Steve's arc in Age of Ultron is so important to him, it's so compelling to watch, it's so well done. I tried to explain it with the main quotes from the movie that bring it out because I'm obsessed.
"I don't think I can afford a place in Brooklyn." "Yeah, but home is home, right?" Steve just looks away and clenches his jaw in a very Steve way. He doesn't agree with Sam, he doesn't even nod. Brooklyn, the geographical location, is not home. Not in the way Steve needs a home.
"Captain America. Pretending he can live without a war." The end comes back around to this one. It stings because it's true. He knows it. What else does he do? Nothing. He doesn't have a home to go back to, as established very early on.
"The war's over Steve. We can go home. Imagine it." And then everyone in the room disappears. And then he sees himself dance with Peggy. And then he's alone again. That was him imagining it. All he could see was a flash of them dancing, but God he looked happy in that flash. Everyone else was gone, he couldn't imagine anything else, because he doesn't know life without war. He wants to. All he can reach is a second of Peggy. But he doesn't know what it was like for the soldiers in ww2 who went home. The only part he does relate to, actually, is the ptsd. Which he also sees in the dream. He flinches at a camera flash and sees wine on a shirt as blood. What else is there after the war for him? All he ever hoped for was a dance. He never even got that. And that was all he could see.
"We can go home." He hears her voice again when he looks at Clint's house. It's the perfect image of an American family home with a big yard for 2.5 kids to play in. Completely normal. That wide shot of him standing on the porch but he's still wearing his uniform, it shows everything he wants but all that he's left with right now. He looks so out of place with his uniform and shield on. And he turns around and walks away because he can't even stand to look at the house. That's supposed to be him in there. He was supposed to go home.
"Isn't that the why we fight? So that we get to end the fight? So that we get to go home?" That's what really set him off, but the whole conversation really. Tony says "looks like you walked away alright" and Steve looks at him with so much resentment. Like how do I look fine? You think I'm fine? But all he says is "is that a problem?" because he can't talk about it. Especially not to Tony, but not really to anyone. Tony says "I don't trust a guy without a dark side." Steve says "let's just say you haven't seen it yet." He's obviously saying he has one. He's been in a bad place as much as Thor and Nat since the dreams, Tony just chooses to see him as a symbol. But he's not about to explain himself. And he's leaving the door open for the option that he might lose control and everyone might realize how dark his dark side is. It wasn't a promise no one would ever see it. It was just that Tony hadn't seen it yet. Now, as much as I love Tony, he was really ignorant for pulling the so we get to go home? It's not like it's hard to see. Steve gets genuinely mad, rightfully. He hasn't stopped fighting since he started, he's never gotten to go home, he's finding himself almost looking for fights because that's all he knows. But he wants to go home so bad, and it's not even an option. Tony wants to fight about if Ultron could save the world, and that they should take the opportunity so that Clint can go home to Laura, and Tony can go home to Pepper, and Nat and Bruce can work out their stuff, etc etc. And Steve's on the other side of the conversation, not even agreeing with the concept of Ultron in the first place, but he has nothing to fight for. He's not defending his stance so that he can go home, he's doing it because he believes it's right. And what else is he going to do if he's not defending something? When he ripped the log in half, it was a glimpse of his dark side, but only if you know what he's thinking. He's mad, he's lonely, he's grieving. And he takes it out on the log.
"The simple life." "You'll get there one day." "I don't know. Family, stability... the guy who wanted all that went in the ice 75 years ago. I think someone else came out." This is the first time he's admitted that he wanted that. Even in TFA, he showed interest but not that explicitly. Since he's woken up, he's avoided it completely. He didn't even answer Sam when he said "home is home." He's finally acknowledged it and admitted it. But he puts the responsibility on himself. "I think someone else came out." That's not really true. In TFA, he said he'd "settle for just one" girl, then that he was waiting for "the right partner" to dance with, and then he promised to dance with Peggy. While he was actively crashing the plane into the ice, in fact. The guy who wanted family and stability went into the ice, yes, and he made it very clear who he wanted that family and stability with. He didn't exactly come out as a different person. He came out 70 years later, so his chance at family and stability with her was gone. This whole time he's been distraught that he couldn't go home. He wasn't all of a sudden saying I just dont want to. He was saying there was no family and stability left for him to want. It wasn't him that had changed, it was the circumstances, and he was trying to live with that.
"You alright?" "I'm home." Yes he was. But he didn't look very happy about it, did he? He was at the Avengers compound. Tony wasn't staying to train the new guys because he was going home to Pepper. Clint was already home. But Steve was still in the middle of the fight. He's not really pretending he can live without a war when he just knows he can't. Even as he says "I'm home," you hear soldiers marching in the background. It's eerie. He's trying to get by because what else can he do, who is he if he's not Captain America? He hasn't been able to be just Steve in a long time. He's not even trying to find just Steve, he left just Steve in 1945 with Peggy. "Someone else came out" ? Captain America came out.
