Avengers Tower
September 2011
"I don't like it," Natasha said quietly.
He rested his hand on her shoulder. Natasha was the only person he knew who he was comfortable touching casually. "Neither do I," he admitted.
She looked up and studied his face carefully. "Zima…"
"I remember him," he blurted. "I think. It's like… I have all these images in my head, facts, memories, all coming back to me in a blizzard. I can't grab hold of any one thing for long." He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to ground himself in the middle of the chaos that had taken over his mind since Captain America called him by a dead man's name. "His mom's name was Sarah," he whispered. "We were… we were friends. He was so much smaller–all skin and bones and stubborn pride. But that all happened to a different person."
Natasha turned into him, reached up, and gripped his shoulders. "It'll be fine," she said softly.
"But what if it's not?" He knew he was being illogical and didn't care. "I–I can't be two people, Pauk. That man I was… he was good . He was a friend and a soldier and he fought for what he believed in. I'm a hired killer." He looked down at his hands in the breath of space between their bodies: one flesh and bone, knuckles callused and skin riven with scars, the other silver and still dysfunctional. Stark had done a temporary repair on the metal arm while he worked on a modern prosthesis. "I'm a monster. I can't be both."
"Why not?" Natasha asked softly. "I've changed as well, my Zima. We can find our way out of the dark places. Find something to fight for other than just our masters."
He laughed. It sounded broken. "I don't even know my name . Zima? 'Soldier'? James Buchanan Barnes? Bucky? That man I was…" He thought about the few memories that had come back with any kind of clarity. "He would hate me."
"Do you hate yourself?" Natasha asked.
Startled, he looked up and met her eyes.
"He is you ," she pressed. "You are Bucky. All those memories, they're still hiding in your brain. They could never beat that decency out of you. Why do you think they kept wiping your mind? Why do you think they used me as your leash for so many years? Why do you think they put you in cryo storage? There's a goodness in you that even their neural programming and beatings and training couldn't stamp out."
He bowed his head and let out a long breath.
Natasha pulled him closer and pressed her forehead to his. "We'll figure it out," she promised, voice like steel. "We always do."
"My spider," he murmured, and closed his eyes.
"I owe him," she admitted a moment later.
"For what?"
"Trusting me," she whispered. "Caring for me. Taking me into this place. I owe all of them, really, but Steve could've turned against me and everyone but Clint would've followed his lead. And Clint's instincts are rarely wrong. If he thinks there's something off about this situation, then I can't let Steve go alone."
"He'll never let you."
They both flinched apart.
Miss Lewis and Stark stood in the door to the storage room.
"How long have you been there?" Natasha snapped.
Darcy shrugged. Her face was cool, unimpressed. He had to admire her composure. And intelligence. Darcy Lewis was a force to be reckoned with; Zima/Bucky (he still didn't know what to call himself) had worked that out quickly. "Not long. I just heard your last two sentences. Very touching."
"She's right," Zima said quietly. "Rogers… Steve… he won't want us to risk it."
Natasha eyed Stark and Darcy warily. "And what about you two?"
Darcy smirked. "Let's just say we're more open to… alternate solutions."
"You want us to go after him," Natasha said flatly.
"All the rest of us are too high-profile to just drop off the grid," Darcy said. "And at any rate, Clint and Tony are the only of us who are good in a fight."
"The Hulk?" Zima asked.
"Has a tendency to smash buildings along with the bad guys," Tony said. "You think I'm incapable of subtlety? Wait till you see the big guy in action. Bruce is perfectly content staying here and working in the labs until we have absolutely no other option."
"How will we get out?" Natasha asked. "SHIELD's likely got a blanket over this place thicker than surveillance on the Iranian embassy."
"You forget our houseguest," Darcy said with a smile.
Zima narrowed his eyes slightly. Her expression was icy and uncompromising, the face of someone who had lost and lost and lost again in life, who wasn't going to just let herself lose again without a fight. This was something she wanted, and she knew what had to be done to accomplish it.
Loki stepped around the doorframe from the hallway.
"You set me up quite nicely for a dramatic entrance," he commented.
"Least I could do," Darcy said. "Loki's agreed to smuggle you out past the SHIELD cordon."
"What makes you think he'll come back?" Natasha asked.
Darcy shrugged. "He wants to be here, not the other way around. And we have a tracker-slash-voodoo-sensor that Jane and Tony cooked up. He'll cover you three in an illusion, get you out of SHIELD's way, and head on back."
