Avengers Tower, New York, United States
June 2011
Steve slowly unwrapped his knee, muscles aching.
Six punishing hours in Tony's exercise rooms was enough to make even a supersoldier's body feel the work, and his knee had been bothering him ever since that time he got tossed by an explosion in '44 and landed wrong. Tony had showed him some modern physical therapy tricks and braces that helped, but it still twinged now and then.
He walked into the bathrooms, undressed, and turned the water up as hot as it would go.
Forehead pressed to the tiles, Steve shut his eyes and let the almost-unbearably-hot water pound down his shoulders and back and legs, washing away the memories of the crash. It grounded him in the present, reminded him that he wasn't trapped anymore. He was free of the ice.
The cold still lurked under his skin sometimes.
When the hot water began to run out, he sighed and shut off the faucet and went through the motions of putting himself back together.
Knee brace: on. Clothes: tidy. Hair: presentable. Face: stoic. (More or less.)
He moved on to the checklist of things for the day. There were reports of Chitauri tech circulating on the black market in Chicago; he was scheduled to meet with Darcy, Tony, and Maria about it in an hour (apparently Darcy knew some people who "engaged in activities of questionable legality", as she put it) to discuss the problem and whether it warranted the Avengers' interference or if SHIELD and the cops could handle the problem. He also had to corral Bruce and ask him if he'd made any progress talking to Tony about his PTSD. So far, every attempt had been met with evasion and scorn, but Bruce said he thought he was making progress. Steve just hoped they'd make Tony admit he needed help before he had a flashback in the middle of a firefight and got himself killed. (Steve knew all about flashbacks, but he wasn't grief-stricken and plagued by a chronic lack of impulse control.) There was Loki to deal with–he'd been sitting in his room for a week and emerged only to get food at all kinds of odd hours, but Steve didn't trust the guy an inch; he had to talk to JARVIS about the surveillance and what exactly Loki had been doing. And he had to contact Fury directly about Clint and Natasha's whereabouts. It had been a week since they'd seen Clint and a lot longer than that since Natasha dropped off the grid. Both of them would be invaluable in any investigation of black-market Chitauri weapons. And Steve had to admit… he missed them.
Steve felt the foul mood he'd been trying to beat out of himself with a workout returning full-force. It suddenly pissed him off that he'd managed to find people who accepted him (broken dark pieces and all), people with whom he could make a difference and who didn't try to make him follow orders, and here was Fury trying to interfere.
Maria caught up to him right as he left the gymnasium. "Steve," she said quietly. "I've got news."
"The Chitauri tech?" Steve said. "Darcy said she heard something-"
Maria shook her head and fell into step beside him. They headed for the stairs in silent agreement, the ingrained aversion to being trapped in a small space that could drop you eighty-plus floors if sabotaged. "Different subject. You're not going to like it."
"Of course not," Steve muttered. "Shoot."
"I've been recalled, effective today. Fury's decided the crisis is over and he needs me back at his side. He's going to be here in five minutes, he has Clint with him, and we haven't told either of them about Loki yet."
"Five minutes?" Steve repeated. "Why didn't he warn us?"
"Best guess? He's trying to catch us doing something off the books," Maria said.
"Like harboring an offworld criminal," Steve said grimly.
"Exactly."
They broke into a sprint up the stairs.
When the two of them burst into the penthouse floor, or "common room" as the unholy duo of Darcy and Tony had taken to calling it, Steve stopped short. There was Darcy herself, leaning up against the counter with Loki.
"What are you doing?" Steve snapped, striding foward.
Darcy raised an eyebrow. "Is he not allowed to learn how to use the coffeemaker?"
Loki bowed slightly, that insufferable smirk on his face. It never seemed to go away, like he was always internally mocking everyone around him. Bastard. Steve scowled at him.
"He's bad enough without caffeine," he growled. "Loki, out. Fury's gonna be here in four minutes and he can't know you're here."
Darcy shot Loki a look. "Is it possible-"
"We made a list, remember?" Maria said. "Yes, Fury is one of seventy-four potential candidates for Thanos' secret ally."
Steve winced. He knew it was a possibility, but he couldn't bring himself to really believe it of Fury. Tony, on the other hand, adamantly maintained that it could very easily be the director of SHIELD, and it had sparked eight arguments that went in circles for hours in the week since Loki's little truth-bomb.
"We're not having this discussion again," Steve said. "Not only do we have no new information that would change the outcome, but we really don't have time. Loki. Out."
"Sir, yes, sir," Loki said sarcastically, and accepted the coffee mug from Darcy before he turned and strode out of the room.
"So Fury's about to show up. Anything else I should know?" Darcy said.
