Sam Wilson || "The Falcon || Intro
CHARACTER NAME/ALIAS: Sam Wilson/Falcon
FACECLAIM: Anthony Mackie
AFFILIATIONS: Nomads
AGE (physical age as well, if different): Let’s say a cool 35
SPECIES (human, metahuman, alien, etc): Human
IS YOUR CHARACTER’S IDENTITY SECRET OR PUBLIC? Public
IF SECRET, OR YOUR CHARACTER IS A CIVILIAN, DO THEY HAVE A CIVILIAN OCCUPATION? Up until a few years ago, Sam had been a counselor at a VA Medical Center. Currently, that’s behind him.
DOES YOUR CHARACTER LIVE IN THE MOUSEHOLE? IF SO, WHAT ARE THEIR DUTIES? If Sam is away from his home, from his family in the states, which he is right now–he’s going to want to know he’s making a difference. He’s got a range of skills, from speaking multiple languages to flight experience, as well as his civilian training as a counselor. In the Mousehole, he’d probably want to be alongside Steve especially in refugee outreach, but more likely sees his skills as necessary in counseling and piloting. It seems like those latter two may be his niche.
DESCRIBE SIX TRAITS (3 positive, 3 negative) YOUR CHARACTER HAS AND HOW THESE AFFECT THEM:
Positives:
Collaborative: Sam is a wingman in the deepest sense imaginable. He looks out for people he feels he can trust and then works with them to the ends of the earth. If he finds a group he can trust, even better. He wants to hatch a plan with smart people and stick to it. He was raised in deep community, with a wide network of people he could count on and who counted on him. That’s how he likes to live, if possible: in cooperation with others, with a give-and-take of resources.
Emotionally grounded: Your problems are your problems, not necessarily Sam Wilson’s problems. While he can listen, Sam has a rational detachment from someone else’s angst, however looming it can be. It’s a skill he especially honed while in social work, but it’s one he already had fairly naturally. He’ll stand up for anyone who has a compelling case and needs an advocate, but in personal matters, he’s not going to get caught up in someone else’s anger or anxieties.He has plenty of his own.
Loyal: If Sam trusts someone, he’s in with them. And that trust comes just as much from gut feeling as it does when he sees action. His loyalty has landed him in loving hands and horrific sadness in equal measures, if he had to estimate. It’s not easy to stake loyalty until death and then enter professions in which death is almost expected. His loyalty–to his family, his wingman Riley, and now to the Nomads, particularly Steve–has taken him away from people he loves, into dangerous warzones, and plunged him into grief more times he can count.
Negatives:
Stubborn: Sam’s smart as hell and he knows it. Moreover, he doesn’t take too kindly to people speaking over him, especially people he perceives as unworthy of respect. His respect has to be earned, and until it is, Sam will do anything but cooperate. If he doesn’t feel like a move is right, especially when it’s planned by someone he doesn’t trust, he simply won’t do it. That stretches from mission plans right down into moving his seat up. It takes some time for him.
Private: Did anyone know Sam had a sister until extremely recently? No, and he likes it that way. He’s seen the world destroy people and he loves too hard to let that destruction extend to innocent people like his civilian family and friends. He won’t be the first one offering information, but he certainly appreciates a well-intentioned effort to know him, if people ask.
Reluctant to strike: The very act of preserving life is important to Sam, and that can be dangerous in a world where one’s life can hang in the balance of one hesitation. This can put him at odds with others in a group, who have very different ideas about how to handle something, especially when danger looms. While Sam may say about himself that this all goes back to cooperation and collaboration, one needs to wonder if it’s really a hindrance and a reluctance to call a spade a spade sometimes.
POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES: I’ll go with what MCU Sam says: “I do what [Steve] does, just slower.” And even then, it’s questionable if he’s really slower. Sam has enough special training to feel confident jumping out of buildings and into helicopters. He’s good to go if he’s got his wings.
WEAKNESSES: He’s very, very human. He gets hurt. He gets tired. He can’t heal as quickly. All that pesky, human stuff. He also has a family…while Sam wouldn’t classify that as a weakness, his enemies certainly would. He has people he wants to protect very badly, which can be exploited if he isn’t careful.
IC PORTION; DETAILS —
WHAT BROUGHT YOUR CHARACTER TO SOKOVIA?
Sam is here because Captain America asked for his help. Pure and simple. After his discharge from the Air Force, he struggled to find a place where he belonged, where he made a difference as much as he felt he was making when he was in the Falcon program. When he met Steve, when Sam saw there was something he could do…he thought about all the times that Sarah or his therapist mentioned that maybe he should look for something to do, look for some way to stay active and do something he finds meaningful. They probably didn’t mean going on the run and spending his life with a bunch of superpowered folks in a war-torn area of the world, but hey. Where Steve goes, Sam is going.
DID THEY SIGN THE ACCORDS? WHY OR WHY NOT?
Absolutely not. Sam is rightfully distrustful of the government having control over people’s activities. Even before he met Steve, Sam was formed in a rural community of mainly people of color; his community is not one that takes kindly or trustful of the government’s control. Add in experience of working in Veterans Affairs, Sam would know firsthand the dismal funding and help that’s available to veterans, who are supposed to be the government’s first concern. That’s all personal. Then, since meeting Steve and becoming involved officially in opposing the Accords, Sam’s only doubled down. Now, it’s for his protection and others’ he knows and cares about personally. Yes, even Barnes, as annoying as he can be personally.