"I've got disguises ready for after Loki leaves you," Tony said. "Clint helped me put them together. A private helicopter will be waiting at a small airport half an hour south of here by car. There's a silver Honda Civic parked three blocks away, plate 535-ZUR." He tossed Natasha a set of keys. "Address of the airfield is already in the car's system. You'll get there an hour or two behind Steve, but it's the best I can do short-notice."
"It's excellent," Natasha said. "Who's been coaching you in covert ops?"
"SHIELD," Tony said.
Zima blinked.
"You people keep forgetting that I have a genius level IQ," Tony said. "I was a SHIELD consultant? Remember? Fury gave me access to lots of mission files–and those he didn't, I got anyway. There's not much of a difference between learning how you guys work and how to evade you."
"All clear?" Darcy asked, looking around the room. "Yes? Kay."
"Come with me, please," Loki said, smiling like a shark, or a wolf. "I'll be kind and allow you to masquerade as a couple, hmm?"
"Can I punch him?" Natasha asked Darcy.
Darcy patted Loki's shoulder irreverently. "He's actually being helpful; let's not punish good behavior."
"I would appreciate it if you would cease comparing me to a pet," Loki muttered.
Darcy laughed. "I know, and that's exactly why I keep doing it. You're fun to irritate. Good luck sneaking out, guys. I need to go put out a fire involving yet another State Department junior aide who thinks they can bring the Avengers to heel."
She marched away down the hall.
"I pity that aide," Loki commented, then looked surprised that he'd done so.
"You have no idea," Tony informed him. "She got into an argument with me about a month and a half after she came on-staff…" He shook his head. "Not pretty. Definitely got my attention, though. You guys ready for this?"
It took Zima a second to realize Tony was talking to himself and Natasha. "Yes," Natasha said.
"You are certain you can evade SHIELD?" Loki asked. "It would not go well for your teammates should Director Fury discover that you are helping the good Captain."
"He doesn't like to go by that title," Tony said.
Natasha glanced up at Zima. He smiled a little at her.
"Between the two of us," she said, "we should be able to work it out."
Triskelion, Washington, D.C.
September 2011
"Welcome, Captain," Pierce said.
"Sir." Steve didn't bow, or salute. This man had not earned either. He rolled his shoulders to settle his brown leather aviator jacket better on his frame and moved farther into the room.
"Do you know why I've called you here?" Pierce asked.
"I assume it's in conjunction with the attempt on Maria Hill's life."
"An attempt that was successful," Pierce said, watching Steve carefully.
Steve flinched slightly. "Hill's dead?"
"Died in surgery in the hospital in New York," Pierce added.
Steve flexed his jaw slightly. "I'm… sorry to hear that. She was a good woman, a good agent."
"She was both of those things," Pierce agreed. "Or at least, she appeared to be."
Steve knew he wasn't imagining the subtext of this conversation. "Sir?"
"There's been a leak," Pierce said. "Last week, we sent in a tactical strike on a group of pirates who hijacked a transport ship, the Lemarian Star , that was carrying classified information. Agent Jasper Sitwell was on board, but evidence gathered when the tac team took the ship back suggests the pirates were working for someone else, and that they weren't there to ransom hostages like they claimed."
"You think it was a cover for an information sale," Steve said.
Pierce tapped the images on his desk of a ship in dark waters, a bald bespectacled agent labeled Jasper L. Sitwell , a captain's chair riddled with bullet holes. "Yes."
"And you think it was Maria."
"Only five people knew about the information on that ship," Pierce said. "Two of them were Fury and myself. Two of them have already been cleared. Hill was the only one of SHIELD's high-ranking operatives who remained under suspicion, and now she's dead."
"Deal went bottom up?" Steve asked.
"We think so."
"I don't see what this has to do with me," Steve said.
"You were the last person to speak to Maria Hill alive," Pierce said. "She doesn't have a boyfriend."
Steve thought of Clint. "I thought that was odd."
"What did she tell you?"
Beneath Pierce's sight line, Steve's fists were clenched. "She told me the apartment was bugged," he admitted.
"Did she tell you she was the one who bugged it?"
Steve said nothing. He didn't believe it. He didn't want to believe it.
Pierce sighed. "Captain Rogers, I know this must be hard for you. But I really need your cooperation. The fate of this organization might depend on it. We don't know what information Maria managed to sell, or how long she's been doing this. The damage could be… extensive."
