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WHO: Steve Rogers
WHERE: The Fountain
WHEN: September 17th
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Will add if necessary.
STATUS: Closed

Even if Wakanda weren't as historically reclusive as it's been until more immediately recent memory, Steve wouldn't pretend he knows enough about it to say whether the fountain belongs there. He's hardly even been outdoors, for all that he's had quite a view from inside; as a guy who draws things in a notebook on occasion he doesn't really think it comes from the same school as the giant panther carved out of the side of a mountain, but what does he know? He and Bucky arrived bloody and exhausted, in no mood for sightseeing, no matter how much the hospitality of Wakanda might be considered a rare privilege. Hard to see it that way, after sleeping it off for a day or so only to wake up to Bucky having already made up his mind.

He's had a lot on his own mind.

Still, the fountain seems out of place with what he's managed to glimpse of a ferocious sort of beauty, in the midst of buildings that Tony would be more comfortable calling home. This is— well, this looks more like something from his time. And he'll just as surely end up calling the bottom of this fountain his home, if he can't get out of here, since he apparently has enough clothes to get him through a cold winter. At least mulling over architecture is as good a way as any to keep from thinking too hard on how much trouble it's giving him.

He hadn't made the first jump. He puts the sides at about fifteen feet, too high for a straight jump for the edge, but manageable with the help of one of the more horizontal cracks in the wall and a running start. He'd taken a few steps backward, used the momentum to jam the toe of one of his new boots into the crevice and launch himself upward. It'd been no good, the tips of his fingers reaching far below the edge. He'd felt it in his body before that, though, the unexpected effort of the maneuver, when it ought to be so much going through the motions. The second try hadn't gone any better, after trying it from farther back, and he'd looked around at the scattered debris in here with him, determining that the leaves and sticks and dirt weren't exactly enough to make anything of. Gives him an idea though.

Climbing up the centerpiece is easier, even if he can still feel the strain in his calves, his arms and shoulders. Steve ignores it as best he can for now, figures he'll get the answer to why his heart's beating harder in his chest to keep up with his exertion when he finds whoever brought him here. Pretty effective, whatever they gave him, to keep him unconscious long enough to move him, and to weaken him even longer — though he can't help but wonder why, then, he doesn't feel the least bit groggy. He reaches the top of the centerpiece and braces himself there, somewhat unsteadily — which he also ignores — and grabs for a branch hanging from the tree overhead. He's just able to reach the nearest one, though it's by no means the strongest, and it bows toward him. He sighs, mutters, "This part would've been a lot easier seventy years ago," and takes a look at his surroundings.

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It's easy to tell at first glance that this guy's one of said new mouths. His dark green scrubs have dirt on them now from his attempts to scale the fountain and then a tree (and falling from a tree), but what's been dirtied also clearly hasn't been lived in yet — there's still a clean, ironed crease down both sleeves. He's got both straps of the welcome backpack — also in good shape — slung over one shoulder, and the heel of his boot is dusty but unworn where the dog noses it.

If nothing else, it's a welcome distraction from his attempts to clear his head — though Steve supposes he's only got himself to blame for that, considering he's got plenty of company to choose from. Either way. He turns around at the intrusion, looks down. He doesn't have any fillings, but his eyebrows sure shoot up at the howl, and after a second he crouches down and rests an elbow on a knee so he can hold his hand out to her, palm up.

"Hey," he says, more modulated than the call of the man coming up behind her. Steve makes him for military even at a distance, but it's not until he's closer and Steve looks up from where the dog has at least temporarily left off the baying to give his proffered hand a good sniff that he realizes he already knows what branch, and how. He's read it in the paper, seen it on the news more than once.

Steve's never seen him with his hands free, though, and his eyes drop from Frank's face to the buckets in both hands, briefly and with a line between his brows, before he looks back at the dog. If he's concerned, it doesn't seem to be for himself.

"Take it she's yours." He gives her head a scratch and stands.

From a distance, with a rogue dog and two unsteady buckets of water to worry about, Frank's just wondering where Jensen got the new scrubs and what it is about that guy that always makes the dog go nuts, but it doesn't take him more than a moment longer to pick up on the multitude of ways this is decidedly not Jensen.

Which is not to say he doesn't recognize the cut of that jaw. He does. His steps slow to a stop in the dirt. It's a face he used to keep pinned to the corkboard that hung on the back of his closet door in their shoebox apartment in Queens, that he'd dug out of the attic and pinned to Frank Jr.'s the year they'd pulled him out of the ice, all two by three inches of Norman Rockwell glow. (It'd still been there, the day he'd burnt the house to the ground.)

The card didn't have that little wrinkle between the brows, though. It hits him sideways, under the ribs, to realize why he might be earning that look now. Thirty-four years of trying his best to be a certain kind of man, and of course he'd only have a chance to compare when he knows he can't anymore.

"Yeah," he manages, dropping his eyes to the dog to keep from staring; Aretha seems content to have earned some ear scratches for her hard work. "She's learned to track, but keeping quiet about it, not so much."

Scares away as many deer as she finds, probably. Frank sets one bucket down, wipes his hand on his pants leg reflexively, and offers it out. "Frank Castle," he says, because if what's going through this guy's head is what he thinks it is, he'd rather just be out with it.

