Ficlet: Jagged Edges Fitting Smooth
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Word Count: 979
Pairings: Gen/none
Summary: Sam Wilson considers the people around him, sometimes, and wonders how they of all people became the Avengers.
It’s an odd group, Sam thinks. They’re sitting at the dinner table, everyone laughing and digging in to the wealth of food cooked for this group. (To be fair, Sam had been shocked at the amount of food Steve and then Steve and James could consume in one sitting, so the huge amount of food makes sense. More or less.)
They had the two former assassins - though if that ‘former’ was actually as correct as Stark and Banner and Thor thought, well, it was alright to leave them in the dark a little bit longer - and Romanoff and Barton were both vicious and oftentimes cruel. They were a product of hard choices and hard lives. Sam’d seen a few people like them before, people who needed to be reined back by a team leader but could be trusted to get the job done, no matter how dirty it was. He couldn’t subscribe to that kind of morality, though he agreed with the practicality that motivated their morality. But underneath, he got to learn about Natasha, who was strangely vulnerable and delicate and wasn’t ashamed of it the way he’d (wrongly) suspected she would be. He got to know more about Clint, the guy who would shout to the heavens that he wasn’t smart and then proceed to interject observations into Banner and Stark’s discussion on flight dynamics of the Quinjet.
Then there was the reformed assassin - James Barnes, the man as out of time as his best friend and adjusting a lot worse than Steve was. James Barnes, at times, seemed he had no honor code or morality at all. He knew the expedient way to get things done and did it. Sam had to admit that, had he been through the torture that James had been through, he would not be adjusting half as well as James was, James’ minor (major, in terms of damage, but minor, in terms of length) setbacks notwithstanding. James, however, seemed to know more about morality than even his best friend - enough to create clear black and white lines, and forever cast himself in the shadows.
James leaned back, kicking at Steve’s chair, and Sam took a sip from his glass as he considered Steve Rogers. Captain America. He grew up hearing stories about the man, about how the Howling Commandos were more than the color of their skin or their nationality, even. That unit had helped civil rights make headway in America, and sometimes Sam still couldn’t get over the fact that he was sitting and chilling with Captain America. But it didn’t keep him from seeing the flaws that Steve had, flaws that no one seemed to see except James, flaws that made Steve more real, somehow. Steve’s honor code was different than others - based on plausible deniability rather than actual moral uprightness. Oh, Steve would do the right thing, and would expect the right thing from others, but Steve was a soldier and even if he felt he morally objected to something, he would allow others to do it. It wasn’t a clean sense of practicality, not the way Natasha and Clint and James thought of and approached the world.
Thor, though, Thor was the way that Steve was in name only - he did not have a soldier’s practicality, but a brutal efficiency born of war and battle. He would never use dirty tricks to get his way, the way that Natasha, Clint, and James would from the start, and the way that Steve would only if he could win no other way. Thor’s brand of justice was harsh but strove to be fair in all things.
Bruce and Tony, however… they were different, and not, in ways. Bruce was more like Thor, in that he had a very righteous and black and white view of fair and unfair, and did his best to always put himself in the white - but, like, Steve, could bend his way of thinking to justify his actions so that he would remain in the white. It wasn’t quite like Steve’s, not really, because he knew he was making these adjustments and ultimately decided it was necessary, while Steve would ever attempt to justify what he did. Tony was more like Clint or Natasha, in that he, like they, saw the world in shades of grey, and knew he occupied space that was more grey than not. Bruce and Tony, though, they were both still civilians when it came down to it. They had no concept of the harsh realities that soldiers lived through, not in the same way that the rest of them saw the world, so though those two tended towards different moral codes, inevitably those codes were softer, in a way.
Sam… Sam would have liked to believe that he could comfortably stand in the grey and understand that varying pressures could create varying shades, but he had never lied to himself before, and he wouldn’t start now. He saw the world as black and white, and some days he stood in the black, and others he stood in the white. Unlike Bruce and Steve, he never tried to justify his actions, but unlike James, he didn’t believe he could never cross back and forth across that dividing line between right and wrong. He didn’t have Natasha, Clint, and Tony’s ability to create shadows in the world.
They didn’t all fit perfectly, and Tony and Steve fought all the time about who made the right call and who didn’t, but as dinner came to a close and they clattered in the kitchen, shoving plates into the sink as James rolled up his sleeves to start rinsing and Tony began to take dishes out of the dishwasher, putting food away and yelling out possible movie titles for their movie night, Sam was never happier that this team was his, different perspectives and all.