"I've been recalled," Maria said.
" What?"
Steve left Maria to explain and jogged over to the window. No helicopter in sight. "JARVIS, can you send Jane and Bruce up here, please?"
"They are engaged in a sensitive experiment," JARVIS said. "It would be unwise to disturb them."
"Fine. What about Tony?"
"I shall notify him that he is needed in the penthouse."
A faint sound of chopper blades reached Steve's ears. "Thanks."
Tony slammed through the doors a second later holding a weapon.
Darcy stared at him. "Is that a paintball gun?"
"I'm going to make a Jackson Pollock imitation on Fury's duster," Tony replied, a sentence that made no sense to Steve. "How much less intimidating do you think he'll look spattered in pink and white?"
"Uhhhh… forty percent?" Darcy said.
"That was a rhetorical question."
"That was before it met me."
Steve pressed his fingers to his temple. "Can you please not? Tony, put the paintball gun away. And no one is to say a word about Loki, his news, or the fact that Fury lied to us about Coulson's death. We don't know enough right now."
"Yet," Darcy muttered, and flopped onto a couch. She whipped out her phone. "Hide the paintball gun, Tony, we can do splatter paint later."
Tony tried to jam the gun beneath the sink. It didn't fit.
"Chopper's almost here," Steve warned.
"Fridge!" Darcy called.
Tony hauled open the fridge, shoved a sack of broccoli and three cartons of chocolate milk aside, and stuck the paintball gun inside, upright. It fit. Barely. He closed the door and grinned at Darcy. "I knew there was a reason I like you."
Steve squinted across the room. "Are you drunk?"
"Buzzed," Tony said. "Helps me think. I'm running a hack on SHIELD. It's not easy. They've got a hell of a lot of secrets to protect."
"You're what ?" Steve snapped.
The helicopter sound increased to a roar as it swung around the side of the building across the street and came in for a landing.
"Save it," Maria said. "Here we go."
Hacking SHIELD. Steve felt the beginnings of a headache pounding at the back of his skull. The universe was determined to make his life unpleasant today.
"Can we just sit down and deal with one thing at a time? No paintballs and no hacking and no Loki for the moment?"
"Yes, sir," Tony said caustically, and sat down across from Darcy.
Steve really wished he could still get drunk.
He felt it when the helicopter touched down and turned around to watch out the big bay windows, the familiar churn of anger starting up again in his gut when Fury's bald head appeared in the helicopter door, a cardboard box tucked under his arm.
Then Clint stepped out behind him.
"Hey, it's the Hawk!" Darcy said happily, then paused. "Wait. He looks upset. And Fury's pissed."
"This should be good," said Tony darkly.
Steve wanted to sit down. The soldier in him kept him on his feet, hands clasped in front of him, ready to greet a commanding officer even though he wasn't technically at attention.
Fury shoved through the doors with his usual force and dropped the box on the floor. "Oh, look, you're all here," he said. "I've got news, and you're not gonna like it."
"We should patent that phrase," Tony said.
"Be quiet," Fury snapped. "Where are Drs. Foster and Banner?"
"Sciencing," Darcy said. "Something finicky. They don't want to be disturbed."
"Well, disturb them."
Darcy looked down at her phone. "Nah."
Fury paused. "Excuse me?"
"Last time I checked, I'm employed by Tony," Darcy said. "And he's not employed by you. So I don't follow your orders."
"Hill, Barton, get the scientists up here," Fury growled.
"They're under my employ," Tony said. "And this is my property. They're busy. Agents Hill and Barton get to stay here."
Fury scowled harder and looked around the room. Steve made sure the man found no compromise in his face when Fury's eye fell on him.
"Didn't your mom tell you if you make that face too often, it'll get stuck like that?" Tony asked him with mock concern.
"Too late," Darcy stage whispered.
"Okay, enough, you two," Steve said tiredly. "Fury. What's the news?"
Fury slapped a flash drive down on the conference table, which hummed as the files were dumped into its system. The glass top doubled as one of Tony's screens, and it shimmered and pulled up high-definition pictures of a massacre.
"Fun times," Darcy commented from the sofa.
"That's the news," Fury snapped. "Natasha Romanoff went off the grid weeks ago. We've been trying to track her, always a step behind. Agent Barton here disregarded his orders and went after her himself. He uncovered her trail but lost her after this." He paused. "What do you know about the Winter Soldier?"
Avengers Tower, New York, United States
June 2011
"Uh… remember that most of the people in this room aren't privy to your kind of clearance," Tony said. Yet . He'd get into SHIELD's files eventually. "So that would be 'nothing'."
