Anthropological Pursuits
The Captain tries to make sense of the women in his life. Natasha Romanov proves the most difficult.
T'Challa formally introduces the Dora Milaje to Steve and Bucky moments after the two step off their transport into Wakanda. A large group of women in armoured attire greet T'Challa with a militaristic shout. A heady feeling of de ja vu rushes through Steve. When T'Challa charges the Dora Milaje to protect Bucky and Steve, Steve feels compelled to drop to one knee and express his gratitude as best as he can.
He receives a tight-lipped smile from their leader in return. "Unfortunately, Captain Rogers, we bow to no man but the king. We will however guarantee your safety."
Steve stands, feeling out of place. The role reversal is ironic. He has, perhaps, grown too used to being the protector. The female guard initially jars against his old-fashioned ideas of chivalry. It is so different to anything that could have happened in 1940s Brooklyn, New York. But as the days go by, Steve begins to relax. What of it, if he is being protected by a female guard? They are his equals, aren't they? Even in 1940s Brooklyn, New York, his mother had taught him that. In Wakanda, Steve realizes that he has long been carrying around a certain species of pride.
So, even though Steve finds the culture so different he learns to respect the Dora Milage during his stay in Wakanda. He learns to respect the sacrifices these fiercely dangerous and beautiful women to serve their country.
.
Wanda reminds Steve of a younger sister: an excessively super-powered younger sister, but a younger sister nevertheless. This woman, Steve wants to protect. Not in the sense of protecting a china doll lest it break, nor protect a principle in the same way the Dora Milage protect him now. He hates to admit it, but in many ways Wanda is probably more powerful than him. Steve means 'protecting' in the sense of protecting Wanda's freedom and the person that she is becoming. He will always stand between her and anyone who might try to jeopardize that.
There is this one time where Steve accompanies Wanda to the Chenokian embassy to sort out some paperwork. The business is only settled at the end of a long afternoon and as they walk out of the embassy, they spy a restaurant serving Chenokian food. Turns out, Wanda had gone there once before with her brother and the food had been pretty good. Wanda does not say anything more than that, but there is a certain look in her eye as they pass the humble diner by. Thus, Steve insists they go there for dinner. Wanda protests, but Steve shepherds her inside.
An hour into their meal, Steve slightly regrets his actions when the waiter starts flirting with Wanda and Wanda starts flirting back. Steve gives the goateed man an unimpressed once-over, folds his arms and makes a mental note to reduce the tip at the end of the meal. Wanda notices all of this with exasperation.
"You do not need to take so much care of me," she says, rolling her eyes.
Steve shrugs. "Go take care of someone else one day."
"Like you, when you are old? Oh wait, you are old already!"
That joke never gets old, apparently.
.
Of all the women in Steve's life, Agent Sharon Carter is the woman Steve feels the surest about – surest in terms of who she means to him. Steve treats her as a woman whose heart he might win over, fumbling though most of his attempts may be. It was unfortunate that, prior to cryostasis, Bucky's new favourite past time was making smug and snarky comments about their recent kiss (the pole-faced psyche of the Winter Soldier had evidently departed from the man's system).
Steve goes out for coffee with Sharon before the whole drama of the superhero legislation comes about. He orders and pays for her coffee, already knowing just how she likes to have it. This is because the week fore, he had a conversation on this very topic with the girl who sat next to her at work.
"I'm impressed," she remarks as Steve passes her the beverage. She is visibly delighted at his manoeuvre, and Steve inwardly gives himself a smug pat on the back. Not bad for an old man right?
Sharon asks Steve what he thinks of the bespectacled man living at the bottom of their apartment block. The guy has recently started stockpiling an overwhelming array of potted plants outside his door. Sharon thinks it's ridiculous. One literally cannot get outside the building without being smacked in the head by a piece of foliage or stabbed by an unfriendly cactus, co-ordination skills be damned.
He laughs, she laughs. They both avoid the fact that they are both hardly home, given the nature of their work as SHIELD agents. But in a way, it feels good. Steve feels like he can be both Captain America Steve and not Captain America Steve around her. When they finish and Steve offers Sharon his arm as they walk outside, that feels good too. He feels like just another normal guy on a normal date. Who knew how much he's been missing that?
.
In Steve's eyes Peggy is a woman apart. They have been mission partners, fellow soldiers and perhaps something more, briefly. She had been his counsellor, his bastion of sense, sure and solid ground on which to rest when he was not sure which way to go. He knows he can tell her honestly what he thinks about a situation and knows that she will do the same, even now, seventy years after they had first met.
