Taking a Stand

Sam Wilson’s footsteps were quiet, almost silent on the paved floor of Washington D.C. He could only hear his heavy breathing as he jogged under the dim light of the streetlamps.

The sun had barely risen, and the sky was painted in beautiful shades of pink and blue, while the air was fresh and cool—perfect for running.

Sam heard quick footsteps approaching. It was louder and louder followed by a voice of “On your left” before a huge man in a blue top ran past his left shoulder at a speed that was not humanly possible. Sam watched as the tall blonde-haired man ran past him and continued along the path.

He shook his head and continued jogging. There were a lot of weird people around those days.

***

The sun was up, and the streetlamps turned dark. A cotton candy blue painted the sky as Sam kept jogging. His breaths became heavier with every step and sweat drenched his grey sweater. He went along the path until he heard the same footsteps behind him getting faster.

He looked behind only to be greeted with another “On your left” again before the man zoomed past him in a blur.

“On my left, uh huh. Got it,” Sam replied bluntly as he tried to catch up to him, only to see him disappear around the corner, running as fast as a car.

***

Sunlight shone on his face as Sam finally finished another lap around the park. More people with their petty dogs and kids filled the area, making him increasingly irritated by the second.

Yet again, he heard the soft thumping getting louder. He glanced behind him to see the blonde-haired jackass running towards him.

“Don’t say it, don’t you say it!” Sam yelled at him while picking up his pace.

“On your left,” the man ran past his side again and Sam was sure he could see a smirk on his face before he continued along the path at an insane speed.

“Come on!” Sam groaned angrily and chased after him, but he slowed down as he tried to catch his breath.

***

Sam sat under a tree, panting heavily. He watched the scenery as he took deep breaths.

“Need a medic?” the all too familiar voice came around the corner. The tall bodybuilder walked over to him and smiled warmly.

Sam laughed “I need a new set of lungs. Dude, you just ran like 13 miles in 30 minutes!”

The man shrugged, a small huff of laughter escaping his lips. “I guess I got a late start,” he replied.

“Really? You should be ashamed of yourself. You should take another lap,” Sam looked away from the tall man for a second, only to see him still standing there. “Did you take it? I assume you just took it,” he joked.

“What unit you with?” the man asked Sam.

“58th pararescue, but now I’m working down at the VA,” Sam answered with a hand for him to shake.

“Sam Wilson,” he introduced himself. The man took his hand and pulled Sam up.

“Steve Rogers,” he smiled at Sam while he got him to his feet.

“Yeah, I kind of put that together,” Sam sighed with a grunt when Steve helped him up. “Must have freaked you out coming home after the whole defrosting thing.”

“It takes some getting used to,” Steve shrugged and turned to leave. “It’s good to meet you, Sam.”

“It’s your bed, right?” Sam called out.

“What’s that?”

“Your bed. It’s too soft. When I was over there, I’d sleep on the ground and use rocks as pillows, like a caveman. Now I’m home, lying on my bed, and it’s like…”

“Lying on a marshmallow. Feel like I’m gonna sink right to the floor.”

Sam grinned and nodded his head.

“How long?”

“Two tours,” Sam answered. The two men stood there in awkward silence in what felt like several minutes.

“You must miss the good old days, huh?” Sam broke the silence.

“Well, things aren’t so bad. Food’s a lot better, we used to just boil everything. No polio is good. Internet, so helpful,” Steve replied. “I’ve been reading a lot about that trying to catch up.”

Sam looked up for a while, thinking, and raised up a finger, “Marvin Gaye, 1972, ‘Trouble Man’ soundtrack. Everything you’ve missed jammed into one album.”

Steve nodded. “I’ll put it on the list,” he took out a small notebook and a pen and flipped it to a page. He wrote down ‘Trouble Man (Soundtrack)’ neatly on the paper. The notebook had other things written on it, such as ‘I love Lucy (Television)’, ‘Moon Landing’, ‘Berlin Wall (Up+down)’, ‘Steve Jobs (Apple)’, ‘Disco’, ‘Thai food’, ‘Star Wars/Trek’, ‘Nirvana (Band)’ and ‘Rocky (Rocky II?)’.

He closed his red notebook and took out his mobile phone from his pocket. He had received a message: ‘Mission alert. Extraction imminent. Meet at the curb. :)’

“Alright, Sam, duty calls. Thanks for the run. If that’s what you call running,” Steve reached out his hand for Sam to shake.

“Oh, that’s how it is?” Sam smiled. They shook hands.

“Oh, that’s how it is,” Steve chuckled.

Sam laughed along with him. “Okay. Any time you wanna stop by the VA, make me look awesome in front of the girl at the front desk, just let me know.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

A black sports car pulled over at the nearby curb of the road and its engine roared loudly. The window rolled down to reveal the driver—a redhead woman.

“Hey, fellas. Either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I’m here to pick up a fossil,” Natasha Romanoff smiled at the two.

“That’s hilarious,” Steve walked towards the car and got in with her.

Sam peered in the car and gave Natasha and her car an appreciative look.

“How you doing?” he asked Natasha from the outside of the car as Steve closed the door.

“Hey,” Natasha smiled.

“Can’t run everywhere,” Steve looked at Sam.

“No, you can’t,” Sam smiled and watched as Natasha and Steve drove off with the sound of the engine echoing down the streets.

-

A Quinjet flew over the Indian Ocean late in the night, its engine silent in the clouds, blending in with the dark sky. Natasha and Steve were on the jet, along with some STRIKE agents, led by Brock Rumlow.

“The target is a mobile satellite launch platform: The Lemurian Star. They were sending up their last payload when pirates took them, 93 minutes ago,” Rumlow informed the team using a high-tech screen, with information about the ship, mostly designed by Tony Stark himself.

“Any demands?” Steve asked.

“A billion and a half,” Rumlow answered.

“Why so steep?”

“Because it’s SHIELD’s.”

“So it’s not off-course, it’s trespassing.”

“I’m sure they have a good reason,” Natasha shrugged.

“You know, I’m getting a little tired of being Fury’s janitor,” Steve turned to her.

“Relax, it’s not that complicated,” Natasha said.

“How many pirates?” Steve looked back at the monitor.

Rumlow showed them on the screen. “Twenty-five, top mercs, led by this guy. Georges Batroc.” He pulled out a picture of Batroc on the monitor. “Ex-DGSE, Action Division. He’s at the top of Interpol’s Red Notice. Before the French demobilized him, he had 36 kill missions. This guy’s got a rep for maximum casualties.”

“Hostages?” Steve asked.

“Uh…mostly techs. One officer, Jasper Sitwell,” Rumlow answered while he pulled out Sitwell’s picture. “They’re in the gallery.”

“What’s Sitwell doing on a launch ship?” Steve sighed. “Alright, I’m gonna sweep the deck and find Batroc. Nat, you kill the engine and wait for instruction. Rumlow, you sweep aft, find the hostages, get them to the life-pods, get ‘em out. Let’s move.” Steve instructed the group and started to move out.

“STRIKE, you heard the Cap. Gear up,” Rumlow ordered his team.

Steve and Natasha got ready to dive off the jet. Steve tested his wrist communicator. “Secure channel seven.”

“Seven secure,” Natasha replied. “Did you do anything fun Saturday night?”

“Well, all the guys from my barbershop quartet are dead, so…not really,” Steve said and put in his earpiece.

“Coming up by the drop zone, Cap,” the pilot on the radio informed him.

Steve punched the button of the jet and the door started opening from the back, the wind hitting hard on their faces and the sound of howling wind blasted in their ears.

“You know, if you ask Kristen out from Statistics she’d probably say yes,” Natasha said.

“That’s why I don’t ask,” Steve turned to the door.

Natasha yelled to him over the loud sound of the wind outside, “Too shy or too scared?”

“Too busy!” With that, Steve jumped out of the Quinjet with his shield.

A STRIKE agent saw him jump out and looked at Rumlow. “Was he wearing a parachute?”

Rumlow shook his head and smiled. “No. No, he wasn’t.”

***

Steve plunged into the ocean not too far away from the ship after jumping off the Quinjet, then climbed up the chains of the Lemurian Star silently.

He hopped onto the ship without a sound and spotted a soldier patrolling past. He snuck to the soldier and tightened an arm around his neck and choked him quietly until he passed out. Steve carefully placed him on the ground as he ran to other parts of the ship, trying to eliminate as many soldiers as he could see. He knocked out most of them using his shield, while he kicked and punched the others without breaking a sweat.

He could not let anybody report him to Batroc, or the whole mission would be compromised, risking the hostages’ life.

Steve made his way across the Lemurian Star, his shield hooked on his back and knocking a soldier in his way out of the ship.

He stopped when he reached an area with two soldiers patrolling. He punched one in the face and kicked another to the wall when he tried to attack him. The soldier he punched got up and took out a small pocketknife. He tried to stab Rogers, but he got thrown on the floor with a swift move.

While still being on the floor, the second soldier glanced at the emergency alarm and reached out a hand to pull it. Steve noticed it and threw the knife the other soldier was holding at his hand, making him scream in pain. Steve kicked him unconscious before continuing his sprint towards the main control room of the ship.

He jumped down to the deck below him and attacked some soldiers using his shield, hitting them repeatedly and kicked a soldier while the circular shield flew across and bounced off the pillars of the ship, hitting more soldiers on the way. He punched another one out and hit the inside of his shield on one of their faces, making them fall onto the ground.

A gun cocked. “Bouge pas! Bouge pas, (Don’t move! Don’t move.)” Steve heard a voice shouting behind him, holding a gun to his head. Steve stood still until the sound of a silent gunshot followed and the pirate grunted before falling to the floor.

Steve looked behind him only to be greeted by Rumlow with the gun that he just used to shoot down the pirate. He parachuted down onto the deck behind Steve.

“Thanks,” the super soldier said.

“Yeah. You seemed pretty helpless without me,” Rumlow joked as he began to take off his parachute.

Natasha and the STRIKE agents soon joined them on the deck. Steve kept his shield while Natasha dropped her parachute and walked beside him.

“What about the nurse that lives across the hall from you? She seems kinda nice,” she suggested.

“Secure the engine room, then find me a date,” Steve ordered.

“I’m multitasking,” Natasha said as she jumped down onto the lower deck.

***

“J'ai dit à Batroc que si on veut que le SHIELD nous paye, commence à leur envoyer des corps maintenant! (I said to Batroc, if we want SHIELD to pay, we have to start sending them bodies now!)” one of the French pirates of Batroc yelled at his teammates.

Below the deck, all the crew of the Lemurian Star were seated down in rows, their limbs tied together with zip ties. All the techs and Jasper Sitwell were surrounded by the pirates, patrolling the small room with their guns.

“Une balle pour quelqu'un. (I have a bullet for someone.)” the man pointed his gun at the hostages. “You want a bullet in your head?! T'en veux une. Hein! (Do you want one? Eh?)” He kicked one of the hostage’s legs. “Bouge ton pied. Tu veux une balle dans la tête? (Move your leg. Want a bullet in your head?)”

***

Steve swiftly jumped up a few decks of the ship and he saw the control room. He took out a device and he launched a small object which looked like a plug on the window on the control room quietly. A device to hear their conversations.

“J'aime pas attendre. Appelle Durand. Je veux que l'on s'arrache dès que la ranson arrive, (I do not like to wait. Call Durand. I want the ship ready to move when ransom arrives.)” Georges Batroc told one of the French pirates that was standing nearby.

Batroc was in the control room, comfortably resting and not noticing the device Steve had just planted on the window.

“Oui, Batroc (Yes, Batroc),” the French pirate walked towards the phone and made the call. “Durand. Démarre le moteur.”

Down in the engine room, Durrand picked up the phone and replied, “Okay.” He put down the phone and turned around only to be greeted by Natasha.

“Hey, sailor,” she smirked.

Before Durrand could take his gun out, Natasha kicked his leg and slung a rope around his neck, choking him. She threw him aside and kicked him so she got tossed off the balcony. She had a rope tied on herself to the sailor, making her hang in the middle of the control room as the sailor slumped on the railings of the many metal platforms of the control room. She managed to swing down below deck, shooting several of the pirates on the way.

***

In the gallery, the pirates were still walking around with guns in their hands, trying to look as threatening as possible.

“Ferme ta gueule! (Shut up.)” one of them called out. “Tu veux jouer les héros, c'est ça! (Want to play hero, is that it?)” He looked at the hostages who kept their heads down.

“Bon, j'ai trop attendu là. (All right, I've waited long enough.)” he growled. He moved to the locked door and banged on it to get the attention of the guard outside. “Hé, trouve Batroc, si j'ai pas de nouvelles dans deux minutes, je commence à les tuer. (Hey, look for Batroc. If I don’t hear anything in two minutes, I'll start killing them!)”

“D'accord. Je vais le chercher! (Okay. I'll find him!)” the guard replied to him.

He turned around only to be greeted with Rumlow and his team. Rumlow shot him with a stun gun and held him there before he could fall to the floor and make a sound. The pirate from inside the gallery sensed something, but as Rumlow held his mate there behind the door, he thought nothing of it.

“Deux minutes, (Two minutes.)” the pirate in the room told his teammates as Rumlow slowly placed the pirate outside the door on the floor without a sound.

On the side of the ship, the STRIKE agents lowered to the windows of the gallery on the ship using wires strapped to them. They pointed their guns at the windows, ready for command. Another STRIKE agent with Rumlow took out a bomb from his backpack and carefully placed it on the locked door of the gallery. Rumlow took the gun and aimed it at the door with full focus. The STRIKE agent pressed a button on the explosive, making the machine attaching itself to the door.

***

Steve crouched behind a pillar on the deck, looking through the window at where Batroc was seated—the main controls of the Lemurian Star.

“Silence radio du SHIELD, Batroc. (Radio silence from SHIELD, Batroc.)” one French Pirate told his boss.

The STRIKE agents got into position, aiming their guns at the unsuspecting pirates in the gallery.

“Targets acquired,” a STRIKE agent informed.

Below the deck, Rumlow pointed his gun at the bomb on the locked door. “STRIKE in position.” he said.

Steve lifted his wrist communicator to his mouth. “Natasha, what’s your status?”

No reply.

Meanwhile, Natasha swiftly jumped down below deck to knock out one of the pirates.

“Status, Natasha?” Steve nagged.

She ran up to the pirate from behind. “Hang on!” she told Steve through her comms. She attacked the pirate with her widow gauntlet and tossed him to the ground. Another two came running up to her and she knocked them both out in a few seconds.

“Engine room secure,” she spoke into her communicator and grabbed a nearby lead pipe. She raised it high and swung it into the pirate’s head hard. Natasha dropped the pipe on the floor and strolled out of the room.

***

Agent Sitwell sat on the floor of the gallery; his limbs tied up. He looked through the window and spotted one of the STIRKE agents. He looked to the pirates again, pretending that he never saw anything.

“Le temps est écoulé. Qui veut mourrir en premier. (Time's up. Who wants to die first?)” he turned to one of his teammates. “Hé toi ! Prend la fille. (Hey, you! Take the girl.)”

***

The STRIKE agents got into place.

“On my mark,” Steve instructed. “Three…two…one.”

The STRIKE team started shooting at the pirates. The door blew open and Rumlow quickly killed the head pirate with his gun once the door gave way.

The pirate fell in front of Agent Sitwell’s legs. Sitwell stared at him.

“I told you, SHIELD doesn’t negotiate,” he told the dead body.

***

Radio silence.

“Halo?” one of the pirates tried the comms again. “Je pense que la ligne est morte.J'ai perdu le contact. (Batroc, the line just went dead. I’ve lost contact with them.)” he turned to his boss who just stared at the floor, thinking of what to do.

“Look out!” the pirate warned Batroc in which turned around suddenly. Steve’s shield was coming at him.

It smashed through the window. Batroc ducked and the shield slammed into the other French pirate instead. It rammed into a metal cabinet in the control room after knoocking down the pirate.

Steve climbed into the room through the broken window. Batroc, who was on the floor, kicked Steve and started sprinting away.

Steve immediately chased after him, taking back his shield on the way.

“Hostages en route to extraction,” Rumlow informed the Captain as he led the hostages out of the gallery with the help of the other STRIKE agents. “Romanoff missed the rendezvous point, Cap. Hostiles are still in play.”

Steve got out of the control room and started scanning the ship for Batroc. “Natasha, Batroc's on the move. Circle back to Rumlow and protect the hostages,” he told her.

Yet again, the line was silent.

“Natasha!” he hissed.

A sharp pain in his side—he rolled back, caught unaware and raised his shield, wary. Bartoc gave him a schist-eating grin.

Batroc was surprisingly strong. The super soldier and him managed to put up a good fight, having an intense hand to hand combat.