"We didn't have much of a conversation. She gave me a note." Steve held out the paper on which he'd forged Maria's handwriting on the way down there. He was a bit of an artist, after all–not a very good one, but skilled enough with pen and paper to do this.
Pierce examined the three words on the torn, crumpled note.
Trust no one.
"I wonder," Pierce said, "if that included her."
Steve was silent for several heartbeats.
"If I think of anything else, I'll let you know," he said at last.
"Please." Pierce studied him for a long moment and heaved a sigh. "You're dismissed, Captain. Thank you for your cooperation."
Steve nodded sharply and slung his shield onto his back as he left.
His thoughts swirled as he climbed in the elevator and pressed the button for the underground parking garage. What Pierce said… it couldn't be possible. Maria would never betray SHIELD like that. She might not have agreed with all of Fury's decisions, but Steve knew she loved her country and would live and die by her principles. They were not so different in that way.
The door opened, and four men in suits entered, talking among themselves. They pressed the button for the lobby.
Steve shifted beneath their wary, nervous looks. They probably thought they were being subtle about staring, but there wasn't a lot he didn't notice in his immediate environment, and this was not quite normal behavior. Especially at SHIELD, where people were used to the sight of supersoldiers and spies and assassins and guns.
He shook off the weird feeling as paranoia, but kept his senses alert.
The elevator slid to a halt a few stories below, and six men in tactical armor entered, their boots tramping on the metal floor. They were silent and intimidating. The suits' conversation died rapidly.
Steve cut his eyes left and right as the elevator began to descend again. His instincts, honed in the fire and death of World War 2, were prickling, screaming that there was violence in the air.
Calm down. Calm down. It's nothing. This is the Triskelion, for God's sake–SHIELD wouldn't wish you harm–
The elevator stopped again, and Rumlow entered with several more agents.
"Captain," Rumlow said cordially.
Steve nodded back. "Good to see you again."
"How about that tac team Fury's putting together, eh?" Rumlow asked.
Steve shrugged. "He seems to be caught up in other things at the moment."
"True, true."
Rumlow turned to face the doors.
Steve shifted his feet. There were men on both sides of him, behind him. He did not like this at all.
The man in front of him was sweating. Steve saw a bead of liquid coalesce in the short hair at the nape of his neck and roll down his damp skin until it vanished in his collar.
He resisted the urge to rub his temples. So it was going to be a fight.
There was no other way this would end.
"Before we get started," he said wearily, "does anybody want to get out?"
Me , Steve thought bitterly.
A frozen silence ensued.
The man behind Steve moved. He twisted, ducked; the shock probe landed on his biceps instead of digging into his ribs and sent a painful jolt up and down Steve's arm. He broke the hand holding it, slapped the barrel of a stun gun away from his face, swung a punch and felt cartilage crunch beneath his knuckles.
Somebody got hold of his left arm, drove it back into the wall. A cold cuff clamped down around his wrist and Steve looked up, saw it glowed blue and strained toward the metal wall with the force of a strong electromagnet. He fought. Lashed out with both feet and his free hand, sending one powerful strike after another into even the suits. Their ambush had backfired a bit. In such close quarters, no one had room to maneuver, and it became a war of attrition. Who would last longer– Steve or the SHIELD agents?
He launched a vicious kick into somebody's gut, right below the protection of their tactical vests, and as the man doubled over someone else slammed into Steve's hip. He lost his balance and the cuff whipped his arm back, pinned it to the wall.
Steve strained against it. Couldn't free himself. Half the elevator was down, somebody had stopped its descent between floors. Shock probes slammed into his stomach, one and another and a third, and his entire body went rigid.
Pain is just a message .
Steve put all his weight on the cuff. It held. He lashed out with both legs, used physics and sheer battering ram strength to slam one assailant after another into submission. He got an opportunity, took it, latched his right hand over his left and gritted his teeth as he strained against the cuff.
"Give it up, Rogers," Rumlow panted. Steve fended him off with both legs. "No one can beat that magnet–"
Steve slammed him in the chest with both heels. Rumlow went flying across the elevator, cracked his head on the glass, and went still.
With a massive effort, Steve tore himself free of the wall with enough force that he slammed into two of the remaining agents and took both of them to the ground.
