wanted.
He fought because otherwise he would have absolutely nothing.
Pretending you could live without a war.
He felt something clawing at his chest, and it felt like two brown eyes wide with fear, surrounded by blood and bruises.
So when the world said they didn’t want him to fight for them, he'd fought his entire world for—for what? He only realized that he had finally found something to protect when he smashed his shield into the arc reactor.
He had something to protect.
He had a warm, loving embrace in an old church in London, and a man who deserved better than to have people shoot at him endlessly for associating with Steve Rogers, and a man whose voice broke when he begged Steve not to tear their family apart.
Time slipped again, and T'Challa was gone. But Sam was there, sitting right beside Steve and watching him out of the corner of his eye.
“Sam… talk to me,” Steve blurted.
He wanted to listen. He wanted to tell Sam that he knew nothing and that he loved him, and that he fought for him, and that he would fight to bring him out of exile.
But he was only good with words when they came out cold.
His hand shot out to grip Sam's shoulder, like T'Challa had gripped his.
Sam’s fingers rose and clasped Steve's wrist. He was staring at Steve in concern – Steve didn't want to know what he was seeing.
“Jesus, Steve, how long have you been holding onto this?”
He didn't know how to answer that. Somewhere between the last few months of hell, and his whole life, maybe.
“Steve,” Sam said carefully. He picked his works like he was tiptoeing into a minefield. “I need to know how bad this is.” He took a deep breath, and Steve closed his eyes pre-emptively. “Steve, what happened in Siberia?”
In his mind, he heard the phantom screams of a woman he had never met, and never seen before. She was screaming for a man he had known – a man who had been his friend. Then Tony flinching back from him. Flinching away from two years of silence and cowardice. Of thinking he knew what was best.
I'm sorry Steve, that… that is dangerously arrogant.
Steve wished he could go back to the Compound, to the room off the kitchen where they'd all sat together. When Tony scolded them for misusing the garbage disposal, and then showed them a young man who'd become just another piece of the Avengers’ collateral damage.
He wished he had asked a question, any question.
He wished he'd cared enough about the people surrounding him to talk to them.
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” he said roughly, which didn't answer or fix anything.
Sam's lips twisted briefly, then he gathered himself. “You should not have been on active duty. Or you should have been seeing a counselor. Or both. I failed you there. No, shut up, I did, I should have seen this. I saw you as Captain America before I saw you as anything else, even after all this time.”
“You know,” Steve said wryly. “Not that deep down, I’m actually just a skinny little kid from Brooklyn.”
“Yeah, you are,” Sam said warmly. He laid his arm over Steve’s shoulders. “And you know what? I kinda like that guy.”
Steve summoned a half-smile, but Sam wasn't looking at him. He was staring out the window at the ever-present fog over the jungle.
“We’re gonna fix this, man. We’re gonna go home.”
For the first time in this century, instead of a tiny, grimy flat in Brooklyn in a world that no longer existed, that word conjured the image of a grassy plain and thick rings of trees, surrounding a enormous complex of metal and bulletproof glass. Of a room designed just for him, and a building filled with people he loved. People who loved him.
“Home,” he whispered. We’re gonna go home. Back to my family.