Batroc performed a flic flac and halted the fight.

“Je croyais que tu étais plus qu'un bouclier. (I thought that you were more than just a shield.)” he said.

Steve gained his composure. He put the shield on his back and took off his helmet.

Batroc smirked.

“On va voir. (Let's see.)” Steve dropped his helmet on the floor.

They started fighting again. But this time, Steve quickly turned the tide in his favor. He kicked Batroc in the right leg, the stomach, and then performed a downwards somersault kick to the face, knocking him down.

Batroc then stood up with visible struggle. Steve rammmed him through the door of a room and knocked him out with a strong punch to the face.

“Well, this is awkward,” Steve heard an all too familiar voice in the room. He jerked his head up to look around, only to see Natasha some distance away, smiling at him. She was typing something on a computer.

The room was filled with computers and screens, looked like something used for navigation of the huge ship.

“What are you doing?” Steve stood up and walked towards Natasha.

“Backing up the hard drive. It’s a good habit to get into,” she replied.

Steve took another look at Batroc on the floor, making sure he was unconscious before he continued to pace towards her.

“Rumlow needed your help. What the hell are you doing here?” he looked at what Natasha was backing up on the monitor.

“You’re saving SHIELD intel,” Steve thought aloud.

“Whatever I can get my hands on,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.

Steve frowned. “Our mission was to rescue hostages.”

“No, that’s your mission,” Natasha finished backing up the hard drive and pulled it out. “And you’ve done it beautifully.” She smiled at Steve before walking off.

He grabbed her arm. “You just jeopardised this whole operation.”

“I think that’s overstating things-”

Batroc cut her off and rose from the floor. He was conscious again. He started running away but not before he could throw a grenade at the two. It was small, but deadly.

Steve quickly deflected it with his shield. Natasha started running and Steve joined her. As the grenade landed on the ground, Natasha took out her gun and shot it at a window in another room, breaking the glass integrity.

Steve held on to Natasha and they both crashed into the room just before the grenade went off, creating bright orange flames. Sparks flew everywhere while they managed to survive safely.

Natasha and Steve backed up and sat against the wall, catching their breath.

Steve looked up back at the room, trying to find Batroc, but all he could see was black smoke and fog. Batroc escaped. A mission for another day then.

“Okay, that one’s on me,” Natasha panted.

“You’re damn right,” Steve grunted and got up, still looking rather mad with her. As he walked away, Natasha sighed and rolled her eyes.

-

The SHIELD headquarters. The Triskelion. It was in Washington D.C. A beautiful, modern-looking three-tower building. It was tall and huge, reached more that 40 storeys high, could be even bigger than Avengers tower back in New York.

Steve walked into Nick Fury’s office, the man who was head of SHIELD.

“You just can’t stop yourself from lying, can you?” Steve stomped towards him.

Fury was sitting comfortably in his chair behind his desk, staring out his office window.

“I didn’t lie. Agent Romanoff had a different mission than yours,” he replied to the soldier without leaving his gaze out the window.

“Which you didn’t feel obliged to share.”

“I’m not obliged to anything.”

“Those hostages could have died, Nick,” Steve frowned.

“I sent the greatest soldier in history to make sure that didn’t happen,” Fury sat up in his seat and finally turned to Steve.

“Soldiers trust each other, that's what makes it an army. Not a bunch of guys running around and shooting guns.”

“Last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye,” Fury stood up, coming to level with Steve.

The super soldier sighed.

“Look, I didn’t want you to do anything you weren’t comfortable with. Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything,” Fury continued.

Steve put a hand on his hip. “I can’t lead a mission when the people I’m leading have missions of their own.”

“It’s called compartmentalisation. Nobody spills the secrets because nobody knows them all.”

“Except you.”

Fury sighed and looked away for a while. “You’re wrong about me. I do share. I’m nice like that.”

***

Fury entered an elevator in the Triskelion.

“Insight bay.”

Steve followed him.

“Captain Rogers does not have clearance for Project Insight,” the SHIELD computer in the elevator stated. It gave Steve an ‘ACCESS DENIED’ across his identity file on the small screen on the side of the elevator panel. The artificial intelligence, also made by the courtesy of Iron Man.

“Director override, Fury, Nicholas J,” Fury leant against the back of the elevator.

“Confirmed,” it replied.

The huge elevator started moving down, silently and smoothly. It was made of glass, the beautiful sight of Washington right outside, with the morning sunlight penetrating through.

Steve placed himself on the side of the elevator, facing away from the glass.

“You know, they used to play music,” he broke the silence.

“Yeah,” Fury looked around the elevator, then at Steve. “My grandfather operated one of these things for 40 years. My granddad worked in a nice building, he got nice tips.” Fury looked up to think about it. “He'd walk home every night, roll of ones stuffed in his lunch bag. He'd say "hi", people would say hi back. Time went on, neighbourhood got rougher. He'd say "Hi", they'd say, "Keep on steppin'. Granddad got to grippin' that lunch bag a little tighter.”

“Did he ever get mugged?” Steve asked.

Fury chuckled. “Every week some punk would say, "What's in the bag?"”

“What did he do?”

“He’d show them. A bunch of crumpled ones and a loaded .22 Magnum,” he smiled.

The elevator descended into the underground.

Fury started walking towards the same wall as Steve but facing the windows. “Yeah, Grandad loved people. But he didn’t trust them very much.”

Steve looked to the floor before turning his gaze out the glass of the elevator. He had to do a double take when he saw the out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, I know,” Fury looked at him. “They’re a little bigger than a .22”

Outside the lift were three huge Helicarriers stored in the underground of the Triskelion. They were enormous flying fortresses, like that of an aircraft carrier. The scale of the Helicarriers were massive, easily towering over the other aircrafts and planes.

Steve looked at them as the elevator continued its descend. His mouth was agape, and his blue eyes were huge. Fury just stood there looking proud as ever, as if he just won some sort of competition that even the school geniuses could not beat.

Many workers were still working on the ships, making adjustments to it while the others were operating cranes to put aircrafts onto the Helicarriers. Each Helicarrier was lined with huge weapons on its top, bottom, sides, front and back. They also had a long runway on top of them for aircrafts to take off from and land on the Helicarrier itself.

“This is Project Insight,” Fury explained to Steve as they walked up close to the enormous ships. “Three next generation Helicarriers synced to a network of targeting satellites.”

“Launched from the Lemurian Star,” Steve said.

“Once we get them in the air they never need to come down. Continuous suborbital flight courtesy of our new repulsor engines,” Fury gestured at the ship’s engines.

Steve looked at it. It was not the regular engines that had those enormous fans inside in the previous Helicarrier. They were different. Like those that could be found in Tony Stark’s suit, but it was much larger.

“Stark?”

“Well, he had a few suggestions once he got an up-close look at our old turbines,” Fury answered. “These new long-range precision guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute. The satellites can read a terrorist's DNA before he steps outside his spider hole. We're gonna neutralize a lot of threats before they even happen.” He led Steve to a deck where he could analyze the Helicarrier which made him and Steve look pathetic in size.

He showed the super soldier the weapons that the ship could carry, but it didn’t matter to Steve.

“I thought the punishment usually came after the crime,” he said.

“We can’t afford to wait that long,” Fury said.

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“After New York, I convinced the World Security Council we need a quantum surge in threat analysis. For once, we’re way ahead of the curve.”

Steve looked away from Fury. “By holding a gun to everyone on earth and calling it protection.

Fury stared at Steve. “You know, I read those SSR files. Greatest generation? You guys did some nasty stuff.”

Steve finally turned to him and looked him in his one good eye. “Yeah, we compromised. Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well. But we did it so the people could be free,” he pointed at the Helicarriers. “This isn’t freedom. This is fear.”

“SHIELD takes the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be,” Fury took a step closer to him. “It’s getting damn near past time for you to get up with that program, Cap.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

With that, Steve turned and walked off.

-

Steve took off from his motorcycle, away from the Triskelion. He had changed out of his uniform into regular clothes, and his shield on his back.

The Smithsonian Museum. It was renowned as the world's largest museum, education, and research complex. Located at the heart of Washington, D.C., the museum was a majestic enclave of knowledge, a haven for inquisitive minds and passionate explorers.

The place was swarming with people and children, all being fascinated by the wide array of displays of spaceships and old planes being hung from the ceiling.

But there was a special exhibit, dedicated to America’s one and only—Captain America.

“A symbol to the nation. A hero to the world,” the Smithsonian narrator over the speakers through the exhibit stated. “The story of Captain America is one of honour, bravery and sacrifice.”

The walls were lined with red, white, and blue, with Captain America’s face on a wall, saluting. It was a nicely done exhibit, attracting many to look through Steve’s history.

A man in a baseball cap kept his head down, walking over to the exhibition. His blonde hair subtly showing under the cap, while his blue eyes scanning around the place. Steve Rogers was there, at his own exhibition.

“Denied enlistment due to poor health, Steven Rogers was chosen for a program unique in the annals of American warfare. One that would transform him into the world’s first super soldier,” the Smithsonian narrator said.

A board showed Steve’s comparison between Steve’s pre-serum self and after he became a super soldier. Some parents were lifting their child to the height of Steve on the tv screen display of his height while two other girls were analyzing him on a second display as well.

A young boy stood at the side. He was wearing a blue shirt with the Captain America shield on it. How ironic. The boy saw Steve and stared at him. He recognised the super soldier. Steve smiled and put a finger to his lips, indicating to him to keep quiet. The boy slowly nodded, still in awe that he just saw Captain America.

Steve walked over to a screen showing an old footage of himself.

“In this rare footage, everyone’s favorite war hero, Captain America…” the old footage recording trailed off.

Steve walked to the display where there were mannequins with costumes of Steve's old commando squad—the Howling Commandos.

“Battle tested, Captain America and his Howling Commandos quickly earned their stripes. Their mission, taking down HYDRA, the Nazi rogue science division.”

He turned around to a display of his friend. James Buchanan Barnes.

“Best friends since childhood, Bucky Barnes and Steven Rogers were inseparable on both schoolyard and battlefield. Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life in service of his country.”

Steve looked at it carefully. His heart felt uneasy. Barnes had helped Steve all the way through his life, and especially through the war. He fought by Steve’s side. But doing such a job came with a cost. The cost of death. Steve did not want to think about it. His only good friend, someone he trusted, died while trying to help him.

Some old tapes of Bucky and him were playing on the display. Those were the times. The times when things were easy. When having a friend by your side was everything Steve needed.

***

“That was a difficult winter. A blizzard had trapped half of our battalion behind the German line. Steve…” Peggy hesitated. She was much older, after the time Steve ‘died’. The old tape that was playing on a screen had Peggy Carter, Steve’s love of his life, being interviewed about the war. “Captain Rogers, he fought his way through a HYDRA blockade that had pinned our allies down for months. He saved over a thousand men. Including the man who would…who would become my husband as it turned out.”

Steve sat on one of the chairs at that part of the exhibit, listening to Peggy’s voice. Her sweet voice. Her accent. There was not a part of him that hated her. He took out a compass from his pocket. Not just any compass. It was a compass he kept since before he went into the ice. The compass had a newspaper cut out of Peggy, pasted onto the cap of the old gold pocket compass.

He opened it and took a good look at her. It was a good photo. It showed her beauty in the black and white picture.

Peggy continued, “Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life.”

***

“You should be proud of yourself, Peggy,” Steve looked at some photographs of Peggy and her children in the picture frames laid on her bedside.

An old and frail Peggy Carter on her bed turned her head to the pictures. Her hair was white. Her face had creases of wrinkles. She was skinny, her voice raspy. She wore a nightgown, the pale white sheets of the blanket covering half her body, and the pillow propped up so she could sit up with ease.

“I have lived a life,” she looked back at Steve, who was sitting next to her bed. “My only regret is that you didn’t get to live yours.”

Steve’s gaze lowered to the floor while he sighed a little.

“What is it?” Peggy asked.

“For as long as I can remember I just wanted to do what was right. I guess I’m not quite sure what that is anymore,” Steve frowned a little. “And I thought I could throw myself back in and follow orders, serve. It’s just not the same.”

Peggy chuckled. “You’re always so dramatic. Look, you saved the world. We rather…mucked it up.”

“You didn’t. Knowing that you help found SHIELD is half the reason I stay.”

“Hey,” Peggy took Steve’s hand. “The world has changed and none of us can go back. All we can do is our best. And sometimes the best we can do is to start over-” She started coughing.

Steve stood up and walked over to a table not too far away to pour a glass of water for her.

“Peggy,” he handed the glass over to her.

Suddenly, her eyes went wide, and some sort of twinkle shone in Peggy’s eyes, as if she were seeing Steve for the first time.

“Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re alive!” she exclaimed with a soft smile. “You…you came, you came back…”

“Yeah, Peggy,” he gave her a wry smile.

Peggy started to cry, “It’s been so long…so long…” She shook her head, not believing her eyes.

Steve nodded. “Well, I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.”

-

Fury was alone in his office, looking out the window again.

“Secure office.”

All the windows blackened. Fury looked at the flash drive Natasha had used to collect SHIELD intel from the Lemurian Star in his hand. He plugged it into his computer.

“Open Lemurian Star’s satellite launch file,” Fury said.

“Access denied,” his computer answered.

He frowned a little. “Run decryption.”

The computer on the screen processed for a while. “Decryption failed.”

“Director override, Fury, Nicholas J.”

The computer processed yet again. “Override denied. All files sealed.”

Fury frowned, “On whose authority?”

“Fury, Nicholas J.”

He let out a nervous sigh, his breath quickening a little. Fury stared at the screen, utterly perplexed. He struggled to make sense of it all.

He walked into the elevator.

“World Security Council.”

“Confirmed,” the SHIELD computer replied.

***

“If Nick Fury thinks he can get his costumed thugs and STRIKE commandos to mop-up his mess, he’s sadly mistaken. This failure is unacceptable.” Councilman Rockwell chided.

Alexander Pierce was holding a virtual meeting with the 4 members of the World Security Council. The screens which projected their bodies nicely on widely spaced chairs, as if they were at the meeting with Pierce in real life.

“Well, considering this attack took place one mile from my country’s sovereign waters, it’s a bit more than that. I move for immediate hearing,” Councilman Singh proposed.

“We don’t need hearings, we need action. It’s this Council’s duty to oversee SHIELD,” Councilwoman Hawley interjected.

“A breach like this raises serious questions,” said Councilman Yen.

Councilman Rockwell agreed. “Like how the hell did a French pirate manage to hijack a covert SHIELD vessel in broad daylight?”

The Council was in Pierce’s office. It had a wall that was a full-length window, showing the distant view of the city around the Triskelion. Pierce was pacing around the room, listening to their arguments.

“For the record, Councilman, he’s Algerian. I can draw a map if it’d help,” Pierce corrected and took off his glasses.

“I appreciate your wit, Secretary Pierce,” Rockwell stared at him. “But this council takes things like international piracy fairly seriously.

“Really? I don’t,” Pierce said. “I don’t care about one boat, I care about the fleet. If this Council is going to fall a rancor every time someone pushes us on the playing field, maybe we need someone to oversee us.”

“Mr Secretary, nobody is suggesting…” Councilman Yen started, but got interrupted when Pierce’s assistant walked into the room.

She whispered something into Pierce’s ear while the Council watched and waited. His assistant then walked off and left the room.

Pierce turned to the Council. “Excuse me.” He followed his assistant, also walking away.

“More trouble Mr Secretary?” Rockwell asked.

“It depends on your definition,” the meeting ended when Pierce walked out of the room. The screens disappeared under the floor and the projections of the Council members also went with it.

Pierce's assistant held the door for him as he walked out of the room, only to be greeted by Nick Fury.

“I work forty floors away and it takes a hijacking for you to visit?” Pierce walked towards his friend.

“A nuclear war would do it too,” Fury answered.

Both men shook hands.

Fury gestured to Pierce’s office. “Busy in there?”

“Nothing some earmarks can fix.”

Fury looked away from Pierce’s eyes. “I’m, uh…here to ask a favour,” he looked back at him. “I want you to call for a vote. Project Insight has to be delayed.

“Nick, that’s not a favour, that’s a subcommittee hearing. A long one,” Pierce said.

“It could be nothing, probably is nothing. I just need time to make sure it’s nothing.”

“What if it’s something?”

“Then we’ll both be damn glad those Helicarriers aren’t in the air.”

Pierce hesitated for a while. “Fine. But you gotta get Iron Man to stop by my niece’s birthday party,” he said.

Fury and Pierce shook hands again to seal the deal.

“Thank you, sir.”

Pierce held on to Fury’s hand. “And not just a flyby, he’s got to mingle.”

He let go of his hand and turned to walk back to his office.