Steve's not usually the type of man to refuse a handshake when it's offered. It's not something he could say he tends to give much thought, and he's shaken the hands of men he didn't think too highly of before. Polite, Tony called him. Maybe he just thinks there are more meaningful ways of communicating his feelings.

But here's a man who murdered an unarmed woman in her workplace, to name only one of his victims. Steve's been called a vigilante before (probably in no small part thanks to the Punisher's existence in very recent memory), but as far as meting out judgment without regard for the law goes, Steve's got nothing on Frank Castle.

So he doesn't refuse to shake Frank's hand to make a statement. It's more a matter of what he can stand. He expels the air in his lungs through his nose and looks from the hand to the man's face, says, "Steve Rogers," and that's not really meant to sound like a threat, either. But if both of those things have those effects, he can't bring himself to feel too regretful.

"What about you?" he asks, holding the eye contact, maybe a little searchingly, despite the rest, because he doesn't miss Frank's reaction to him even if he doesn't know what to make of it. "Found anything worth your time?"

Steve doesn't have to say it; his body language is enough, even before he pointedly neglects to accept the offered handshake. Frank's hand hangs in the air just a second too long, before he pulls it back and up over his scalp, his mouth pulling in a wince, knife-thin and humorless. So that's how it is, then.

It's not like he expected any different - he would have been disappointed, even, if Rogers had grit his teeth and shook just because politeness demanded; they aren't either of them the type. But it still stings, in a way Frank wasn't sure he could feel anymore.

"Not a way out," he answers like that's all that matters, but he's shaking his head, settling his weight back on his heels, shoulders squaring. "Let's not do that, all right? Dance around it. You know who I am, I know who you are. If we're going to have a problem, let's have it."

Steve can't say he gets accused of beating around the bush too much, but it doesn't change his expression except to deepen the furrow in his brow slightly as he looks at Frank, trying to get his measure. Steve knows his own mind just fine, and he was speaking it — maybe this tells him more about Frank than a hundred newspaper articles ever could.

"I wasn't asking for a way out," he says, voice even but not easily mistaken for conciliatory. He doesn't dance, either, in any sense of the word, but he doesn't say that part. "Whether we're gonna have a problem or not is up to you, so you tell me."

Frank's the one dodging, in his own way, and maybe a part of him knows it. Explaining how important Steve Rogers was to him to Steve Rogers isn't anything he's prepared to do, though, especially now he thinks it isn't going to matter anyway. They're not going to be pals. He meets Steve's gaze all the same, spine straight, but with a contrary tilt to his chin, like he's making his bad attitude his armor.

"You know what I did." There's no regret in his voice, but no mocking swagger either, the way there was in the courtroom. He's not proud. He's just not sorry.

"You want to know if I'm gonna do it again, the answer's yes. What I do, I do to keep people safe. That doesn't stop just 'cause of a change of scenery."

"You think what you do makes people feel safe?" It's not really a question, though, something in his voice too flat, the line of his mouth too grim. It's not just disappointment in Frank; he hardly knows the man at all. But when he'd said the Accords just shifted the blame, he'd meant it. If men like Frank exist because men like Steve offer him some twisted form of precedent, well — that's something he has to take responsibility for.

It's something he will take responsibility for.

"Maybe not. But it is gonna stop here 'cause of me."

A flinch flashes quick at Frank's cheekbone. What armor he's got isn't perfect, not against this, not when the guy he spent half his life looking up to is looking at him like he's broken — and maybe he is, alright, but he's not crazy. He knows what he's doing. He's making the streets safer, making people safer, whether they feel it or not.

"Because you would never, is that what I'm supposed to believe?" He huffs a breath with a shake of his head, but his disbelief is a thin, fragile thing.

"You're a soldier—" Not a hero, not a vigilante, because that's not the precedent Frank is following; that's not the kind of man he considers himself to be, and that's why this argument twists a knife in his gut in a way it didn't with Red or anybody else. There are things he'd never expected the Devil of Hell's Kitchen to understand, but Cap? "You served, what, four years on the front lines? As many as that since? Don't tell me you never had to make the hard call."

"Sure."

It clicks for Steve as he listens to Frank speak. It's not something he's ever exactly worn comfortably on his shoulders when it's accompanied by words rather than action, but it is at least something he's familiar enough with to recognize here. Enough for his gut to sink with the understanding, and he doesn't look away from Frank but still swallows before continuing.

"There are casualties. But the front line's not supposed to be at home unless someone else brings it there." He shakes his head, a quick nod as though to forestall a protest he knows is coming. He knows what kind of neighborhood Hell's Kitchen is these days and why Frank fights there. "If that's where it needs to be? You surround yourself with other soldiers, people you trust and who can trust you so they have a chance of stopping you if you're making the call for the wrong reason. If you think that doesn't matter, then yeah, you are crazy. No one's safe if the war's coming from in your head, Frank. You work alone, then you're no soldier. You're just a killer."

He has no idea what's going on in Frank's head. He could believe himself to be a paragon of sanity for all Steve knows, and he's heard him say enough to that affect. Steve's not sure he disagrees; Frank was clearly in his own mind, if not the right one. He presses his mouth into a brief line.

"Let me tell you, the hard call was never shooting an unarmed civilian through a window."

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