Fury glared at him. Tony took a drink and gave the man a scornful look because he knew his disdain would piss Fury off, and it worked wonderfully. The scowl lines deepened, but Fury didn't rise to the bait. "The Winter Soldier," he said, "is an extremely dangerous operative first utilised by the KGB in approximately 1947. We know next to nothing about him. He's a ghost. He's cropped up dozens if not hundreds of times around the globe in the last sixty-four years, but only as whispers, and by the time we arrive, he's long gone. We don't know who he is, where he comes from, what they've done to him, or even whether it's only one person." He paused. "Until now."
"You think he did this?" Steve said, moving toward the table. Tony felt the edges of a flashback pulsing around his thoughts and kept his eyes well clear. "Was there surveillance?"
"Cameras all over the hotel. Armed security, undercover bodyguards in the party, motorcades, you name it," Fury said. "He got around all of it without a hitch. This gathering is comprised of extremely highly-placed officials from Russia, China, Ukraine, Turkey, Poland, and Greece. All of them were attending a party held in the hotel pictured." Fury tapped one of the photos, and Tony chanced a look: a well-lit building modern building with a sign in Russian characters. "It seems they were having some kind of covert meeting. We don't know what they were discussing and haven't had a chance to investigate- my Russian counterparts aren't too big on sharing. I'm told they don't like me much."
"I can't imagine why," Steve muttered.
Tony turned around. "I'm sorry, did I mishear you or did you just sass back at your CO?"
"He's not my CO," Steve said quietly. "Continue, sir."
Fury looked like he was about to have a conniption. Clint, conversely, appeared to be having a fantastic time watching all this, but Tony wondered why he'd been so uncharacteristically quiet.
"What do we know?" Maria asked, all business.
Fury tapped another file. "We have basic autopsies. They match what my people saw before they were kicked out. About half these men died of wounds characteristic of our Soldier: a person of immense strength, over six feet tall judging by the angles of some wounds, who favors his left arm. The real giveaway, though, was this." He magnified a video feed. Faint pops of silenced gunfire emanated from the table's speakers. Tony clenched his fist around his glass of Scotch. "We caught one glimpse of our guy on the way in."
A man in a suit appeared, face hidden expertly from the camera, and dove for the door.
Fury paused the video right as the man's fingers closed on the handle. "Look." He magnified it, and the group shuffled in closer.
"Tattoo," said Maria, and Tony nodded.
It was a faded red star-shaped tattoo on the back of the man's neck, almost hidden by his hairline. They could only see it because his hair was pulled back into a ponytail.
"That tattoo's been reported in several sightings of this Winter Soldier over the years," Fury said. "It's one of only three things we consider true about him: he's male, he's marked by that tattoo… and it's very likely that he's been modified much as Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff were."
"So you do think it's the same person," Maria said. "The KGB managed to make one of their own."
"Possibly more than one, but I do believe that there is one man who has been running missions for the Russians since the outset of the Cold War," Fury said. "Agent Barton, tell them what you found."
"An old bunker, a while north of Moscow," Clint said. "You don't want to know what I had to do to find the place. Thirty-eight people inside, dead–soldiers and scientist-looking types. The weirdest bit was what looked like a massive industrial freezer, half-melted, with people-sized cryotubes. One of them was in use until very recently.
"I was able to get into the servers, but since I'm not a computer person, I accidentally tripped some kind of autovirus. I did get a few fragments of video and enough information to strongly suggest that our target, the Winter Soldier, was there in cryo for at least a decade, probably longer. Someone showed up, sterilized the place, and defrosted him."
"Agent Barton," Fury said, voice like stone, "tell them why you went there in the first place."
Clint hesitated. Tony's finely tuned sense of bodily cues sat up and perked its ears. That was– anguish on the SHIELD agent's face.
"You were looking for Natasha," Darcy said.
Clint's eyes flicked to her. "Yes."
"Agent Romanoff dropped off the grid after her last mission," Fury said. "Disobeyed orders and gave her watchers the slip. She's highly skilled; we couldn't track her."
"But I could," Clint said.
"Agent Barton went off the reservation as well, but given that he was successful and returned to us with valuable intel, he's only on probation," Fury said. "Agent Romanoff's in a tougher position. The other half of the men in that room?" He shook his head. "They were killed with knives to the throat or heart, impossibly precise blows indicative of a fighting style that I've only seen used by three people with any degree of skill. Two of those people are dead now. Entrance wound angles suggest someone significantly shorter than most special operatives, a population subset comprised overwhelmingly of men."
"Natasha was there," Darcy summarized.
Fury pressed play on the video.
