Okay, I have to talk about this moment.
This isn’t a moment of triumph. Steve isn’t stomping on his shield in vindictiveness or spite. He’d disgusted. Disgusted with them and with himself. He’s angry that it came to this.
Steve Rogers TRIED to give them an out. He ASKED them to leave. He didn’t WANT to fight them. Up until the very last moment, Steve hoped that these men, his fellow soldiers, would not betray him. He hoped that what he knew to be true was not true. He hoped that, whatever decisions these men had made up until the point of this elevator ride, that they would choose DIFFERENTLY now. That they would reconsider, alter their lives.
Until the last bloody, sweating, stinking, violent moment, Steve Rogers hoped these men would become their better selves.
He stamps down on his shield and flips it up onto his arm, surveying the wreckage at his feet. Wrecked hopes and lives, smashed honor and brotherhood. Steve picks his shield up from the ruin, disgusted and angry —
— and he still goes on to hope that every soldier he meets will be the best human being they can be.
That’s my Steve Rogers. That’s my Captain America.