On some nights, he dreams of the Howling Commandos and running through snow-filled forests, gunfire in his ears. He wakes up, and when it is pitch dark all around him he cannot decide what century he is living in. It takes him the rest of the night to convince himself that he is in the present and that he can never go back to his old life. It is as if his body cannot still believe that half a century has passed, as if his body insists that they must still be living in that old time.
It's both comforting and painful to visit Peggy in her hospital ward. He isn't sure of how to think of her anymore. Peggy is where Steve realizes his conceptions of what to do and how to be as a person start to get fuzzy. This woman's niece is now in his life, even though it seemed like just a year ago that Peggy had been in her twenties and not in her nineties. Perhaps it's a malady of being caught in the wrong life: all of these earnest attempts to create frameworks for thinking about all of his relationships. Because, perhaps, if he has these frameworks, they can help him navigate what otherwise seems to be incoherent and confusing. Or perhaps he wants to convince himself that he still knows how to operate as a (somewhat) normal human being, a human being who has roles to play, a person to be.
When Steve does visit Peggy, he will often come with old songs from the past. He doesn't bring the song they danced to – it somehow feels inappropriate, what with she having a husband and all that. But there are a great many songs they can talk about – and there is something gratifying in being able to talk to someone who knew the person he used to be. He is amazed too, when she starts telling him stories, stories of what she did after he went under the ice. He's both proud of her and then sad for missing out on her achievements when they happened.
"Good god, I always feel delusional when you come and visit," she croaks at one point, "I still can't believe how young you are."
Steve laughs. "It's nice, spending time with you. Everyone else says the opposite."
.
There is always a mixed bag of feelings when the name 'Natasha Romanov' pops into Steve's head. He wishes that it wouldn't have to be like this – all of this persistent thinking and figuring out of what he thinks of her and what she is to him. She's important to him he knows, but he finds the phrasing of why and how difficult. It's only been momentarily that he feels they have ever been completely on the same page – that is, when they led the Avengers together and she had been his second-in-command. She was the one who rallied all of their troops and helped him keep them in line. How short lived that had been.
Despite all of all of the things they have been through together there is still so much of Natasha that Steve finds unfathomable. And even worse, he feels like she has crept under his skin in a way that feels too close for comfort – as if she can see right through him, effortlessly. Steve both completely trusts and respects Natasha, and yet he feels wary of her, because he finds himself often unsure of the ways in which she operates.
She has been both ally, and with the recent dispute, foe. Despite his attempts to assuage the man, the Black Panther still nurses misgivings about her: 'You think you know a woman, and then she goes and does a thing like that.' This is a woman who has flirted with him, even as she has told him to go flirt with other women; a woman who has been both invulnerable and vulnerable to him; a woman who has both protected him and been the one he has protected. She is a hundred different faces all wrapped up into one person, and this bothers Steve, because it means he doesn't know what to do with this phenomenon that doesn't quite fit any relational archetype he knows of.
He also hates the idea that he is just another piece in some bigger game of chess she is playing – perhaps because somewhere deep inside, he wonders if he is avoiding that bigger game through indulging his one-minded pursuit of protecting Bucky. His guilt makes him irritable, and this temperament remains right up to the day that Natasha unexpectedly shows up in Wakanda.
Her hair is cropped short again and she seems unfazed by the heat and humidity. She also refuses to tell him why she has come.
"Do I need to have a reason to visit you, Captain?" she quips, raising her eyebrows.
Steve laughs, but it sounds slightly humourless. "After all that's happened I'd say you do. Have a new scheme you'd like to not-inform me about?"
As soon as the words escape his mouth, Steve regrets them. They sound a lot pettier said aloud and they wipe the smile that had been gracing Natasha's face right off.
"That's not fair and you know it."
"It would help if you shared more."
Natasha sighs, exasperated. She's annoyed at him too, he realizes. She gives him one of her soul-piercing looks. "Didn't you say to me, once, that you wanted a friend?"
"You have a strange idea of friendship."
"I'm not sure if yours are completely orthodox either."
Steve laughs again. Some, but not all of the tension passes. He exhales and turns away. He thinks of all of the times when they've argued, or also bantered. He thinks of that one time they kissed. He thinks of how many times they've been there for each other, their current disagreements and still finds himself slightly perplexed. He tries to let it go.
"You going to come back to Wakanda again?"
"I don't know, are you going to be this amiable the next time I visit?"
Steve laughs, a third time, and this time he doesn't feel so sarcastic.