-

Steve went to the Veterans Administration. A PTSD group meeting. He could hear people talking when he walked down the warmly lit hallway. The place was mostly painted in a pale beige and brown wood lined the walls. He saw Sam Wilson, counselling other veterans in a big, empty room.

“The thing is, I think it’s getting worse,” Steve saw a female veteran talking. “A cop pulled me over last week, he thought I was drunk. I swerved to miss a plastic bag. I thought it was an IED.”

Steve leant against a wooden pillar, listening to them talk.

There were a bunch of veterans at the meeting, sitting on chairs placed in the room.

“Some stuff you leave there, other stuff you bring back. It’s our job to figure out how to carry it,” Sam, who was standing at the front of the room, consulted the group. “Is it gonna be in a big suitcase or in a little man-purse? It’s up to you.”

***

“I’ll see you next week,” the female veteran thanked Sam.

“Definitely,” he answered.

The meeting ended, and the veterans slowly started dispersing from the room. Steve patiently waited for Sam to say goodbye to the veterans before walking up to him, in which Sam greeted him with a smile.

“Look who it is. The running man,” Sam started to sort some papers and booklets on a small table.

“Caught the last few minutes. It’s pretty intense,” Steve looked at him, leaning against the wall.

“Yeah, brother, we all got the same problems. Guilt, regret,” Sam looked at the super soldier.

“You lose someone?”

“My wingman, Riley,” Sam sighed and crossed his arms. “Flying a night mission. Standard PJ rescue op. Nothing we hadn’t done a thousand times before. Until an RPG knocked Riley’s dumb ass out of the sky. Nothing that I could do. It’s like I was just up there to watch.”

“I’m sorry.”

“After that, I had a really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?”

“But you’re happy now, back in the world?”

Sam looked around. “The number of people giving me orders is down to about zero. So, hell yeah,” Sam smiled. “Are you thinking about getting out?”

“No…I don’t know,” Steve shook his head. “To be honest, I don’t know what I would do with myself if I did.”

“Ultimate fighting?” Sam joked in which Steve laughed. “It’s just a great idea off the top of my head. But seriously, you could do whatever you wanted to do. What makes you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

-

“Activating communications encryption protocol,” the AI in Fury’s car said.

He was driving through the busy city. Cars were everywhere on the narrow streets. The sun was setting, the clouds covering the sunlight.

“Open secure line zero-four-zero-five.”

“Confirmed.”

An image of Maria Hill’s profile appeared on the side of the car’s windscreen.

“This is Hill,” she said.

“I need you here in D.C. Deep shadow conditions.”

“Give me four hours.”

“You have three. Over,” Fury ended the call.

He came to a stop at a traffic light, and a police car stopped next to him.

Fury turned his head to the side to see the policeman in the car looking at him suspiciously.

“Want to see my lease?” he asked them coldly.

The policeman quickly sounded their siren before moving off. Fury did the same after they moved off, not paying much attention on the road.

Everything was fine. Everything was fine until a car crashed into him at the intersection. Things went flying. Fury’s airbag activated. His car got pushed to the side. Fury looked around, his eyes wide and his heart rate increasing.

More cars smashed into him. Not just any car, though. Police cars. They crashed into his front, sides and back, trapping him.

“Fracture detected,” the computer in his car told him. A skeletal analysis of Fury came up on the screen, highlighting his right forearm being injured. “Recommend anesthetic injection.”

Fury threw his head back on the headrest, groaning in pain. He took deep breaths, still trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

One police car that smashed into him reversed and several black vehicles came around. But these vehicles…they were those used by SWAT teams.

Fury gave himself his injection as SWAT teams surrounded his car with guns in their hands, all pointing at him.

“D.C Metro Police dispatch shows no units in this area,” the AI said.

Fury was surrounded. He immediately realised that these people were in fact not the police. But what were they doing? Were they trying to kill him? Who were these people?

“Get me out of here!” he yelled.

The mercenaries suddenly started to shoot their bullets at Fury’s car, creating dents and making the windows crack.

“Propulsion systems offline,” the computer informed him.

“Then reboot, dammit!” Fury shouted as he helplessly stayed in the car, watching the armour on the car decrease with every bullet that hit.

Fury looked around frantically. He saw four mercenaries carrying a huge battering ram towards the car once they stopped shooting. They placed its three legs on the road right next to the driver’s side Fury was on.

“Warning! Window integrity compromised.”

“You think?” Fury shifted himself over to the passenger side of the car. “How long to propulsion?”

“Calculating.”

The mercenaries placed the battering ram next to the window. They drilled it into the tar of the road. One of them pressed a button on it. The heavy steel battering ram lunged forward with a primal force. The car shook from the impact, nearly toppling its side. The window started cracking even more.

“Window integrity thirty-one percent,” Fury’s car informed him. “Deploying countermeasures.”

“Hold that order!” Fury yelled.

The battering ram smashed against the window again.

“Window integrity nineteen percent. Offensive measures advised.”

“Wait!”

It crashed into the window again. The glass was dented and cracked. Just one touch could break the glass…

“Window integrity one percent.”

“Now!”

A minigun gun emerged from next to his seat and he shot the window. The window broke while Fury returned the fire on the mercenaries, causing the SWAT truck and some police cars to explode.

“Propulsion systems now online,” the car informed him.

“Full acceleration, now!” Fury kept shooting at the mercenaries.

The wheels of the car started accelerating, but the police cars were blocking it from escaping. The car automatically backed up and pushed the police cars aside. It sped off on the main road as Fury continued to fire at them.

“Initiate vertical takeoff!” Fury shouted as he looked back at the mercenaries.

“Flight systems damaged.”

“Then activate guidance cameras!” Fury climbed back over to the driver’s seat. “Give me the wheel!”

Fury took over, driving his car down the busy and narrow street. The mercenaries had gotten into their police cars and chased after Fury. Fury switched lanes and swerved around cars to escape.

“Get me Agent Hill,” Fury commanded.

“Communications array damaged.”

“Well, what’s not damaged?”

“Air conditioning is fully operational.”

The police cars continued to chase him down as Fury weaved through the cars on the road.

“Traffic ahead,” the AI informed him.

“Give me an alternate route.”

“Traffic ahead on Roosevelt bridge. All vehicles stopped. 17th Avenue clear in three blocks, directly ahead.”

Fury headed into the traffic and smashed into some cars, trying to cross to 17th Avenue. He squeezed between other cars, causing a pile up and making the cars in front come to a stop. The cop cars had to stop.

But the mercenaries were determined. They got out of their cars and started firing at Fury again.

Some of them got back in their car, pushing the others away. Two mercenaries were chasing Fury on foot, jumping over vehicles.

Fury’s battered car pushed through the traffic as the mercenaries shot at him through the windows of a bus. Another one was shooting at his car from the back, but Fury put on full reverse, knocking him out when Fury hit him. He pushed his car towards the second one, making him fall.

Fury turned onto 17th Avenue. The police cars followed. They chased him until one of them took out their guns and shot at him. Fury smashed his car into his and started taking out the gun from the mercenaries' hands as he continued firing.

A second police car came and sandwiched Fury between them. Fury took the gun from the mercenary and hit him in the face. He took out another gun and Fury struggled to disarm him.

“Warning, approaching intersection,” the car warned.

Fury immediately slammed on the brake. The two police cars went in front of him, getting hit by a huge yellow truck at the intersection.

Fury made a turn, managing to shake the mercenaries off.

“GET. ME. OFF. THE GRID.”

“Calculating route to secure location.”

Through the broken glass, Fury spotted a mysterious figure on the road, right in front of him.

It immediately shot a bomb that attached itself under Fury’s car. The bomb exploded and Fury’s car flew through the air.

The figure stepped away, letting the car fall on its underside. No more escape for Fury.

The car landed with a loud crash echoing through the street. Black smoke formed in the air and sparks flew as the roof of the car scraped the rough road.

Once the car came to a stop, the menacing figure approached Fury.

It was a human. It had long hair and wore an entire suit of black and grey armour. On its face had a black mask and goggles. The figure had a menacing body, each step he made echoed in Fury’s ringing ears.

Fury got trapped in the car as he gasped for breath. Through the smoke, he saw the figure moving closer and closer. He took out a laser weapon and started burning a hole in the road.

The figure walked up to the car and ripped out the door using an incredible amount of force.

He lowered his head to peer into the car. Fury was gone. There was only a hole on the floor, as deep as God knows.

-

Steve rode his motorbike all the way home. He walked up the stairs.

“That’s so sweet. That’s so nice,” Steve heard a sweet woman’s voice at the top of the stairs, talking into her phone. It was his neighbour. Kate. She closed her door, carrying her laundry basket with her. She saw Steve and greeted him.

“I gotta go, though. Okay. Bye,” Kate ended the call. She turned to Steve. “My aunt, she’s kind of an insomniac,” she chuckled.

Steve smiled. He always thought she was pretty. Her blonde curly hair and her face. Just something about it that Steve liked. She was the nurse Natasha recommended on the Lemurian Star. Maybe…just maybe he could give it a shot…?

“Hey, if you want…if you want, you’re welcome to use my machine,” Steve suggested. “Might be cheaper than the one in the basement.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it cost?” Kate asked.

“A cup of coffee?”

Kate smiled. “Thank you, but um…I already have a load in downstairs, and uh…you don’t really want my scrubs in your machine. Just finished a rotation in the infectious diseases ward, so…”

“Ah, well, I’ll keep my distance,” he let a small chuckle escape his lips.

“Hopefully not too far.”

Steve nodded and turned to his door.

“Oh, and I think you left your stereo on,” Kate informed him.

Steve looked at her confused for a moment. “Oh. Right, thank you.” He smiled and watched as she went down the stairs with her laundry basket. He then turned in suspicion towards the door. He listened carefully to the faint sounds of 40s music playing in his apartment.

***

Steve entered the dark room through the window, making as little noise as possible. He cautiously walked through the house, picking up his shield at the side for protection in case he needed it. Who knows? There might be another surprise attack from Batroc…

He hid behind a wall, just behind the corner of where the stereo was blasting his music. He peeked behind the wall only to find a figure sitting in the dark on the armchair, next to the stereo.

Nick Fury was staring back at him with his one eye, his body slumped onto the chair in a lazily manner, the music still playing.

Steve sighed. “I don’t remember giving you a key.”

Fury sat up. “You really think I need one? My wife kicked me out.”

“Didn’t know you were married.”

“A lot of things you don’t know about me.”

“I know Nick, that’s the problem,” Steve turned on the lamp beside him.

Steve frowned when he saw Fury’s injuries, but before he could say anything, Fury put a finger to his lips and switched off the lamp. Fury wrote something on his phone and showed it to Steve. It had two simple words: ‘EARS EVERYWHERE’.

“I’m sorry to have to do this, but I had no place else to crash,” Fury continued his lie. He wrote something else on the phone.

SHIELD COMPROMISED

Steve looked at it, then back at Fury. “Who else knows about your wife?”

Fury showed him another text.

YOU AND ME

“Just…my friends,” he stood up and walked closer to Steve.

“Is that what we are?” Steve asked.

“That’s up to you.”

As the music was playing in the background, a sudden crack split the air. Fury yelped as he stumbled forward. Two more deafening blasts came after that, both hitting Fury as well. Bullets.

Someone shot Nick Fury.

He fell forward onto the floor. Steve immediately went forward and dragged him to the side, away from the wall. As Fury coughed and groaned, Steve caught a glimpse of the shooter through the open blind of the window. The figure was standing at the building behind his apartment, aiming a gun at where it just shot.

Blood stained Fury’s body and he coughed. He held on to Steve’s hand. Steve looked down at him. Fury opened his shaky fist, and a flash drive was in his palm.

“Don’t…trust anyone…” Fury gasped for breath.

Another loud sound rang through the apartment and Steve turned his gaze to the front door. Someone was banging on it. Hard. The door flew open.

“Captain Rogers?” he heard a familiar voice. It was Kate. Or it was rather Sharon Carter. She held a gun in her hand, entering his house professionally. “Captain, I’m agent 13 of SHIELD Special Service.”

“Kate?” Steve stared at her.

“I’m assigned to protect you,” she answered.

“On whose order?”

Sharon stopped immediately when she saw Fury’s body, which was now lying unconscious on the floor.

She stared at his body, her eyes going wide, “His.”

She knelt next to his side and checked his pulse as Steve watched in confusion. She fished out her radio from her pocket.

“Foxtrot is down, he’s unresponsive. I need EMTs,” she contacted SHIELD.

“Do we have a 20 on the shooter?” an agent from the other side of the radio asked.

Steve looked out the window again. The figure was still there, but he turned and left after he saw Steve.

“Tell him I’m in pursuit.”

Steve smashed through the windows of his apartment and leapt to the other building where the assassin was in. He ran through the building, following the figure who was also running along the rooftop. It had long hair and wore an entire suit of black and grey armour.

The same person that bombed Fury’s car.

It was hard for Steve to see details of him. It was mostly a blur, running as fast as Steve could. That should not be possible. Steve was a super soldier. He could outrun cars…

Steve chased him through an office building, crashing through doors. Papers flew everywhere as Steve ran past them. His speed was too fast to be running in an office, making him crash into a wall accidentally as he made a sharp turn.

The figure leapt down from the roof onto another. Steve ran through one last window of the building, catching up to the figure. Steve threw his Vibranium shield at it.

It turned around and caught the shield like it was nothing without even stumbling back. His arm that caught it shone in the moonlight. It was like…metal. The metal of its arm and the shield vibrated from the impact, but it took enough time for Steve to analyze the figure. He had a mask, and black paint around his eyes. His metal arm had a red star on it.

The figure stared at Steve. His gaze was as cold as ice. His eyes showed no emotion. Just a dark, cold stare.

He threw the shield back at Steve with a great amount of force, making him move back from the impact of the shield when it hit him. When Steve looked up, the man was gone. He ran over to the edge of the roof, looking down. The shooter was nowhere to be seen. As if he just disappeared in thin air.

***

A familiar black car came to a stop right behind the line of police in the middle of the road. Natasha Romanoff came out of the car and ran into the hospital building.

She pushed open the door to the viewing room and joined Steve who was silently watching Fury’s operation through the glass. Natasha watched Fury’s blood all over the sheets of the operating table, and his eyes closed, his body lifeless.

“Is he gonna make it?” Natasha asked, her eyes filling with tears.

“I don’t know,” Steve said.

“Tell me about the shooter.”

“He’s fast. Strong,” Steve looked to the floor. “Had a metal arm.”

Maria Hill joined them, staring at Fury’s barely surviving body.

“Ballistics?” Natasha asked Hill.

“Three slugs, no rifling. Completely untraceable,” she replied.

“Soviet made,” Natasha stated.

“Yeah,” Hill looked at her, but she got interrupted when Fury’s condition started deteriorating.

“He’s in V-tach,” a male nurse informed.

“Crash cart coming in,” another nurse said.

The doctors and nurses in the operating room started scattering around, trying to save Fury’s life.

“Nurse, help me with the drape.”

“BP is dropping.”

The blips stuttered, hesitated, and then faded into a single, unbroken line. A single muffled high pitch tone filled the air of the viewing room.

“Defibrillator!”

Natasha, Steve and Hill silently watched Fury. Their hearts dropped all the way to the floor. The room bore witness to a profound silence, like a void that seemed to stretch to infinity.

“I want you to charge him at 100,” the doctor instructed.

Natasha’s eyes watched every movement. Every breath. Just hoping that Fury would wake up. “Please don’t do this to me, Nick,” she whispered.

“Stand back! Three, two, one. Clear!” Fury was given a shock with the defibrillator. “Pulse?” the doctor asked.

“No pulse,” the male nurse reported.

“Okay, 200 please. Stand back! Three, two, one. Clear!” Fury was given another shock. “Give me an epinephrine! Pulse?”

“Negative.”

“Don’t do this to me, Nick. Don’t do this to me…” Natasha whispered to herself again.

The three watched helplessly as the doctors tried to revive Fury but he was still flatlining. A small tear streamed down Hill’s cheek. And Natasha was desperately not trying to cry. Steve just turned and left the room.

“What’s the time?” the doctor asked.

“1:03, Doctor,” a nurse replied.

Steve went out of the room and looked at his hand. In his palm was the flash drive that Fury had given him

“Time of death, 1:03 a.m.”

***

Natasha stood next to Fury, looking down at his dead body being laid out in a room. Steve stood at the door, watching from a distance, and giving Natasha space. Her tear-stained face focused her gaze on Fury, thinking about a lot of things, a million thoughts going through her mind.

Hill walked in. “I need to take him.”

Steve looked at her, then walked over to Natasha.

“Natasha,” Steve stood next to her.