Word Count: 979
Pairings: Gen/none
Summary: Sam Wilson considers the people around him, sometimes, and wonders how they of all people became the Avengers.
It’s an odd group, Sam thinks. They’re sitting at the dinner table, everyone laughing and digging in to the wealth of food cooked for this group. (To be fair, Sam had been shocked at the amount of food Steve and then Steve and James could consume in one sitting, so the huge amount of food makes sense. More or less.)
They had the two former assassins - though if that ‘former’ was actually as correct as Stark and Banner and Thor thought, well, it was alright to leave them in the dark a little bit longer - and Romanoff and Barton were both vicious and oftentimes cruel. They were a product of hard choices and hard lives. Sam’d seen a few people like them before, people who needed to be reined back by a team leader but could be trusted to get the job done, no matter how dirty it was. He couldn’t subscribe to that kind of morality, though he agreed with the practicality that motivated their morality. But underneath, he got to learn about Natasha, who was strangely vulnerable and delicate and wasn’t ashamed of it the way he’d (wrongly) suspected she would be. He got to know more about Clint, the guy who would shout to the heavens that he wasn’t smart and then proceed to interject observations into Banner and Stark’s discussion on flight dynamics of the Quinjet.
Then there was the reformed assassin - James Barnes, the man as out of time as his best friend and adjusting a lot worse than Steve was. James Barnes, at times, seemed he had no honor code or morality at all. He knew the expedient way to get things done and did it. Sam had to admit that, had he been through the torture that James had been through, he would not be adjusting half as well as James was, James’ minor (major, in terms of damage, but minor, in terms of length) setbacks notwithstanding. James, however, seemed to know more about morality than even his best friend - enough to create clear black and white lines, and forever cast himself in the shadows.
James leaned back, kicking at Steve’s chair, and Sam took a sip from his glass as he considered Steve Rogers. Captain America. He grew up hearing stories about the man, about how the Howling Commandos were more than the color of their skin or their nationality, even. That unit had helped civil rights make headway in America, and sometimes Sam still couldn’t get over the fact that he was sitting and chilling with Captain America. But it didn’t keep him from seeing the flaws that Steve had, flaws that no one seemed to see except James, flaws that made Steve more real, somehow. Steve’s honor code was different than others - based on plausible deniability rather than actual moral uprightness. Oh, Steve would do the right thing, and would expect the right thing from others, but Steve was a soldier and even if he felt he morally objected to something, he would allow others to do it. It wasn’t a clean sense of practicality, not the way Natasha and Clint and James thought of and approached the world.
Thor, though, Thor was the way that Steve was in name only - he did not have a soldier’s practicality, but a brutal efficiency born of war and battle. He would never use dirty tricks to get his way, the way that Natasha, Clint, and James would from the start, and the way that Steve would only if he could win no other way. Thor’s brand of justice was harsh but strove to be fair in all things.
Bruce and Tony, however… they were different, and not, in ways. Bruce was more like Thor, in that he had a very righteous and black and white view of fair and unfair, and did his best to always put himself in the white - but, like, Steve, could bend his way of thinking to justify his actions so that he would remain in the white. It wasn’t quite like Steve’s, not really, because he knew he was making these adjustments and ultimately decided it was necessary, while Steve would ever attempt to justify what he did. Tony was more like Clint or Natasha, in that he, like they, saw the world in shades of grey, and knew he occupied space that was more grey than not. Bruce and Tony, though, they were both still civilians when it came down to it. They had no concept of the harsh realities that soldiers lived through, not in the same way that the rest of them saw the world, so though those two tended towards different moral codes, inevitably those codes were softer, in a way.
Sam… Sam would have liked to believe that he could comfortably stand in the grey and understand that varying pressures could create varying shades, but he had never lied to himself before, and he wouldn’t start now. He saw the world as black and white, and some days he stood in the black, and others he stood in the white. Unlike Bruce and Steve, he never tried to justify his actions, but unlike James, he didn’t believe he could never cross back and forth across that dividing line between right and wrong. He didn’t have Natasha, Clint, and Tony’s ability to create shadows in the world.
They didn’t all fit perfectly, and Tony and Steve fought all the time about who made the right call and who didn’t, but as dinner came to a close and they clattered in the kitchen, shoving plates into the sink as James rolled up his sleeves to start rinsing and Tony began to take dishes out of the dishwasher, putting food away and yelling out possible movie titles for their movie night, Sam was never happier that this team was his, different perspectives and all.