He dodged a shock probe. It found a place in the side of the man beneath him who instantly shuddered and went limp. Steve rolled over, flipped upright, kicked his shield up into his hands. The remaining agents went down in a matter of seconds.
He surveyed the bodies strewn about the elevator.
Stupid bastards .
Steve ran to the door of the elevator and hauled it open with his fingertips.
A troop of armored soldiers ran down the hallway toward him.
He gritted his teeth and shoved the doors shut again.
No hatch in the ceiling. It'd take too long to batter his way through the floor, and they could remote operate the elevator down if they had to, crush him before he ever exited the shaft.
There was only one way down, and it was going to hurt like hell.
Somebody slammed into the elevator door.
Steve backed up, braced himself, and charged.
He broke through two layers of glass and out into the sky.
The glass roof of the atrium loomed below.
Steve angled his body. Aimed in the bare half-second he had. Curled in a ball behind his shield.
The first impact hurt. The second one echoed through his entire skeleton. Left his ears ringing, head spinning, every part of him in pain.
Steve rolled over and clenched his teeth.
Pain is just a message.
He got one foot beneath himself. Two. He settled his shield on his left arm and looked around. The atrium had gone silent. Dozens of people stared at him in various states of shock and fear.
Steve bolted for the parking garage.
He seemed to have bought himself precious time with the jumping-ten-stories stunt; no one was prepared to come after him down here. He made it to the garage and fired up his motorcycle and only had to go through four individual guards or agents along the way.
Steve slung his shield into its slot between the handlebars, started the engine, and peeled out of his spot, aiming for the square of sunlight that was the garage entrance.
A siren blared.
The steel bunker bay doors started to seal.
Steve gritted his teeth and opened the throttle all the way, flying past lines of cars and vans.
The square of light shrunk farther and farther.
Steve shot right at the closing steel. He'd decapitate himself if he didn't–
He punched the booster and leaned as far to the left as he could.
The motorcycle's engine roared and it shot forward. Gravity tugged Steve's cheeks. His left knee was inches from the ground.
He slipped through the gap with inches to spare.
Steve wrenched the motorcycle upright and steered back into a straight line, right down the long road leading across the water away from the Triskelion.
The speedometer needle crept upward. Fifty miles an hour. Sixty. Seventy-five. Eighty-three.
A SHIELD dropship dropped out of the sky with a scream of hard-working engines.
A mechanized voice ordered him to halt and surrender.
Steve's heart pounded louder than the dropship.
A machine gun leapt to life and sprayed the pavement with bullets.
Steve dodged left, right, left, in varying turn radii, screaming across the pavement in irregular, unpredictable patterns. A few stray bullets pinged off his shield or the metal of his bike, but he dodged the worst of it–got in range–
With the ease of practice, he slung his shield sidearm. It lodged in the left engine of the dropship. The engine shuddered, roared, belched black smoke. The dropship tipped.
Steve hit the front brakes of his bike. It wrenched onto its front wheel and he used the momentum, hurling himself forward and up straight into the glass cockpit of the dropship. There was less than half a second during which Steve met the terrified pilot's eyes. He twisted and vaulted off the glass up onto the wing. Ripped his shield free. The dropship jerked left and banked toward the pavement. Steve launched himself over the edge and skidded along its hull. He stabbed his shield through the metal just in time and hung there one-handed. The dying dropship shrieked and spun. Pavement, then water, then pavement again spun beneath his dangling legs.
He somersaulted up over the edge of the ship, pulled his shield free at the apex of his spin, landed and rolled along its shifting top surface.
There. The fins. Steve aimed, threw. The shield ricocheted between the stabilizers, leaving twin gouts of fire and smoke. An explosion shook the dropship. He sprinted down its spine. Another of the ship's convulsions launched him after the shield. He caught it one-handed and rolled when he hit the ground.
Behind him, the dropship crashed into the pavement, effectively bottlenecking any ground pursuit.
Steve shook with fury and adrenaline. This was SHIELD– SHIELD, compromised; SHIELD, trying to kill him.
He'd been right to distrust the Director. He'd been right to break from them. He'd been right to take his own path.
Steve was armed only with his shield and his skills; he was wearing a leather jacket and a cotton T-shirt and jeans. He was not equipped to go on the run.
But he knew (hoped) that some of his teammates would come for him. And he knew SHIELD would come for him as well. So he didn't exactly have a choice but to hide, and stay alive, until he could figure out his next move.