She stayed quiet. She tenderly touched Fury’s head before walking out of the room.

Steve followed her. “Natasha!” he called after her.

She turned around and frowned. “Why was Fury in her apartment?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shrugged.

“Cap, they want you back at SHIELD,” they were interrupted by Rumlow.

Steve spun around to Rumlow. “Yeah, give me a second.”

“They want you now.”

“...Okay,” he nodded and turned back to Natasha.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Natasha stared into his blue eyes for a moment before walking off.

Steve watched as she disappeared and sighed.

“STRIKE team, escort Captain Rogers back to SHIELD immediately for questioning,” Jasper Sitwell informed the team on the comms of his earpiece.

Steve looked around the place, sighing. The vending machine then caught his attention. A middle-aged worker was refilling the machine with snacks and candy.

Steve stared into the machine for a long time.

Rumlow looked back at Steve who was now walking towards him.

“Let’s go,” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Rumlow started gathering his team. “STRIKE, move it out.”

The worker closed the vending machine and locked it using his key.

Inside the machine were many types of gum and candy but hidden behind some pack of pink bubblegum was a grey flash drive.

Fury’s flash drive.

***

Steve was transported back to the Triskelion. He was brought to Pierce, who was talking to Agent 13, Sharon Carter.

“For whatever it’s worth, you did your best,” he told her.

“Thank you, sir,” Sharon started to turn to leave.

She saw Steve and started walking away from Pierce, in Steve’s direction. “Captain Rogers,” she greeted him.

“Neighbour,” Steve replied coldly without even making eye contact with her, and continued walking.

Sharon took a few steps before looking back at Steve and sighing.

“Ah, Captain,” Pierce shook hands with Steve. “I’m Alexander Pierce.”

“Sir, it’s an honour,” Steve said. He was in his suit, and his shield on his back. His eyes were still solemn. His blue eyes were slightly greyish and tired. Fury’s death was his fault. Was it?

“The honour is mine, Captain. My father served in the 101st. Come on in,” Pierce gestured him to get into his office.

***

“That photo was taken five years Nick and I met, when I was State Department in Bogota,” Pierce told Steve when he gave him an old photo to see. The photo had Fury and Pierce both making an oath.

“ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages. Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers.” Pierce continued. “I said, "No, we'll negotiate." Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order. They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty,” Pierce sat down on a chair and Steve did the same too.

“Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter,” he said.

“So you gave him a promotion,” Steve stated.

“I’ve never had any cause to regret it,” Pierce looked at Steve. “Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?”

“I don’t know,” Steve shook his head.

“Did you know it was bugged?”

“I did, because Nick told me.”

“Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?” Pierce asked. Steve’s blue eyes stared at him silently, obviously not knowing about what Pierce was saying.

“I want you to see something,” Pierce pressed a button and footage of Georges Batroc being interrogated was pulled up on the screen behind Steve.

Batroc was sitting silently on a chair, wearing a simple tank top. “Who hired you, Batroc?” a SHIELD agent asked him as he paced around, like a moon circling the earth.

Steve looked at the screen. “Is that live?”

“Yeah, they picked him up in a not-so-safe house in Algiers.”

Batroc sat silently, staring at the table in front of him while the other SHIELD agents tried to get information out of him.

“Are you saying he’s a suspect? Assassination isn’t Batroc’s line,” Steve said.

“No, no. It’s more complicated than that,” Pierce explained. “Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech.”

Pierce gave the super soldier a file. “Am I supposed to know who that is?” Steve asked.

“Not likely. Veech died 6 years ago. His last address was 1435 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 1437.”

Steve looked up. “Are you saying Fury hired the pirates? Why?”

“The prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence. The sale went sour and that led to Nick’s death.”

“If you really knew Nick Fury you know that’s not true.”

Pierce nodded, “Why do you think we’re talking?”

He stood up and walked towards the window of his office, gazing out of it. “See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists. We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies.”

Pierce looked back at Steve. “Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry,” he hesitated for a while.

“Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So, I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?”

“He told me not to trust anyone,” Steve told him coldly.

“I wonder if that included him.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “But those were his last words. Excuse me.” He picked up his shield from the couch, hooked it behind him and started walking away.

“Captain.”

Steve stopped and looked at Pierce.

“Somebody murdered my friend and I’m gonna find out why. Anyone gets in my way, they’re gonna regret it,” Pierce told him. “Anyone.”

Steve gave him a nod. “Understood.”

He turned his back and walked out of the office.

***

Steve stepped into the elevator.

He looked out the glass of the walls. Pierce’s office was all the way at the top of the Triskelion. The view was amazing. It made cars down on the roads look like ants.

“Operations control.”

“Confirmed,” the SHIELD computer said.

The elevator doors started closing.

“Keep all STRIKE personnel on site,” Steve heard a voice.

Rumlow and two STRIKE agents entered the elevator before it could close.

“Understood,” one of the STRIKE agents said. “Yes sir,” another replied.

Steve heard them but still gazed out the window.

“Forensics.”

“Confirmed.”

“Cap,” Rumlow greeted Steve.

Steve turned around. “Rumlow,” he replied. He faced the inside of the elevator, awkwardly standing with the other three.

The elevator doors shut, and it started descending.

“Evidence Response found some fibers on the roof they want us to see,” Rumlow said to Steve. “You want me to get the tac-team ready?”

“No, let’s wait and see what it is first,” Steve replied while looking at the floor.

“Right.”

The four men stood in the elevator, trying to look as less awkward as possible.

Steve glanced at them. He noticed one of the agents was touching his weapon suspiciously. He stared at it and frowned a little.

The elevator came to a stop and more SHIELD and STRIKE agents entered.

“Administrations level,” one of them said.

“Confirmed.”

“Excuse me,” an agent said to Steve in which Steve moved a little to make space for them.

The elevator became packed, and all the men were surrounding Steve.

The doors closed and they started riding down.

Rumlow turned to Steve. “I’m sorry about what happened with Fury. Messed up, what happened to him,” he said.

“Thank you,” Steve said in which Rumlow simply nodded.

Something was off.

Steve looked to one of the agents. He was sweating. In an air-conditioned elevator?

The elevator stopped again. The door opened and three more agents enter.

“Records.”

“Confirmed.”

The elevator was filled with men. Steve was in the middle, facing the doors. The doors started closing.

The elevator began its descend once again.

It was quiet. There was barely enough space for Steve to move. His blue and white uniform with his brightly coloured shield stood out from all the black suits the rest of the men were wearing.

He was surrounded. Not good.

Steve knew what he had to do.

“Before we get started,” Steve sighed. “Does anyone wanna get out?”

Silence.

Suddenly, one of the agents turned around and used an electric rod to give Steve an electric shock. He dodged the attack and things started getting chaotic. The others grabbed him and pinned his body to the wall. Some of them grabbed some magnetic cuffs from the handle of their suitcases. They put it on Steve’s wrists while a huge man held Steve from behind in a chokehold.

The men held Steve while many more tried to push Steve’s wrists with the cuffs onto the smooth metal surface of the wall. Tension hung in the air as the super soldier desperately resisted the strength of the men, plus the magnetic attraction of the wall and the cuffs on his hands.

He got an idea. Steve lowered his hand swiftly and kicked the agents in a surprise attack. He knocked some out, but his wrist got stuck to the side of the elevator by the cuffs.

He tried to pull it away, but he got attacked by Rumlow with an electric rod, which Steve bore the excruciating pain.

He elbowed him aside and threw another agent at the security cameras of the elevator.

Agent Sitwell and a few agents were watching his entire fight in the control room on the monitor.

“Mobilize STRIKE units, 25th floor,” Sitwell instructed on his radio.

Steve continued knocking out the rest of the agents while his wrist was still on the wall. When the agents were struggling on the floor, he took the time to pry the magnetic cuff off the wall using his super soldier strength.

He managed to get it off and performed a somersault which made him land nicely in the middle of the elevator. He punched two more agents and tossed another to the wall.

Steve turned to Rumlow who was up, holding his rod in his hand.

“Woah, big guy,” Rumlow halted the fight as Steve frowned at him, breathing heavily. “I just want you to know, Cap, this ain’t personal!” He lunged forward to attack Steve.

Rumlow managed to hit Steve twice with his rod before the super soldier turned the tables and tossed him up on the ceiling of the elevator, making him fall to the floor with a thud.

Steve stared at all the bodies passed out on the floor. “It kind of feels personal.”

He kicked up his shield from the floor and broke off the magnetic cuff on his wrist.

Steve opened the lift doors only to be greeted by a team of about two dozen STRIKE agents aiming their weapons at them.

“Drop the shield! Put your hands in the air!” one of the agents commanded.

Steve instantly used his shield to break off the wires of the elevator in one turn, which sent the elevator dropping down. It got stuck a few floors down as Steve came to an abrupt stop.

He pried open the elevator doors, but more STRIKE agents were running towards him. With no choice, he closed the door.

Steve looked around the elevator and looked out of the glass.

He noticed a building a few floors down. It was a long way down to the glass roof of the building.

“Give it up, Rogers! Get that door open! You have nowhere to go!” The agents started banging on the door.

Steve took a few steps back, being incredibly focused. He tightened the straps of his shield on his arm before he ran straight into the glass, making it shatter.

The super soldier plummeted down right down to the building down below, putting his shield in front of him to brace the impact.

He dived through the glass ceiling and crashed onto the ground floor, with the Vibranium shield underneath him. He groaned in pain as he slowly stood up.

The people on the ground floor stood some distance away and watched as Steve started running off.

Sitwell watched him from the monitors. “Are you kidding me?”

“He’s headed for the garage. Lock down the bridge!” he instructed the STIRKE agents on his radio.

Steve rode out of the SHIELD garage in his motorbike, barely avoiding getting sandwiched by the closing doors. He sped down the long bridge which was heading down to the main road. He had his helmet on, with his shield on his back.

A Quinjet flew in front of Steve.

“Stand down, Captain Rogers. Stand down,” the Quinjet pilot warned him through the loudspeaker. The Quinjet lowered its machine gun, aiming at him. “Repeat, stand down!”

 Steve continued going even faster, not obeying the pilot’s orders.

The gun began firing at him. Steve dodged all of them, swerving his bike from side to side.

He threw his shield at the Quinjet. It landed right into the propellers, jamming it.

Steve hopped onto the Quinjet and pulled the shield out. The Quinjet started tossing and turning, with smoke coming out of the propellers. The Captain hung onto the Quinjet as it flew around wildly.

He threw his shield again at the engines and dived off the Quinjet, catching his shield midair. He landed right outside the bridge as the smoking Quinjet crashed into the bridge.

Steve looked back at the Triskelion before escaping with his shield.

***

“Eyes here,” Sitwell took the attention of the SHIELD agents in the room. All of them immediately stopped what they were doing and looked back at him, including Agent 13.

“Whatever your op is, bury it. This is Level One. Contact DOT. All traffic lights in the district go red. Shut all runways at BWI, IAD and Reagan. All security cameras in the city go through this monitor, right here. Scan all open sources. Phones, computers, PDAs, whatever. If someone tweets about this guy, I want to know about it,” Sitwell continued.

The agents listened attentively and started taking down notes of what he said. Sharon Carter just stared at him, her hands on her hips.

“With all due respect, if SHIELD is conducting a manhunt for Captain America we deserve to know why,” she stated.

“Because he lied to us,” Alexander Pierce entered the room.

All eyes turned to him.

“Captain Rogers has information regarding the death of Director Fury, he refused to share it. As difficult as this is to accept, Captain America is a fugitive from SHIELD.”

-

Steve walked through the hospital halls; his hands buried deep in the pockets of his hooded jacket. The hood was draped over his blonde hair and his attire covered his body.

He walked over to the same vending machine, keeping his head low.

Steve frowned. The drive was gone, so were the packs of gum that were supposed to hide it.

Something popped. Steve looked in the reflection of the glass. There she was, Natasha Romanoff, blowing a bubble from a piece of bubblegum she was chewing on. The same gum that was sold in the machine.

Steve turned around and stared at her as Natasha continued to chew, as if she had done nothing wrong.

He took Natasha by surprise when he pushed her to a room and slammed her against the wall.

He took off his hood angrily. “Where is it?”

“Safe.”

“Do better.” Steve got up into her face.

“Where did you get it?” Natasha asked.

“Why would I tell you?”

“Fury gave it to you, why?”

“What’s on it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop lying!”

“I only act like I know everything, Rogers.”

Steve looked at the door to check if anyone was watching them. “I bet you knew Fury hired the Pirates, didn’t you?”

“Well, it makes sense. The ship was dirty, Fury needed a way in, so do you.”

“I’m not gonna ask you again!” Steve pressed her harder against the wall.

Natasha paused for a moment. “I know who killed Fury.” She stared into his blue eyes.

Steve kept silent, prompting her to continue.

“Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists,” Natasha said. “The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two dozen assassinations in the last fifty years.”

“So he’s a ghost story.”

“Five years ago, I was escorting a nuclear engineer out of Iran. Somebody shot out my tires near Odessa. We lost control, went straight over a cliff. I pulled us out. But the Winter Soldier was there. I was covering my engineer, so he shot him straight through me,” she lifted her shirt a little to show Steve a scar on the side of her stomach. “Soviet slug. No rifling. Bye-bye bikinis.”

“Yeah, I bet you look terrible in them now.”

There was a hint of a smile from Natasha.

“Going after him is a dead end. I know, I’ve tried,” she held up the flash drive. “Like you said, he’s a ghost story.”

Steve took the drive from her.

“Well, let’s find out what the ghost wants.”

-

“Nick Fury was murdered in cold blood. To any reasonable person, that would make him a martyr, not a traitor,” Pierce said.

He was holding yet another virtual meeting in his office with the Council.

“You know what makes him a traitor? Hiring a mercenary to hijack his own ship,” Councilman Rockwell disagreed.

“Nick Fury used your friendship to coerce this council into delaying Project Insight,” Councilman Singh pointed out. “A project he knew would expose his own illegal operations. At best, he lied to you. At worst…”

“Are you calling for my resignation?” Pierce looked at him. “I’ve got a pen and paper right here.”

“That discussion can be tabled for a later time,” Councilwoman Hawley said.

“But do you want to have a discussion?”

“We’ve already had it, Mr Secretary,” said Councilman Rockwell. “This council moves to immediately reactivate Project Insight. If you want to say something snappy, now would be a good time.”

-

Natasha and Steve walked through a crowded mall. They were in civilian attire, cap pulled low over Steve’s face.

“First rule of going on the run is don’t run, walk,” Natasha told him.

“If I run in these shoes, they’re gonna fall off.”

They dipped into an Apple store, Natasha going to work on the computer.

“The drive has a level six homing program, so as soon as we boot up, SHIELD will know exactly where we are.”

“How much time do we have?” Steve muttered.

“Uh, about nine minutes from…” she popped a drive into the laptop, “...now.”

Steve started looking around, a little nervous.

“Fury was right about that ship, somebody's trying to hide something. This drive is protected by some sort of AI, it keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands,” Natasha told him as she tried to find out what was on the drive.

“Can you override it?” Steve asked.

“The person who developed this is slightly smarter than me. Slightly.”

The SHIELD vehicles pulled up outside the mall and Rumlow and his team came out of them, still with their injuries caused by Captain America. The team then proceeded into the mall, in search of the two Avengers.

“I’m gonna try running a tracer,” Romanoff said. “This is a program that SHIELD developed to track hostile malware, so if we can’t read that file, maybe we can find where it came from.”

Natasha started to find the location of what was in the drive.

“Can I help you guys with anything?” an Apple employee suddenly came up to them.

Natasha immediately smiled and grabbed Steve.

“Oh, no. My fiancé was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations,” she lied.

Steve joined the act. “Right. We’re getting married.”

“Congratulations,” the store employee smiled. “Where are you guys thinking of going?”

Steve hesitated and looked at the computer screen, which Natasha had tracked the signal to somewhere in New Jersey.

“New Jersey,” Steve mumbled.

“Oh.” The Apple employee looked at him for a moment which made Steve confused. “...I have the exact same glasses.”

“Wow, you two are practically twins,” Natasha commented without looking up from the screen.

“Yeah, I wish. Specimen,” the employee looked at Steve’s figure, impressed. “Uh…If you guys need anything, I’ve been Aaron.” He showed both of them his name card.

“Thank you,” Steve nodded.

Rumlow and his team were in the mall now, patrolling for them.

Steve looked at his watch. “You said nine minutes, come on,” he nagged at Natasha.

“Shh, relax. Got it.” They both found a signal coming from Wheaton, NJ.

Natasha looked at Steve. “You know it?”

“I used to. Let’s go,” Steve pulled out the drive and they both exited the store.