PROVIDE 3-5 HEADCANONS RELATED TO YOUR CHARACTER:
Sam is very introverted, which can be a surprise to some. While it’s been in his best interest to be outgoing and social, that’s all conditioning. The truth is that he needs time to recharge, to remind himself who Sam is, apart from others.
He is a cat person to the max. Stray cats around Sokovia? He knows about them already, no problem. If he had more time, he’d love to adopt one, but for now, he drops scraps from food when he can.
He is two years older than his sister Sarah, and he was born three years after his brother Gideon. Gideon died in an accident while Sam was deployed overseas, actively on a mission. Because of the sensitive nature of his work, he wasn’t told until the mission was completed, which meant he missed the window to go on leave and attend services. When he was able to go, Riley went with him, and he, Sam, and Sarah had a mini service for him. The way he’d like to be celebrated. Which was passing a bottle of his favorite whiskey between them and sharing stories until they cried laughing and then just plain cried.
Speaking of Riley. Riley. Sam’s wingman, his right-hand man, his–his–his–,words tend to fail when it comes to describing what Riley was and was not to Sam. He wonders, sometimes, if he can get away with never making it totally clear. If Steve understood enough when they connected over the shared losses of Riley and Bucky. If that was enough. If Steve understands. He doesn’t know. What he does know is that sometimes, that grief is as painful still as it was in the immediate aftermath of losing him.
CHARACTER BIO —
Sam Wilson was born to Paul and Darlene Wilson in Delacroix, Louisiana. He was three years behind his older brother Gideon and, in two years, joined by his younger sister, Sarah. The Wilsons were pretty well-known, even in the small community. Paul and Darlene ran a seafood business from their own boat, and Paul was a deacon in the local church, meaning the kids needed to mind themselves at all times–no exceptions. And Sam did. He was a good kid, rising above the middle child expectations to be noticed, always. His teachers knew him as a kid who would stick up for the little guy, even if that little guy was himself. He excelled from academics to friendships to sports to–you fucking name it, and Sam Wilson was in the yearbook photo.
When Sam lost his dad in high school, just a few months away from going away to college, he wondered if it’d be better to stick around. It was Gideon who set him straight, who put big hands on his shoulders and said, fuck that, you’re getting out. While Sam had made a name for himself in the small community, it was time for him to make a name for himself outside of it, too, and Gideon was the one who moved back home to take care of their mom and make sure Sarah was okay, too. Sam was allowed to go off to college, to get all the language skills he needed to do what he really wanted to do. To put into motion the plan he and his dad had dreamed about together:
The Air Force. God, Sam loved it. There was the usual bullshit; the military was not the kindest place for a Black man who couldn’t keep his eyes from lingering, just sometimes, on his wingman. But he hadn’t thrived in rural Louisiana for nothing; Sam knew how to play that game well. He thrived, rising in rank and security clearance until he found himself flying with falcon wings, the EXO Falcon program. He was in the sky when Gideon died back in Louisiana. He was in the sky when his mother died, too, later, after a long illness. He was in the sky when Riley died, too. That was the only one he saw with his own two eyes.
The immensity of grief wrapped up in the wings, taking him away from his family and his friends and Riley, was almost enough to weigh them down. To ground him, quite literally. But there was a thrill in them, too, something impossible to ignore. Something that kept him hiding the wings in his DC apartment after his honorable discharge. Something that kept him going home with them to fly around out back near the docks when he visited Sarah. Something that kept Sam going, beyond the value he found post-service as a counselor at the VA. It was certainly there, that excitement, though it felt watered down as time passed.
By the mid-2010s, he had wondered if the thrill of the wings were behind him. If perhaps he was just a guy, a civilian with routines that kept him tied down to the ground. Maybe he’d had enough adventures, enough grief, too, to last him a lifetime. Maybe he could just wake up, brew his coffee, go on his routine runs, and head back home for his post-run orange juice every day.
Then he got lapped by Steve Rogers. Then he got lapped again. Then he got–yeah, that whole thing.
Steve Rogers reminded Sam what it felt like to have adrenaline pump through his veins instead of peace, and Sam sometimes felt drunk on it. It was more of a direct purpose than he’d felt since Riley was alive and there was nothing but them and their missions, and Sam had missed it. While he wasn’t as confident as Steve was in the success of their mission (look, Barnes was a nasty motherfucker when he was out of his mind, okay?), it was still the honor of his life to be at Steve’s side when he woke up in that hospital. And it was still the honor of his life to be trusted to track down Barnes when he fucked off to God-knew-where.
The Accords brought all those things to a head. Sam watched as Steve got more reckless and more angry, as Natasha signed them out of her fear, as his own hands were placed in handcuffs and hauled off to the Raft. While plenty has happened since then, there’s a lotta wounds still fresh. Sokovia, however, needs their help. And Sam’s always ready to put those emotions aside for a mission.
Still, he wonders. How much longer can he put those emotions to the side? When he’s, once again, taken away from his family here…how can he remain grounded in his own identity? Can he share that with anyone here? From even his childhood, Sam Wilson has been a good boy. A good man. But lately he’s been wondering who can see past that label to the real him, the one that grieves, the one that fears, the one that doesn’t heal too quickly–physically and otherwise.
But he’ll try. Because Sam isn’t the man who hesitates. Sam is the man who opens the door wider and welcomes anyone into his house, even two avengers who tell him everyone they know is trying to kill them. Though his house isn’t his heart. That’s a much more private place.
Relevant Personality Types:
ENFP, "The Campaigner"
Enneagram 9w1, "The Negotiator"
Libra Sun, Leo Moon, Virgo Rising