Muzzle flashes, bullets, and the sounds of dying men poured out of the room for less than thirty seconds, but it was enough to start a dull roar in Tony's ears. He gripped the edge of the table, hyperaware of the way it drew Steve, Darcy, and Clint's attention to him.
Two people slipped out of the room, heads turned expertly away from the camera, but even before Fury hit pause Tony knew he recognized that head of red hair.
"Natasha Romanoff is considered a rogue agent, armed, fugitive from the United States, and highly dangerous," Fury said. Each word fell to the table like a chunk of ice. "She's aiding and abetting a criminal, mass murderer, and wanted man who's been MIA for twenty-five years but is quite possibly the most dangerous single person on the planet."
That's what you think , Tony thought at Fury, picturing Loki as he'd been that morning: impossibly tall and imposing when he came in for food, far healthier than he had been during the battle of New York. And then there was Natasha herself, and Darcy, who could be very dangerous in a very different way. And Bruce, of course. Though Steve was exempt– the golden retriever made human had too strong a moral compass to be as frightening as the Winter Soldier.
The point remained that Fury was dramatically underestimating the Avengers.
Tony almost smiled.
Almost.
Fury tapped the table and the files vanished. He plucked the flash drive off the glass and dropped it back in his pocket. "Effective immediately, Natasha Romanoff is at the top of my 'wanted' list, second only to the Winter Soldier himself. The people in this room are the only people we know her to have any concrete ties with." He pointed at the cardboard box. "She left that for you. We've been scanning it for any trace of bugs or messages, and come up with zilch, so you can have the contents now. If Agent Romanoff contacts any of you, if you so much as catch a glimpse of her on the street, I want to know yesterday. If I find out you've been in touch with her and didn't tell me, I'll have you up on charges of treason so fast you'll get whiplash. The Tower is under surveillance beginning right now. Consider this a courtesy warning." He looked around the table, face uncompromising. Tony wanted to argue but he suspected that if he opened his mouth, the only that would come out would be gibberish. "Effective immediately, Agents Barton and Hill are coming with me."
"I quit," Clint said quietly.
Fury froze. " What did you just say?"
"I said I quit. Sir." Clint stood tall and faced the Director, eyes hard. "I've already tried to convince you that it's a mistake to chase Tasha. She's gone already, and if you go after her like this, you're only gonna make it worse. I'm not going to participate in a manhunt against my oldest friend."
"You signed a contract," Fury hissed.
This, Tony could do. He released the table and stepped forward. "Barton's contract expired two years ago."
Every eye in the room snapped to him. Normally the center of attention was exactly where Tony wanted to be, but right now it only made him nauseous. He ignored the twist of his stomach. "The only remaining restrictions on the termination of Agent Barton's employment are the Statute of Secrecy, and the clause requiring him to move into either retirement or work for an employer who has a Level Six or higher SHIELD security clearance, keeps Barton in SHIELD's line of jurisdiction, and has a history of cooperation with SHIELD. Stark Industries meets all those characteristics. I've been looking for a bodyguard, and Barton here's been kind enough to accept."
Fury's face was twisted with anger, but he didn't say a word for at least thirty seconds. Tony leashed the storm inside his skin. The best part was that Fury couldn't even come after Tony for knowing that information; the legal documents were part of Clint's file, which had been released to Tony as part of the Avengers Initiative.
"Fine," Fury growled, and glared at Clint. "Enjoy your demotion. Hill, with me."
He stalked toward the doors.
"Maria," Darcy hissed, and tossed the other woman something small and black. Maria caught it in one hand, glanced down, and dropped it in her pocket. She nodded once at the group and then left without a backward glance.
"Well, that was dramatic," Tony remarked.
The helicopter took off.
Steve looked at Darcy as it swung out of sight. "What'd you give her?" he asked.
Darcy grinned. "Burner phone. It's got my spare number in it. She can contact us if she wants."
"Spare number?" Clint asked.
"I have a second phone registered under the name Lizzie Moore," Darcy said, a shadow crossing her face for a brief moment. "Working for the feds makes you a little paranoid. Looks like it paid off."
"You are certainly an entertaining group of people to live with," Loki remarked from the stairs.
Clint turned around. "The fu–what the fuck is he doing here?" he demanded.
Steve looked at Darcy, clearly at the end of his metaphorical rope. "You get to explain. Since you dragged the stray inside."
"I am not a stray," Loki said, sounding affronted.
"No, you're a mass murderer standing in my penthouse!" Clint snapped.
Attention flicked to Tony. He realized they were all waiting for him to make some comment about it being his penthouse.
Tony looked down at the table. "I need…" he said, and collapsed.