“Standard tac-team. Two behind, two across, and two coming straight at us,” Steve informed Natasha as they kept their head down, walking through the crowded mall. Rumlow’s team was split up, all going towards Natasha and Steve in all directions.

“If they make us, I’ll engage, you hit the south escalator to the metro,” Steve said as the two agents were getting closer and closer to them.

“Shut up and put your arm around me and laugh at something I said,” Natasha told him.

“What?”

“Do it.”

Steve complied and put his arm around Natasha’s neck, faking a laugh as they passed by the two agents.

Inside the Mac store, one of the agents looked around. “Negative at the source,” he informed his team through his comms.

“Give me a floor rundown,” Rumlow demanded.

“Negative on three,” a HYDRA agent from the highest floor of the mall said.

“Negative on two.”

“Snake the upper levels, work down to me,” Rumlow stepped onto an escalator, going up to the second floor.

Steve and Natasha were on the escalator beside the one Rumlow was on, going down. Natasha spotted him and turned to Steve.

“Kiss me.”

“What?” Steve stared at her.

“Public displays of affection make people very uncomfortable.”

“Yes, they do.”

Natasha quickly pulled him towards her and pressed her lips against his. It was a gentle but long kiss, long enough for Rumlow to spot them and look away uncomfortably as he passed them by, not suspecting them to be SHIELD’s most wanted.

Natasha pulled away after a while. She turned around and walked down the escalator after Rumlow was gone.

“You still uncomfortable?” she asked.

Steve followed her, “Not exactly the word I would use.”

***

A blue car drove on the road, passing into New Jersey.

“Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?” Natasha looked at him, one foot placed on the dash of the same blue car.

Steve looked at her before focusing on the road again, driving silently on the road. “Nazi Germany.”

Natasha gave him a low hum before looking away.

“And we’re borrowing. Take your feet off the dash,” Steve warned her.

Natasha complied while staring at Steve.

“Alright, I have a question for you,” Natasha said. “Oh, in which you do not have to answer. I feel like if you don’t answer it though, you are kinda answering it, you know?”

“What?” Steve looked at her.

“Was that your first kiss since 1945?”

“That bad, huh.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Well, it kinda sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”

“No, I didn’t. I just wondered how much practice you’ve had.”

“You don’t need practice.”

“Everybody needs practice.”

“It was not my first kiss since 1945. I’m 95, not dead.”

“Nobody special, though?”

Steve chuckled. “Believe it or not, it’s kinda hard to find someone with shared life experience.”

“Well, that’s alright. You just make something up.”

“What, like you?”

“I don’t know. The truth is a matter of circumstances, it’s not all things to all people all the time. And neither am I.”

“That’s a tough way to live.”

“It’s a good way not to die, though.”

“You know, it’s kinda hard to trust someone when you don’t really know who that someone is.” Steve focused his gaze at Natasha.

“Yeah,” she looked away for a moment. “Who do you want me to be?”

“How about a friend?”

Natasha laughed softly, “Well, there’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.”

***

The car pulled up outside the gate of an abandoned military base where the signal led them to.

“This is it,” Steve closed the car door behind him.

The pair looked around the old worn-out base.

“The file came from these coordinates,” Natasha kept her device in her back pocket.

Steve looked at a nearby sign of the base. On it, the sign read: CAMP LEHIGH U.S. ARMY RESTRICTED AREA.

The sun was setting, and slowly it became darker and darker. There were no streetlamps or lanterns in the area. The duo walked through the pitch-black base, only guided by the moonlight.

They kept walking around, trying to pinpoint where the signal came from.

“Change much?” Natasha asked.

Steve stared at the flagpole that was standing beside the track. It had no flag on it. Just a lonely pole. Standing there shining in the moonlight. Memories flooded his mind.

“A little.”

Steve looked at the familiar place. He remembered a lot about how he got bullied, about how hard he worked to be part of the army. All of it were in there. In Camp Lehigh.

He envisioned himself, his former self, running on the track, trailing behind all the others.

“Pick up the pace, ladies! Let’s go! Let’s go! Double time!” the Sergeant yelled at the training soldiers as they ran past Steve. He watched as one by one they shot past him.

“Come on, Rogers! Move it!” the sergeant yelled at his former self.

He was skinny and small. Really short. One could mistake him for a schoolboy without close inspection. He was not exactly the best looking either, which was the reason he never had enough confidence to flirt with some ladies in bars like his friend, Bucky, did.

Panting and trailing behind was a younger Steve. He stopped when he saw what he looked like now. He stared at the present Steve for a while.

Steve never thought he would get here. To where he was. He never thought he would be someone labelled as Captain America. Or one of the only people in the world who owns a Vibranium shield. Or one of the only people who could save the world from vital threats.

No one thought a skinny little boy with a broken life from Brooklyn would be the world’s greatest saviour one day.

“Come on! Fall in! Rogers! I said fall in!” Sergeant Duffy screamed at him, and the former Steve started running away.

Steve watched nostalgically as his memory faded in the distance.

“This is a dead end,” Natasha’s voice snapped him back to reality. “Zero heat signature, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off.”

Steve turned around to look at her but noticed the building ahead of them and stared at it.

“What is it?” Natasha asked.

She walked with Steve to the building.

“Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place,” Steve explained.

He broke the padlock with his shield and entered the building. They stepped down the stairs into the dark, stuffy room. Steve turned on a light switch and some old ceiling lights illuminated the room.

There were many chairs placed with desks in neat rows, with a logo at the back of the room.

The logo had words written in a circle. The words: STRATEGIC HOMELAND INTERNATIONAL ENFORCEMENT LOGISTICS DIVSION.

SHIELD. It was a SHIELD office.

“This is SHIELD,” Natasha looked around the huge room.

“Maybe where it started,” Steve started walking deeper into the office, the scent of dust filling their lungs.

The pair entered a dimly lit room, filled with shelves that had non-existent books in it. Just dust and cobwebs. There were also some old, framed portraits on the walls, the first thing they could see when they walked into the room. The photos were of people. Some recognisable people.

“And there’s Stark’s father,” Natasha jerked her head to the portrait of a young man.

“Howard,” Steve remembered. He had seen the legendary Howard Stark before in the past before he died.

Howard Stark was the father of Tony Stark, one of the Avengers. The Iron Man. He was also Steve and Natasha’s friend. No, an ally. He hardly had friends. Just a lot of enemies. Howard Stark was just like his son, smart, arrogant, and the creator of Stark Industries, in which Tony took over, then shut it down after an unfortunate event in Afghanistan.

Next to the photo of Howard was one of a young woman. A young woman that Steve knew too well. Every inch of her face he remembered.

Peggy Carter. Founder of SHIELD.

“Who’s the girl?” Natasha asked him.

Steve kept quiet and just walked away. He stopped at a massive bookshelf and looked at it suspiciously. Natasha slowly trailed after him, taking in the surroundings.

Steve analyzed the perimeter of the bookshelf. “If you’re already working in a secret office…” he placed his fingers in the crevice of the bookshelf and slid it towards the right with great strength.

Behind the bookshelf revealed an old elevator.

“...why do you need to hide the elevator?”

Natasha and Steve entered the elevator, and Natasha used her phone device to decode the password for the elevator. The doors closed and they both started descending.

The elevator came to a stop. The doors opened slowly into a pitch-black room.

The pair strolled into the room, and the motion activated lights slowly lighted the room the further they went in.

It was a computer room. Or rather a room with only one computer. The technology was from a long time ago. One computer needed a whole bunch of systems to generate.

There were only three monitors in the computer that were in the centre of the whole room.

“This cannot be the data point, this technology is ancient,” Natasha frowned.

They looked around the place and Natasha noticed a small flash drive port on the table with the computer. She put Fury's drive into the port. Instantly, the generators fired up and the systems started running.

“Initiate system?” a soft robotic voice coming from the computer asked, and the words ‘INITIATE SYSTEM’ appeared on the small screen.

Natasha went forward and started typing on the keys.

“Y-E-S, spells yes,” she typed those words in on the old rusty keyboard. “Shall we play a game?” she turned to Steve, smiling. “It was from a movie that was really—”

“I know, I saw it,” Steve interrupted.

Some green pixels formed on the screen. It was like the form of a face.

“Rogers, Steven, born 1918,” an accented voice from the computer stated.

An old camera, what looked like a hand-held video recorder had pointed itself at Steve. The camera moved by itself and panned towards Natasha’s direction.

“Romanoff, Natalia Alinovna. Born, 1984,” the voice stated again.

“It’s some kind of recording,” Natasha stared at the face on the screen.

“I am not a recording, Fräulein,” the voice said. “I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am.”

An image was showed on another one of the monitors. An old photo of Doctor Arnim Zola.

“Do you know this thing?” Natasha asked Steve.

“Arnim Zola was a German scientist who worked for the Red Skull. He’s been dead for years,” Steve walked around the computer set up on the table.

“First correction, I am Swiss. Second, look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain,” Zola stated.

“How did you get here?” Steve started at the machine.

“Invited.”

“It was Operation Paperclip after World War II. SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value,” Natasha recalled.

“They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own.”

“HYDRA died with the Red Skull,” Steve said.

“Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

“Prove it.”

“Accessing archive.” Zola showed them an old footage of Johann Schmidt on the other monitor. “HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.” More images of the US army in the past and news headlines of the Red Skull were pulled up on the screen.

“What we did not realise, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist.” Old tapes of Captain America from the shows that Steve did were mixed with rampage, war, bombings and just chaos. “The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded, and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD.”

Newspaper images of SHIELD and Arnim Zola popped up. “For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war.” More tapes of revolutionaries flashed on the screen, and just some clips of the Winter Soldier. “And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.”

Natasha kept her eyes on the screen. “That’s impossible, SHIELD would have stopped you.”

“Accidents will happen.” The screen displayed some news headlines, showing Howard and Maria Stark dying of a car accident, but Zola showed them they were killed by HYDRA. “HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise.” The screen had more videos of assassinations and the idea of Project Insight. “We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life; a zero sum.”

Steve suddenly punched the screen in a fit of anger, breaking it.

“As I was saying…” Zola appeared on another screen.

“What’s on this drive?” Steve pointed at the flash drive Fury gave him.

“Project Insight requires insight. So, I wrote an algorithm.”

“What kind of algorithm? What does it do?” Natasha asked.

“The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it.”

A thick metal gate right outside the elevator started closing, preventing Natasha and Steve from going back up. Steve threw his shield at the door, hoping to jam it but the gate was too fast. Natasha’s phone device started informing her about something.

“Steve, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops,” she told him.

“Who fired it?”

“SHIELD.”

“I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain,” Zola’s voice filled the room as Steve tried to figure a way out. “Admit it, it's better this way. We're both of us...out of time.”

Natasha pulled out the drive from the port and Steve noticed a huge vent on the floor. He yanked the vent cover out. Natasha went towards him and both of them jumped in just as the place exploded.

Concrete and debris flew all over the place, and the lights went out, making everything dark. Stever used his shield to protect Natasha and himself from getting covered by the building, as everything started falling apart.

***

The dust settled. Steve used all the strength he had left to push away the concrete covering them. He coughed through the debris and looked at Natasha to see if she was fine. She passed out. Steve cleared a way for them before picking her up and walking into the outside.

Parts of the building were everywhere in the abandoned Camp Lehigh. There were fires that spread across the rubble, lighting the place with a dim orange glow.

In the distance, the sounds of engines could be heard. The sound of Quinjet planes. SHIELD was there. Or rather HYDRA was there to find them. Steve managed to escape with Natasha in his hands.

The STRIKE agents started scavenging the place, hoping to find them under the rubble, dead or alive.

Brock Rumlow was there, and he noticed Steve’s footprint in the ground.

He informed his team on the comms, “Call in the asset.”

-

Alexander Pierce was in his huge house, walking to the kitchen. He was dressed in regular clothes, living a regular life, without any council bothering him.

He opened the refrigerator and took out a milk carton, placing it on the table.

Then he saw it. He saw that same figure. The same figure that killed Nick Fury. The same figure that Steve chased down. The one with the metal arm.

The Winter Soldier.

He was sitting at a table in Pierce’s house, hiding in the shadows. His face was covered not by a mask, but by darkness. Only a ray of light shone on his emotionless eyes. He had his gun on the table, his metal arm reflecting the moonlight coming out of the window.

Pierce stared at him, closing the refrigerator door.

“I’m going to go, Mr Pierce,” Pierce’s housekeeper, Renata, called out as she walked to the door. “You need anything before I leave?”

“No…” Pierce answered without looking away from the Winter Soldier. “It’s fine, Renata. You can go home.”

“Okay, night-night,” Renata left, not realising about the infamous assassin present in the house.

“Good night,” Pierce said before hearing the door close.

He looked at the Winter Soldier for a while longer. “Want some milk?”

The figure kept quiet, just staring at Pierce with cold eyes.

“The timetable has moved,” Pierce poured himself a glass of milk and took a sip of it. “Our window is limited. Two targets, level six.”

The Winter Soldier kept quiet, giving his expressionless face.

Pierce walked and joined him at the table. “They already cost me Zola. I want confirmed death in 10 hours.”

Just then, Renata entered the house again.

“I’m sorry, Mr Pierce. I…I forgot my phone…” she trailed off after she saw the Winter Soldier sitting there, still as a statue, with a gaze that could cut through glass.

Pierce frowned. “Oh, Renata, I wish you would have knocked,” he picked up the gun from the table and shot Renata a couple of times.

The house filled with Renata’s screams as she lay on the floor, her lifeless body going limp, and the Winter Soldier watching everything with eyes as cold as his heart.

-

Sam Wilson was jogging under the early morning sky, drenched in sweat. He ran a few rounds in the same park in Washington before walking home, exhausted but satisfied. Although this time, he never met Captain America.

Sam thought it was cool. Imagine going for a run, meeting America’s favourite boy. Who knows what else might happen…

He got home and immediately walked to his fridge to search for a drink. He took out a carton of orange juice and just as the juice was about to drip out into his mouth, he heard some knocking on the door.

He frowned and capped the carton of juice, putting it on the table before walking to the door.

The curtains at the door were drawn up, and Sam saw Natasha and Steve standing by the door, covered in dust from the explosion they survived earlier.

Sam opened the door, “Hey, man.”

“I’m sorry about this. We need a place to lay low,” Steve sighed.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” Natasha explained to Sam.

Sam looked at them, “Not everyone.” He let them into his house, shutting the door after looking if anyone else was around.

***

Steve flicked the water off his hands into the sink, turning off the tap. He took a hand towel on the side to dry his clean hands.

He saw Natasha silently sitting on the bed through the mirror, drying her hair. Her face was blank and thoughtful as she looked at the floor.

Steve walked over to her, standing outside the bathroom door. “You okay?”

Natasha looked up and nodded.

Sam was kind enough to let them use his bathroom for them to clean up. The pair took off their disguises and cleaned up themselves.

Steve tossed the towel on the side of the sink. He walked over to Natasha and sat on the bed next to her, “what’s going on?”

“When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight,” she stared at him. “But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but...I guess I can't tell the difference anymore.”

“There’s a chance you might be in the wrong business,” Steve said.

Natasha gave him a faint smile. “I owe you.”

“It’s okay,” Steve shook his head.

“If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life, and you be honest with me, would you trust me to do it?”

“I would now. And I’m always honest,” he smiled.

“Well, you seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing.”

Steve leant back, his body hitting the bed frame. “Well, I guess I just like to know who I’m fighting.”

Sam stood at the doorway, looking at them. “I made breakfast. If you guys…eat that sort of thing…”

“So, the question is: who in SHIELD could launch a domestic missile strike?” Natasha said.

They were in Sam’s kitchen, seated down as Sam spread some butter on toast that he made.

“Pierce,” Steve answered.

“Who happens to be sitting on top of the most secure building in the world.”

“But he's not working alone, Zola's algorithm was on the Lemurian Star.”

“So was Jasper Sitwell.”

Steve hesitated and thought for a moment. “So, the real question is: how do the two most wanted people in Washington kidnap a SHIELD officer in broad daylight?”

“The answer is: you don’t,” Sam walked over to them and dropped a file on the table, right in front of Steve.

“What’s this?” Steve looked at it.

“Call it a resume,” Sam stood back and watched them.

Natasha took a photo that Sam had placed down with the file. “Is this Bakhmala?” she asked Sam. “The Khalid Khandil mission, that was you.”

She turned to Steve. “You didn’t say he was pararescue.”

Steve took the photograph from her and took a good look at it. It was a picture of Sam in his army uniform. There was a man beside him. He also wore the same uniform, and he looked like Sam’s colleague.

“Is this Riley?” Steve looked up at Sam in which he nodded sadly.

“I heard they couldn't bring in the choppers because of the RPGs. What did you use, a stealth chute?” Natasha asked.

“No. These.” Sam handed the file to Steve.

The soldier opened the file, glancing over the first page. “I thought you said you were a pilot.”

“I never said pilot,” Sam smiled.

After a while, Steve shook his head. “I can’t ask you to do this, Sam. You got out for a good reason.”

“Dude, Captain America needs my help. There’s no better reason to get back in.”

“Where can we get our hands on one of these things?” Steve held up the file and asked.

“The last one is at Fort Meade, behind three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall.”

Steve turned to Natasha, and she shrugged.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Steve threw the file on the table.

The file was brown coloured and thin, just with some pieces of paper inside. Nothing too complicated. On the front cover had some simple huge words: EXO-7 FALCON.

***

“Listen, I gotta fly home tonight because uh…I got some constituency problem, and I gotta press the flesh,” Senator Stern told Sitwell as they both walked out of the building together where they had just had a meeting. They were followed by some of their bodyguards dressed in suits.

“Any constituent in particular, Mr. Senator?” Sitwell asked, walking down the stairs next to Stern.

“No, not really,” his squeaky voice answered. “Twenty-three, kind of hot. Real hot. You know, wants to be a reporter, I think. I don't know, who listens at that point?”

“Doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” Sitwell stopped walking and smiled.

“Really? Because she’s killing my back. Look, this isn’t the place to talk about it.”

Stern’s gaze lowered down to Sitwell’s collar. “This is a nice pin.” He touched Sitwell’s SHIELD pin on his black jacket.

“Thank you.”

The latter smiled, “come here.”

Stern pulled Sitwell into an embrace.

“Hail HYDRA,” he whispered in Sitwell's ear before pulling away.

He stepped down the stairs, touching his back. “See, it’s right there...”

“I just saw that, yeah.”

“Should I get it checked?”

“Yeah, you should.”

Stern nodded and continued down the stairs, his bodyguards following.

Sitwell’s phone started ringing. He frowned and fished his phone out from his jacket. It was an incoming call from Alexander Pierce.

He turned to his bodyguards, “I need a minute. Bring the car around.” Both of them nodded and walked away from him.

Sitwell picked up the call. “Yes, sir?”

“Agent Sitwell, how was lunch?” Sam Wilson answered instead. “I heard the crab cakes here are delicious.”

“Who is this?” Sitwell demanded.

“The good-looking guy in the sunglasses, your ten o’clock.”

He turned and looked in that direction, but he saw no one.

“Your other ten o’clock,” Sam said.

Sitwell turned the other way again and immediately saw Sam sitting a few feet away, raising a glass to him. “There you go.”

“What do you want?”

“You’re gonna go around the corner to your right. There’s a grey car two spaces down. You and I are gonna take a ride,” Sam explained.

“And why would I do that?”

“Because that tie looks really expensive. And I'd hate to mess it up.”

Sitwell looked down at his tie. There was a red laser dot on it. A red light from a gun. He looked up in the distance in a state of panic, finding who could be aiming the laser at him.

But there were so many people in the buildings around. It could be any of them.

***

Sitwell slammed through the door and fell on the floor of the rooftop.

“Tell me about Zola’s algorithm,” Steve and Natasha followed out onto the rooftop, pacing towards the man.

“Never heard of it,” Sitwell picked up his spectacles from the floor and put them back on.

“What were you doing on the Lemurian Star?” Steve demanded.

Sitwell kept stumbling back away from him and Natasha. “I was throwing up, I get seasick.”

He nearly tripped over the side of the roof, his body struggling to maintain balance. Steve grabbed his collar, the super soldier’s body looking much bigger compared to his.

Steve glared at him, holding Sitwell up, just at the edge of the building.

“Is this little display meant to insinuate that you’re gonna throw me off the roof? Because it’s really not your style, Rogers,” Sitwell’s face displayed a small smirk.

“You’re right, it’s not,” Steve let go of Sitwell and brushed the shoulders of his jacket. “It’s hers.”

Steve stepped aside and Natasha kicked Sitwell down the building, his screams following him.

“Oh, wait. What about that girl from accounting, Laura...?” Natasha asked him as Sitwell’s screams started getting quieter.

“Lillian. Lip piercing, right?” Steve said.

“Yeah, she’s cute.”

“Yeah, I’m not ready for that.”

Sitwell’s screams became louder again, and he emerged from the side of the building. A flying figure was holding him. A figure with wide grey wings.

Sam. The Falcon.

He wore some kind of jet pack strapped to his upper body with goggles on. Sam threw the screaming man back onto the rooftop, before landing himself, the wings of his jetpack retracted back into the pack. He turned around, facing Sitwell.

Sitwell frantically tried to collect himself, his breath shallow and uneven. Natasha and Steve paced towards him again, closing the distance.

“Zola’s algorithm is a program…for choosing insights targets!” he panicked.

“What targets?” Steve demanded.

“You! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Undersecretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa city. Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who's a threat to HYDRA! Now, or in the future.”

“The future? How could it know?”

Sitwell laughed. “How could it not? The 21st century is a digital book. Zola taught HYDRA how to read it,” he stood up, looking Steve in the eye.

The other three frowned in confusion.

“Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, e-mails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola's algorithm evaluates people's past to predict their future,” he explained.

“And what then?” Steve asked.

Sitwell looked away, “oh my god, Pierce is gonna kill me.”

“What then?!”

Sitwell stared at the super soldier again. “Then the Insight Helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.”

-

The car drove through the bridge of the highway, with Natasha, Steve, Sitwell, and Sam. Sam was driving them to the Triskelion, hoping to stop Project Insight before HYDRA could launch it.

“HYDRA doesn’t like leaks,” Sitwell told them from the back of the car.

“Then why don’t you try sticking a cork in it?” Sam said.

“Insight’s launching in 16 hours, we’re cutting it a bit close here,” Natasha reminded Steve, also sitting at the back of Sam’s car with Sitwell.

“I know. We'll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the Helicarriers directly,” Steve said, looking out the window.

Sitwell glared at him; his eyes wide. “What?! Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible idea—”

Something landed on the roof of the car with a thud. Something heavy.

A hand smashed through the window next to Sitwell and it pulled him out of the car, right into the traffic on the other side of the bridge, killing him after a huge yellow truck drove past.

Natasha watched their only answer to stopping HYDRA get murdered.

That something moved again on the roof, right above them. A human.

Natasha scurried to the front before the person on top shot bullets down into the car, nearly killing her.

She went onto Steve’s seat, pulling his head away from the headrest before another bullet shot down, and kicking Sam away, the deafening sound of the gun firing again.

Steve pulled the brake handle. The car jerked to a stop. The person on the roof flew forward onto the road in front.

The figure slid on the road and came to a stop, its hand scraping on the tar. Its hand reflected the afternoon light. It was silvery, shiny…metal.

A metal arm. The metal arm with a red star on it.

The Winter Soldier.

He was covered in full black armour, his long hair waving in the wind. He slowly stood up, looking back at the car, his face hidden behind a mask and goggles.

The three of them watched the Winter Soldier as he stood up, the cars around honking at them to get out of the way.

Natasha aimed her gun at the man, but a huge jeep from behind hit the bumper, and Natasha dropped her gun. The car was pushed forward by the force of the black jeep behind. A HYDRA vehicle.

The car went straight towards the Winter Soldier and Sam frantically tried to steer away from him, but the man just jumped back onto the roof of the car, breaking the windows and landing on it with his whole body grabbing onto the sides for support.

Sam pushed down hard on the brakes. The huge car from behind just kept pushing the car forward, the tyres of the car screeching loudly accompanied by some bright orange sparks coming from underneath.

Natasha started looking for her gun on the floor while the car got pushed further up the highway.

The Winter Soldier smashed his metal arm through the windscreen from the top of the car, pulling the steering wheel Sam was holding right out of its place.

“SHIT!” Sam looked at the roof and Natasha got back her gun. She started shooting at the roof, and the Winter Soldier jumped back to the huge black jeep, leaving Sam, Natasha, and Steve in the car helplessly moving forward, as fear and uncertainty whipped their minds.

The jeep slammed into the car again, this time, causing the car to swerve uncontrollably as it hit the side of the highway.

Steve tightened his shield on his arm. “Hang on!” He pulled Natasha closer to him and held onto Sam. He broke open the car door just as the vehicle went flying, landing back on the road with a hard impact. The trio slid on the door across the tar down the highway, the car destroying itself as it overturned.

Sam rolled off the door while Steve and Natasha slid to a stop on the road.

The black jeep stopped, and the Winter Soldier got off from it, walking towards the three. Some men emerged from the jeep, giving the Winter Soldier a huge gun.

The Winter Soldier aimed the gun at Steve and Natasha, pulling the trigger.

A huge bomb was shot at them, Steve pushed Natasha away and he took the bomb with his shield, the impact making him fly off the bridge onto the road below. Steve crashed into a bus window, and while the bus driver was distracted with that, he hit a truck, making the bus topple to the side, hurting the civilians in the vehicle.

Up on the bridge, some HYDRA agents joined the Winter Soldier, and they started shooting at Natasha and Sam. They took cover from the other cars on the road, the bullets piercing through the windows.

Natasha started shooting back at them. The Winter Soldier shot another bomb at her, in which she jumped over to the other side of the road, avoiding the bullets the HYDRA agents shot.

The cars had all stopped, and the civilians all started running away from the chaos, their cars getting damaged by explosions and gunshots.

Natasha ran behind a car. The Winter Soldier aimed his gun at the car, pulling the trigger once again. The car flew right over the bridge with an explosion, forcing Natasha to jump too. She shot a rope on the underside of the bridge, pulling her to a safe landing.

She ran on the road below under the bridge as a HYDRA agent passed the Winter Soldier a smaller gun. The man walked to the side of the bridge looking down looking for Steve.

Under the bridge, Natasha spotted the Winter Soldier’s shadow on the road. She stood just under the side of the bridge, shooting her gun at him. She managed to shoot the Winter Soldier’s goggles as he stumbled back, sitting down on the bridge, leaning against the barrier.

He used his right arm to tear down his goggles, revealing his emotionless blue eyes, the expression that screamed ‘be scared of me’. He stood up and immediately started raining bullets at where Natasha was previously standing.

Natasha was hiding behind a truck not too far from the bridge on the highway. She was also using her guns at the soldier. A shootout began between the top of the bridge and the highway. Natasha ran away from the bridge, so did the other civilians.

The Winter Soldier watched as she ran further and further away. “I’ll take care of her, find him,” he told the agents in Russian, his voice monotone and cold.

He jumped off the bridge, landing hard on a car and walking down the front of it onto the road with the gun in his hand.

The HYDRA agents hooked axes attached to their harnesses on some cars on the bridge before descending onto the highway.

In the bus, Steve slowly opened his eyes, greeted by the sounds of worried and hurt civilians trying to get out of the bus one by one. The place was littered with books, magazines, and broken glass.

The HYDRA agents shot at the bus, one of them having a huge machine gun. Steve stood up and started running to the back of the bus as the bullets closed in on him, the ricocheting sounds ringing in his ears. Steve crashed through the window and swiftly picked up his shield on the floor, covering himself as they continued shooting.

Back on the bridge, one HYDRA agent was preparing to jump off onto the road. Sam silently sneaked up to him, a small blade in his hand. He kicked the agent, punching him in the face and swiping away his gun. He used the blade to cut off the agent’s harness before pushing him off the bridge.

The agents below were still shooting mercilessly at Steve. He managed to use his shield to deflect some of their bullets, hitting them in the process. He turned most of his shield towards the man holding the machine gun, the force trying to push Steve away.

Sam used the agent’s gun to help Steve eliminate the men shooting at him. Steve started running to the direction of the man holding the machine gun. The bullets were still firing at Steve, the repetitive firing sounds ringing in his ears.

Steve ran up to the agent and threw his body onto the roof of the car, knocking him out. Steve took cover behind the car and looked up at Sam on the bridge who was shooting at some other HYDRA agents down on the highway.

“Go, I got this!” Sam yelled to Steve.

The super soldier immediately started running away from the bridge to find Natasha as Sam continued to shoot down the agents near the bridge.

***

A police car came around the corner, but it exploded and crashed onto the side of the road with orange flames coming out of it accompanied by some black smoke trailing behind.

The Winter Soldier reloaded his grenade launcher which he had used on the police car. The roads were empty, with everyone already running away from the assassin. His hair waved in the wind, his metal arm swinging at his side, the other arm holding the huge gun. He walked around the highway, using his hard icy gaze to look for Natasha.

Other people from their cars ran out and scattered away, screaming and shouting with fear, the sounds the Winter Soldier had heard many times before.

He slowed to a stop. He heard something. A voice that was not screaming.

“I make an LZ, twenty-three hundred block of Virginia Avenue. Rendezvous two minutes,” he heard a soft voice coming from two cars away. It sounded like Natasha.

The Winter Soldier crouched down next to a car and quietly rolled a bomb to where he thought Natasha was hiding. The small metal ball rolled across the car silently to the place where Natasha was hiding.

“Taking fire above and below the expressway. Civilians threatened. Repeat, civilians threatened,” Natasha said.

The bomb hit the curb and slowed to a stop. But Natasha was not there. It was her phone device playing a recording of her voice. “I make an LZ, twenty-three hundred block at Virginia Avenue. Rendezvous two minutes.”

The bomb exploded and the area glowed orange with fire. It would instantly kill anyone standing in a 2 feet radius from it. The car next to it also caught fire and it came apart from the impact of the explosion.

The Winter Soldier watched the black smoke disperse into the air. He sensed something wrong. Pierce said these targets were level 6. Those were not easy to eliminate. Not as easy as that.

From behind, Natasha surprised him by kicking his gun away and climbing onto the tall man’s shoulders, sitting down, and taking out a tight string to attempt to strangle him. The Winter Soldier stumbled back and used his metal arm to throw her forward, her body hitting a car in front.

The Winter Soldier picked up his gun from the floor, aiming it at Natasha. She threw a small disc-like electronic device at his metal arm, paralysing it. The Winter Soldier struggled to move his arm and Natasha took the time to run away.

He peeled off the device using his non bionic arm. He stared at the ground for a few seconds, his cold eyes turning into one of pure rage. The Winter Soldier curled his metal fingers into a fist and recalibrated his arm, walking away to look for Natasha again.

“GET OUT OF THE WAY! STAY OUT OF THE WAY!” Natasha yelled at the civilians who were running all over the place. Natasha herself was running as well, as far as she could from the Winter Soldier.

A sudden gunshot and the sound of shattering glass silenced the chaos around her. Natasha felt a shock in her shoulder that spread into pain. She pressed her fingers on the gunshot wound of her shoulder and glanced at it while collapsing onto the road, leaning against a car.

Natasha looked around for who could have shot her while breathing heavily, the pain of the wound sinking in while dark red blood oozed out. The streets were already cleared of people, only their cars left scattered on the roads.

Someone stepped onto the bonnet of a car not too far away. Natasha spun her head around and her eyes met the Winter Soldier, his gun aiming at her.

Steve came around the corner with his shield, sprinting towards the Winter Soldier. The Winter Soldier noticed him.

Steve was about to push the Winter Soldier off with his shield, but the assassin just threw a powerful punch into the shield with his metal arm, the impact hard enough to destroy normal metal.

The Winter Soldier pushed away his shield and kicked him away, aiming his gun at Steve and shooting a few times.

Steve managed to hide behind his shield just in time. The Winter Soldier turned his attention to Steve and rolled off the car, taking another smaller gun. Steve ran behind a car to take as much cover as he could as the Winter Soldier started shooting at him again.

The Winter Soldier ran out of bullets and glanced down at the Škorpion vz. 61. Steve took the opportunity to kick away his gun. But the Winter Soldier just pulled out another and pressed the trigger at Steve again. Steve covered himself with the shield and punched him in the face, hard, the Winter Soldier also dropping his weapon.

The Winter Soldier grabbed his shield and used it against Steve, hitting him a couple times. Steve tried to fight back but the Winter Soldier just kicked him away, taking his shield.

The shield got strapped onto the Winter Soldier’s right arm, his piercing glare with his muted eyes. Steve stared back at him. The Winter Soldier was fast. Strong. His metal arm added to his ability. Not an easy opponent.

The Winter Soldier threw his shield back at him. Steve dodged it and the shield went flying into a van behind him, the Vibranium cutting deep into the metal of the door.

The Winter Soldier pulled out a knife. Steve and the assassin battled it out, the super soldier nearly getting slashed by the knife several times. The Winter Soldier was fast. Very fast. Almost faster than Steve could handle. His combat work was smooth and steady, consistently attacking Steve, not giving him much time to think or even attack.

Steve defended himself, blocking the punches or dodging them. He finally punched the Winter Soldier in the face, kicking him into a vehicle behind. Steve kicked him again into the van. Attack. Time was important. Every second of reaction time was important. Every distraction, every punch or kick.

The Winter Soldier got up and hit Steve again, both men fighting each other fiercely. The assassin used his metal arm and grabbed Steve’s throat, hoisting him up in the air.

Steve felt the cold metal on his neck, squeezing the air out of his lungs. The Winter Soldier’s eyes stared into his. The eyes that spoke more than the Winter Soldier needed to. Steve tried to push the arm away, but the Winter Soldier held it there. Hard and strong.

He jerked Steve closer to his face, giving him a death glare before throwing him away, his body hitting the bonnet of the van before hitting the hard road.

The Winter Soldier jumped onto the bonnet and lunged his metal fist at Steve, who quickly rolled away in time before the Winter Soldier dented the road where Steve face just was.

The men hit each other a couple times more. The Winter Soldier kicked him into the van, his body hitting the metal hard. The assassin then took out another knife and stabbed it at him. Steve stopped the knife before it could touch his nose, but the Winter Soldier just pressed it to his side, inches from Steve’s left ear. The blade slid into the van, cutting it deeper than a valley. Steve moved towards the right, the knife following him.

The super soldier went under the knife and grabbed the Winter Soldier from behind and tossed him backwards. Steve then used the chance to grab back his shield just as the latter threw another punch.

Steve finally stopped his metal arm from hitting him with his shield. The assassin was strong. It was not possible that he could be on par with a super soldier, could he? Steve hit the Winter Soldier’s face before grabbing his mask and throwing him behind with all his might.

The black mask dropped on the road.

The Winter Soldier slowly got up. No more disguise. No more hiding. Steve watched as he caught his breath. The moment of truth. Who was he fighting? Who was this man? What did he want with Steve?

The Winter Soldier turned around, his cold eyes meeting Steve’s.

The Super Soldier’s heart dropped, and he immediately stood up properly. His eyes went wide as he stared at the Winter Soldier.

“...Bucky?”

The Winter Soldier frowned. “Who the hell is Bucky?”

Bucky. Bucky Barnes. James Buchanan Barnes. He was the man standing right in front of Steve. He still looked the same. Just sloppier. Had longer hair. But Steve knew him. He knew what Bucky looked like no matter how much he changed himself.

But…how?

The Winter Soldier pointed his pistol at a dazed Steve. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Sam came with his falcon jet pack and kicked the Winter Soldier aside.

The Winter Soldier got up and stared at Steve. For a moment, his eyes flashed a sense of realisation. But as quickly as it came, it went back to the cold Winter Soldier he was. He pointed the pistol at Steve again but Natasha, who was hiding behind a vehicle from far away, used a grenade launcher that the Winter Soldier dropped on him.

The place exploded into flames and smoke. Steve looked at Natasha. Her shoulder was now covered in blood, but she was still breathing and alive.

He turned back to Bucky. But he was gone. The Winter Soldier had disappeared in the smoke. Steve looked around for him, but an assassin like him could hide in broad daylight.

Some sirens could be heard. The SHIELD vehicles. The two most wanted people in Washington in a highway chaos would attract attention.

The vehicles surrounded them, and several agents led by Rumlow came out of them, pointing guns at Natasha, Steve, and Sam. The SHIELD, or rather HYDRA agents were all in their armour, rushing towards the trio, circling them so they had nowhere to run.

“Drop the shield, Cap! On your knees! Get on your knees! Now!” Rumlow yelled orders the super soldier and he reluctantly complied, putting the shield on the road, and putting his arms in the air as surrender. Rumlow kicked Steve into a kneel. Dozens of agents pointed their guns at him, all filled with hundreds of bullets, and one could just end Steve’s life. There was nowhere to go.

Steve just stared at the ground, his mind racing with thoughts. Both of confusion and shock. His best friend…someone who did not recognise Steve.

One HYDRA agent placed the mouth of his gun right behind Steve’s head, ready to pull the trigger with Rumlow’s instructions.

A chopper was in the air, the blades noisily turning. It was from the News doing a live broadcast. Rumlow looked at it and turned back to his teammate.

“Put the gun down,” he whispered loudly at him. “Not here. Not here!”

The agent finally lowered his gun, and the HYDRA agents took Sam, Steve, and Natasha into custody.

***

“It was him,” Steve’s eyes lowered to the floor, hoping it could answer all the questions he had.

Bucky Barnes. His only good friend. The only person who stood up for him. He had known Bucky since before the war, after he had saved Steve from an alley. They had known each other for years. And they could have stayed together for a few more decades.

The train.

Bucky helped Steve in the war, fighting alongside Captain America, but Bucky only helped the inner Steve. The one who used to get beaten up in alleyways. Helping in such a dangerous task showed Steve the price of war—death.

Bucky fell of the train. He died…right?

“He looked right at me like he didn’t even know me,” Steve said quietly. He wanted answers, but he was also scared to find out the truth.

But how? Bucky’s once bright warm blue eyes turned into emotionless cold grey holes. The eyes that could not recognise Steve. How was he alive?

“How is that even possible? It was like 70 years ago,” Sam said.

The trio were escorted to somewhere in a van. Probably to their deathbed. Steve was tied in metal shackles so it would be impossible for him to fight against the guards. Sam and Natasha were just in chains tied to the van. HYDRA had caught them. For now.

“Zola,” Steve thought out loud. “Bucky’s whole unit was captured in ‘43. Zola experimented on him. Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall. They must have found him and…”

“None of that’s your fault, Steve,” Natasha muttered.

“Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

Natasha leant her head back on the side of the van, her eyes half closed. Sam looked at her shoulder. The gunshot wound was bleeding profusely, and she was losing a lot of blood.

He turned to one of the guards in the van with them, “We need to get a doctor here. We don't put pressure on that wound, she's gonna bleed out here in the truck.” He gestured to Natasha’s wound.

The guard immediately pulled out his electric rod and pointed it at Sam, threatening him. Sam backed away, keeping silent.

Suddenly, the guard with the electric rod stabbed the rod into the other guard’s stomach next to him. The guard kicked his face and his body lay limp on the floor of the van.

The guard took off his helmet with some struggle, finally pulling it off to reveal Maria Hill’s messy hair.

“Ah, that thing was squeezing my brain,” she stared at the helmet. She looked at Sam in confusion, then back at Steve. “Who’s this guy?”

***

Rumlow’s crew stopped at a tunnel. The several vehicles parked behind one another. The HYDRA agents emerged from the cars.

“Three holes, start digging,” Rumlow told his crew.

He with some other agents went to the van that the trio and Maria Hill were in. They pointed their guns at the doors, ready to shoot them.

The agents opened the van doors, but Rumlow stared at the inside of the van, his eyes opened wide.

They had all gone, with the guard lying on the floor unconscious. The shackles and chains on the side with a massive hole on the floor of the van, freshly burnt, an orange circle still around the rim.

***

Hill opened the door to let them out. Steve climbed out of the van first before helping Natasha out. Sam followed and the trio walked with Hill towards a secret facility, somewhere far away from Rumlow and the city.

The place looked like an old rusty dam, with green trees and buses surrounding it.

They entered a dimly lit rusty hallway to be greeted by a man running to them.

“GSW she’s lost at least a pint,” Hill said, referring to Natasha’s wound.

“Maybe two,” Sam added.

“Let me take her,” the man continued running to them.

“She’ll wanna to see him first,” Hill told the man.

She led the three of them into a room, smiling at what was inside. Steve and Natasha stared. In the room was a man, lying on a bed. Not just any man. It was Nick Fury, alive.

“About. Damn. Time,” he said in a hoarse voice, looking right back at them with his one eye.

***

“Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, one hell of a headache,” Fury told them about his conditions as Natasha got threated by the man, who was the same doctor who kept Fury breathing.

“Don't forget your collapsed lung,” the doctor reminded him.

“Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good.”

“They cut you open, your heart stopped,” Romanoff said.

“Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it,” he explained.

“Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?” Steve asked.

“Any attempt on the director’s life had to look successful,” Hill said.

“Can’t kill you if you’re already dead. Besides, I wasn’t sure who to trust.”

-

The sun was setting, the streetlights turned on in the busy street. A bank vault stood in the streets, some cars passing by on the wet road.

The HYDRA agents were in there, with the Winter Soldier. He sat in the vault on a chair. A special chair he always sat on. It was big, and there were shackles on it in case he acted up. There was a lot of machinery on that thing. Machinery all for his torture.

The Winter Soldier was getting his arm fixed, some agents including Rumlow and his team were standing on guard around the vault. It was deadly silent and dim, only the occasional sounds of the drilling and metal fixing of the Winter Soldier’s bionic arm.

The Winter Soldier sat on the seat, his shirt off, staring blankly at the floor. The room was quiet, but his mind was noisier than a bustling New York street during peak hours.

He thought about what the man said. The man on the bridge. He said something. A word.

Bucky.

Who was Bucky?

It sounded too familiar. The Winter Soldier’s mind was a fog of mess. He tried to pick out the memories, piece them together.

“Sergeant Barnes,” he remembered Arnim Zola’s voice calling out to him. It was a blur. There was snow. Snow around him and Zola in the memory.

The Winter Soldier sat up straight on his seat, trying to remember them all. Why were his memories a blur? Why could he not remember clearly?

The snow. It reminded him of a train, somehow. He had a flashback to a train, on some old tracks. There was snow around. Mountains too.

The man on the bridge was in the memory. He was wearing a suit. He looked very much like Captain America. HYDRA’s biggest enemy.

Captain America was reaching for something, a panicked expression on his face.

“Bucky, no!” he tried to reach towards the Winter Soldier in the memory. The vision then went blurry and he heard his own screams as he plummeted down from a cliff, towards the hard icy snow below. The memory was his, but he could not remember what happened.

Bucky. It was a name.

He had another flashback creeping into his mind. He saw some men with him, one of them was dragging him on the snow. He looked to his left. His left arm was bleeding, the blood staining the white ice. The arm was cut off. Up all the way to his elbow. It hurt. The Winter Soldier remembered. The memory became foggy again.

“The procedure has already started,” he heard Zola’s voice ringing in his ears again, like a parasite he could not remove.

Flashes of different images tossed around in his mind, as if a cat were in his brain, playing with his memories. He saw doctors with all kinds of tools. A bunch of syringes. A drill. He was…covered in bandages. His arm was gone.

The Winter Soldier jerked in his seat, desperate to remember, desperate to make the memories clear.

He remembered something else. Him, on a table. He was looking at his hands, men with clipboards and coats were standing around him. Doctors? Scientists?

“You are to be the new fist of HYDRA”

The Winter Soldier grabbed one of the scientists’ necks in the vision. He blinked another time and Zola’s face appeared again.

“Put him on ice.”

Cold. He felt cold. Confined. A tube. He was standing in a tube, with a little window in front of his face. He knew that place too well. He was always put there. He placed his cold metal arm on the door of the container he was in, the place suddenly freezing up, the Winter Soldier’s eyelids slowly closing.

The Winter Soldier’s memories faded. No.

He came back to his senses and knocked the HYDRA agent fixing his arm away hard, his body sliding on the floor roughly and hitting the side of the vault.

The agents around him cocked their guns and aimed it at him as the Winter Soldier sat upright in the seat, breathing heavily and arms flexing on his sides.

Alexander Pierce and some more agents came around and entered the vault the Winter Soldier was in. His agents opened the metal golden gates for him.

“Sir…he’s-he’s unstable…erratic…” one HYDRA scientist warned Pierce as he got closer and closer to the Winter Soldier. Still, Pierce went into the vault, the gate closing behind him.

He saw the guns and ordered his men to lower them, walking closer to the Winter Soldier.

Pierce looked at him. The Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes. Bucky was in a dazed state, zoning out into his own thoughts running through his corrupted mind.

“Mission report,” Pierce asked coldly, keeping his glasses in his jacket.

Bucky stared at the floor, his eyes emotionless and blank. But it was clear he was thinking. It was not the cold hard eyes he had. It was more of those of a confused man who needed answers.

“Mission report, now,” Pierce asked again after Bucky kept silent.

No reply. Bucky was still in his own little world, thinking and trying so hard to remember, but he just could not.

Pierce knelt a little so he could be eye to eye with him, before suddenly striking him hard in the face.

Bucky took the hit, not showing any signs of pain, just the same confusion he showed earlier. He frowned.

“The man on the bridge…” he turned to Pierce. He recalled Steve on the highway, saying that one word. “Who was he?” Bucky asked quietly.

“You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” Pierce simply explained.

Bucky looked back at the floor again, his greasy long hair just as messy as his mind. He kept silent for a while again, his eyes slowly lighting up. He remembered the same man from the train. That memory. It was his. He experienced that. He saw Steve before.

“I knew him,” the assassin said in a soft voice. It was barely audible, as if he was saying it more to himself than to Pierce.

Pierce grabbed a chair and sat right in front of Bucky, staring into his confused eyes. “Your work has been a gift to mankind. You shaped the century, and I need you to do it one more time. Society is at a tipping point between order and chaos. Tomorrow morning we're gonna give it a push. But, if you don't do your part, I can't do mine, and HYDRA can't give the world the freedom it deserves.”

“...but I knew him.”

Pierce sighed, stood up, and turned to the scientists, “Prep him.”

“He's been out of cryo-freeze too long,” the Scientist said.

“Then wipe him and start over,” he looked at Bucky.

Pierce, Rumlow and the agents watched as the scientists pushed him back onto the chair. One of them gave him a teeth shield. Another scientist pressed a few buttons on the console next to the chair and Bucky got restrained. Shackles came up from the handles and wrapped around his arm tightly, making it hard to move.

Bucky started breathing heavily, hating the feeling of the chair, the shackles, the feeling of being trapped and most importantly…

The machinery on top of the chair came down, closer and closer to his head. Bucky’s chest moved up and down with every scared breath he took, his eyes yelling for help.

The machine was inches from his ear. The thing he dreaded. It closed in onto his head.

The electric shocks started, and so did Bucky’s pained screams fill the silence in the room. The screams the HYDRA agents heard many times before.

Brainwashing.

Once before and after every assignment. Electric shocks to wipe his brain. Making Bucky into the Winter Soldier—a mindless robot.

Pierce turned coldly and walked away with Rumlow and the other agents, the Winter Soldier’s cries and yells of pain trailing behind.

-

“This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said, "Peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility." See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues,” Fury held up a picture of Alexander Pierce, analysing it.

“We have to stop the launch,” Natasha said. He wound was bandaged up, and she was feeling much better with the doctor’s help.

The trio with Hill and Fury were talking inside the secret facility, wondering how they could beat HYDRA in their own games.

“I don’t think the council is accepting my calls anymore,” Fury opened a case with three green chips inside.

“What’s that?” Sam asked.

“Once the Helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites becoming fully weaponized,” Hill showed them her computer screen with the Helicarriers and the satellites.

“We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own,” Fury gestured to the chips in the case.

“One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational a whole lot of people are gonna die.”

“We have to assume everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We need to get pass them, insert the server blades, and maybe, just maybe, we can salvage what's left—”

“We’re not salvaging anything,” Steve interrupted him. “We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick, we're taking down SHIELD.”

“SHIELD had nothing to do with this.”

“You gave me this mission, this is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised, you said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose, and nobody noticed.”

“Why do you think we’re meeting in this cave? I noticed.”

“And how many paid the price before you did?”

Fury sighed, “look, I didn’t know about Barnes.”

“Even if you did would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalised that too?” Steve asked sternly. “SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes.”

“He’s right,” Hill looked at Fury.

Fury looked at Natasha next in which she just leant back on her seat, staring right back at him, keeping silent.

He turned to Sam.

“Don’t look at me. I do what he does, just slower,” Sam gestured to Steve.

Fury turned back to Steve. “Well…” he sighed and sat back on his seat. “It looks like you’re giving the orders now, Captain.”

-

Steve stood at the bridge of the dam, looking far out into the distance, looking at the faraway city. The air was fresh and clean. A different feeling than the city.

His hands were deep in his pockets as he breathed in the air, calming him down a little. His eyes stared into the horizon, thinking about his best friend. What could have happened to him? So many things.

“We looked for you after,” he recalled a memory of Bucky’s voice telling him. “My folks wanted to give you a ride to the cemetery.”

“I know, I’m sorry, I just…kinda wanted to be alone,” Steve remembered himself saying.

It was in the past. Before the 21st century. Bucky still remembered him. Steve was still small and skinny. They both walked up the steps towards Steve’s old apartment. It was built of wood. Not the usual concrete those days.

Bucky was wearing a black suit that was for Steve’s mom’s funeral. Steve thought Bucky was clean and proper. Good-looking and smart. Most of the girls’ favourite guy. Still, he was friends with weak little Steve who has barely uttered a sentence to a lady before.

Steve was just wearing a sloppy jacket and shirt with a red tie, his hands pushed into his pockets, his head looking down at the wooden steps.

“How was it?” Bucky asked him.

The funeral. One of Steve’s lowest points of his life.

“It was okay,” Steve answered in a slightly shaky voice. “She’s next to dad.”

Bucky trailed behind Steve, the small man keeping his eyes to the floor. “I was gonna ask…”

“I know what you’re gonna say, Buck. I just…”

“We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids. It’ll be fun. All you got to do is just shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash,” Bucky said.

Steve reached the door of his apartment and rummaged through his jacket pockets for his keys, but they were empty. Again.

Bucky sighed and kicked a brick away on the floor outside the door, picking up the apartment key from under the brick.

“Come on,” Bucky passed the key to Steve.

Steve took the key from Bucky. “Thank you, Buck,” he looked at him. “But I can get by on my own.”

“The thing is…you don’t have to,” Bucky placed an arm around Steve’s shoulder, giving him a friendly pat. “I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”

Steve sighed and smiled back at him.

Those were the days. Where he had someone to cover his back.

“He’s gonna be there, you know,” Sam joined Steve on the bridge, interrupting his thoughts, bringing back to where he was.

“I know.”

“Look, whoever he used to be, and the guy he is now, I don’t think he’s the kind you save. I think he’s the kind you stop,” Sam told the super soldier.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” Steve continued staring over the bridge. He could not possibly try to stop his best friend. He was not Bucky anymore. Someone had turned him into a monster. A mindless killer that did not recognise a friend he had had for years.

“Well, he might not give you a choice. He doesn’t know you.”

“He will,” Steve looked at Sam confidently. “Gear up, it’s time.” He started to walk off the bridge.

“You gonna wear that?” Sam looked at his attire. He was dressed like a normal man going for a walk in the park after dinner with his jacket and jeans.

“No. If you’re gonna fight a war, you got to wear a uniform.”

***

At the Smithsonian Museum, an old security guard was walking through the Captain America exhibit, his white hair tucked underneath his cap and his boots making tapping noises every time he took a step.

The exhibit was empty, all the people had gone before closing hours. The security guard walked past the exhibits and stopped when he saw something.

“Oh man, I am so fired,” the security guard sighed.

The Captain America WWII uniform on a dummy had been stolen, making it completely bare, only leaving Steve’s old metal shield that the dummy was holding.

-

Maria, Sam, and Steve emerged from the shrubs and bushes, the Triskelion getting closer and in sight.

Hill was suited up in her SHIELD uniform and Sam wore his jet pack strapped to his body. Steve wore his Captain America suit. It was a little dusty, but still fit perfectly. His old suit. The one he wore when he beat HYDRA back in the past. During the war. The red, white, and blue uniform was something that all Americans knew at the front of newspapers and radios. He carried his bright coloured Vibranium shield too. The same colours as America’s flag.

Steve just hoped that, just maybe, Bucky would recognise him. With his old suit. He hoped. He would get his friend to remember. He was not going to let years of friendship go to waste and leaving his friend suffering in whatever he was going through. Bucky helped him so much. It was only fair if he paid him back. It was the least he could do.

***

“We are in final launch sequence,” the man on the PA informed the Insight crew.

The workers of the Triskelion were all preparing for the launch of the Heilcarriers. Both HYDRA and SHIELD were part of it. But none of the SHIELD crew knew.

The Helicarriers were built and ready to launch. The crew in the Insight Bay were moving the machinery away from the three huge Helicarriers, all of them loaded with guns and jets on top.

“We are go on guidance,” one SHIELD technician said, pressing some buttons on his computer console.

“All personnel to launch station,” the voice from the PA stated.

***

“And how was your flight?” Pierce asked.

“Lovely,” Councilwoman Hawley walked next to him, her handbag strapped on her right shoulder. “The ride from the airport less so.”

The World Security Council was walking with Pierce to the Triskelion, going to watch the launch of the Helicarriers live.

“Sadly, SHIELD can’t control everything,” Pierce said.

“Including Captain America,” Councilman Rockwell added coldly.

Pierce walked towards one of the guards handing him a case containing four pins.

“This facility is biometrically controlled, and these will give you unrestricted access,” Pierce let the council members take one pin each, pinning it on the left-hand side of their attires.

***

A helicopter noisily passed by the Triskelion. Some men in the Project Insight headquarters were talking to each other.

“I’ve been parking there for two months,” one com technician said.

“But it’s his spot,” another one replied.

“So, where’s he been?”

“I think Afghanistan.”

“Negative, DT-6. The pattern is full,” the technician spoke into his earpiece before turning back to his colleague. “Well, he could have said something.”

Suddenly a high-pitched sound rang through their ears from the earpiece. The technicians groaned and immediately took off their headsets.

“Must be the dish,” one of them said.

“I’ll check it out,” the other technician stood up from his seat and headed towards the door.

“Triskelion command request we clear the area for launch,” the man on the PA announced again.

The technician walked to the door and tapped his card on the lock. The door unlocked and he pushed open the door.

He nearly jumped when he saw the wanted Captain America standing at outside the door, wearing his outfit with Sam and Maria pointing their guns at the poor technician.

He backed into the room, his mouth agape as Steve inched forward.

“Excuse us,” Steve commanded. The technician quickly moved aside, raising his hands up in surrender.

***

“I know the road hasn’t exactly been smooth, and some of you would’ve gladly kicked me out of the car along the way,” Pierce addressed the council in his office. “Finally, we’re here. And the world should be grateful.”

He raised a glass as a toast as the other council members were about to down their drink.

“Attention all SHIELD agents,” a voice came up on the PA. The council members put down their glass and listened.

They all knew that voice. Everyone knew.

“This is Steve Rogers,” Steve said on the broadcast, his voice booming across the entire Triskelion.

Pierce also stopped and listened in shock. That man should be dead by now.

The other SHIELD agents paused whatever they were doing. The man they had been trying to hunt for months was trying to talk to them. He was in the building.

“You’ve heard a lot about me over the last few days. Some of you were even ordered to hunt me down. But I think it’s time you know the truth,” Steve spoke into the microphone of the Insight headquarters, thinking very carefully about his choice of words. “SHIELD wasn’t what we thought it was. It’s been taken over by HYDRA. Alexander Pierce is their leader.”

The council membered turned towards Pierce who just shrugged and walked around his office.

“The STIRKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well.”

The STRIKE team were walking through the building, Rumlow splitting them up and walking to different directions, going to find Steve and continue the launch of the Helicarriers.

“I don’t know how many more, but I know they’re in the building. They could be standing right next to you.”

The SHIELD agents looked around them, listening very carefully to what Steve said. Alexander Pierce continued pacing around his office while Steve talked, taking out a phone device and pressing some buttons on it.

“They almost have what they want. Absolute control. They shot Nick Fury, and it won’t end there. If you launch those Helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill anyone who stands in their way. Unless we stop them.”

In the Insight Bay, the HYDRA agents were walking towards the Helicarriers. A couple of SHIELD agents looked at them coming their way. Both looked at each other and started to take out their weapons. But one HYDRA agent shot them both with his own gun and the crew continued to make their way into the Helicarriers.

“I’m know I’m asking a lot. But the price of freedom is high. It always has been. And it is a price I am willing to pay. If I’m the only one, so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not,” Steve ended his speech.

Sam came up to him. “Did you write that down first or was it off the top of your head?” he smiled.

***

“You smug son of a bitch,” Councilman Rockwell frowned at Pierce after learning the truth about him.

Some HYDRA agents entered Pierce’s office.

Councilman Singh looked at them, thinking there were SHIELD agents. “Arrest him,” he told one of them.

In return, the agent pointed his gun at Singh, to which the councilman’s face dropped.

“I guess I’ve got the floor,” Pierce said.

***

Rumlow walked through the deadly silence of the control room, passing by the stunned SHIELD agents. No one moved, all eyes turned to Rumlow. Agent 13, Sharon Carter was also there, watching in suspicion.

Rumlow walked over to one of the technicians.

“Preempt the launch sequence. Send those ships up now,” he ordered.

The technician looked at him, hesitating visibly.

“Is there a problem?” Rumlow asked him coldly.

“Um…” the technician shook his head, being in a state of panic. The rest of the agents and technicians in the room watched him intensely.

“Is there a problem?” Rumlow repeated, raising his voice.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the technician took a few shaky breaths. “...I’m not gonna launch those ships. Captain’s orders.”

Rumlow pointed his gun at the technician’s head, “move away from your station.”

Agent 13 moved towards them, pointing her own gun at Rumlow. “Like he said!”

The rest of the SHIELD agents immediately drew out their weapons pointing it at Rumlow.

“Captain’s orders,” Sharon kept her gun up.

“You picked the wrong side agent,” Rumlow moved the gun just behind the technician’s head, the mouth touching his hair. The technician shut his eyes and his breath started becoming heavy with panic, putting his hands up.

“Depends on where you’re standing.”

Rumlow slowly lowered his gun and dropped it on the floor, the sounds of the gun clattering echoed through the silent room.

Suddenly, Rumlow took out a knife and in a swift swipe he cut Sharon’s arm holding the gun. Sharon grunted in pain and dropped her weapon. The quiet sounds of the people’s shocked and horrified gasps followed. Rumlow caught the gun before chaos could ensue.

Rumlow started using Sharon’s gun to shoot at the agents, the sounds of bullets making the people scram all over the place and the other agents shot back. The technicians kept their heads low and covered their ears.

Rumlow managed to kill some of the agents before turning back to the console of the control room. Sharon kicked the technician’s chair away, knocking him to the floor before Rumlow could kill him.

The sounds of gunfire were all over the place as Rumlow frantically typed some keys into the console.

The technicians climbed under the tables, hoping they would be safe. Agent 13 got out another gun and tried to shoot at Rumlow, her arm still bleeding from the cut.

He got away from the console and started back out from the room, shooting a few more bullets at the agents. Rumlow ran out of the room before Sharon’s bullets could hit him.

The console beeped. Rumlow had overridden the launch. The countdown of 2 hours for the Helicarriers turned to 0. Project Insight was being launched.

The water surrounding the Triskelion started draining a little. The bay doors for Helicarriers started opening, the water on the doors sprinkling into the Insight bay as the sunlight shone onto the Helicarriers for the first time.

“Close the bay door! Close the bay door now! Close the bay door!” A SHIELD agent ran waved his arms in the air to get the attention of the crew of the controls. The crew looked at him but hardly had time to react as some more HYDRA agents shot them.

The doors continued opening, and the sunlight was pouring in. The engines of the Helicarriers fired up and the ship started moving towards the sky.

In the Insight headquarters, Hill was sitting down, monitoring everything on the multiple screens she had. She saw the bay doors opening.

“They’re initiating launch,” she informed Steve and Sam.

The HYDRA crew were already on the ships, all suited up and ready to go. The Helicarrier was out of the door, above the water and still going up, not stopping anytime soon.

***

Back on the ground, Steve and Sam were running their way to the Helicarriers.

“Hey, Cap, how do we tell the good guys from the bad guys?” Sam asked, running on Steve’s left.

“If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad,” Steve said.

Sam deployed his jet suit and jumped off the side of the building, gliding into the sky. Steve jumped too, landing on one of the Helicarriers. The HYDRA agents immediately started shooting at him, and Steve dodged and took cover behind some containers on the ships.

Steve knocked out a HYDRA agent, taking his grenade. He pulled the pin and threw it at more oncoming agents, the explosion hurling them to the ground.

Sam started flying around the two other Helicarriers, but just as he could find a way in, the guns on the ships shot bullets and bombs at him. Sam started moving off, the bullets trailing behind him, the explosions ringing in his ears.

“Hey, Cap! I found those bad guys you were talking about!” Sam yelled as he flew around the outside of the Helicarriers.

“You okay?” Steve asked.

“I’m not dead yet,” Sam headed to the sky, the danger still lurking behind and would end Sam like his best friend if he slowed down.

***

Pierce looked out his office window, watching Sam getting chased around by gunfire. He turned around and walked towards the council who were all held hostage in his office.

“Let me ask you a question,” he told the council, putting his phone device on a table and taking a glass of champagne. “What if Pakistan marched into Mumbai tomorrow, and you knew they were gonna drag your daughters into a soccer stadium for execution?” Pierce handed Singh the glass. “And you could just stop it, with the flick of a switch. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you all?” He looked at the council members.

“Not if it was your switch,” Singh hurled the glass across the office, the glass shattering, the champagne spilling on the floor.

Pierce just chuckled and reached out a hand to one of the HYDRA agents. The agents took out his gun and passed it to Pierce.

He pointed it at Singh’s head, ready to shoot him. Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Councilwoman Hawley kicked Singh aside, took away Pierce’s gun and punched him in the face, dazing him for a moment.

She threw an electronic shock disc at one of the HYDRA agents and used Pierce’s gun to throw it at another. She knocked out the last one, slamming him onto the floor.

One of them got up again, trying to aim his gun at Hawley, but she just slammed his head on the table hard. That left Pierce standing there helplessly, incredibly shocked.

Hawley held her gun at Pierce, slowly rising from the floor to stand up. The men of the council watched in awe too as Hawley pressed the side of her forehead, and her face started becoming distorted and glitchy. Like some piece of mask.

“I’m sorry…” Hawley removed a mask disguise from her face, and Natasha Romanoff stared back at Pierce. She removed her blonde wig, her neat red hair falling onto her shoulders.

“Did I step on your moment?” she smirked slightly at the aghast Pierce.

***

“Satellites in range at three thousand feet,” one of the techs from the Helicarrier stated.

Maria Hill back at the Insight Headquarters saw the Helicarriers getting higher and higher into the sky. She rolled her chair back to the controls.

“Falcon, status?” she asked Sam.

“Engaging,” Sam replied with the bullets still chasing his tail high in the sky.

He dived down towards one of the Helicarriers, dodging the missiles and shots HYDRA gave him along the way. He hovered right above the top of the Helicarrier, the gunfire not stopping. He descended onto the carrier, taking out a pair of guns to attack the HYDRA soldiers on the ship.

“Alright, Cap. I’m in,” he informed Steve while looking for the best way in.

The droning sounds of a plane started getting louder. Sam turned his head to the direction of a jet going straight towards him.

“Oh shit,” Sam sped off before the HYDRA agents in the jet could shoot more bullets at him.

He flew underneath the wings of the other jets on the Helicarrier to try to cover as much of himself as possible from the guns. But the jet followed him to the end of the ship, bombing the last jet wing Sam flew under.

Sam retracted his falcon wings into his jetpack before he rolled on the floor from the impact of the explosion. He stood up right at the edge of the Helicarrier. The jet got emerged through the cloud of black smoke, headed towards Sam, raining gunfire.

He shot his gun a few times at the pilot window of the jet before jumping off the side, deploying his wings once again. He dived under the Helicarrier, trying to shake the jet off, but it kept following Sam like lost ducks.

***

On another Helicarrier, Steve was knocking out the HYDRA agents that came up to him from all directions.

“Eight minutes, Cap,” Hill informed him on the comms.

“Working on it,” he answered back, throwing his shield at an agent before going into the Helicarrier.

***

Councilman Yen held the gun at Pierce’s head as Natasha had instructed him to. Pierce glanced at his phone device on the table, just an arm’s reach away. He had his palms up and faced forward as he watched Natasha.

Natasha was working on the device in Pierce’s office, going through some files.

“What are you doing?” Councilman Rockwell asked her.

“She’s disabling security protocols and dumping all the secrets onto the internet,” Pierce started moving forward, closer to Natasha.

“Including HYDRA’s,” she said.

“And SHIELD’s,” Pierce looked at her still typing away on the computer. “If you do this, none of your past is going to remain hidden. Are you sure you’re ready for the world to see you as you really are?”

“Are you?”

***

Outside in one of the Helicarriers, Steve ran towards the control centre of the ship. It was a bunch of suspended metal platforms with a tall cylindrical system in the centre, holding a lot more computer chips similar to the one Fury and Hill gave him.

Steve pressed some buttons on the controls and the chips came down into Steve’s view.

He took out one of them and replaced it with the ones that Fury gave. He sent them back up and ran away from the control centre.

“Alpha lock,” he informed Hill.

Maria saw that one Helicarriers had the chip in on her screen. “Falcon, where are you now?”

“I had to take a detour!” Sam yelled as he flew outside the second Helicarrier, avoiding the jet still chasing him.

Suddenly, the jet launched heat-seeking missiles right at Sam. At least a dozen of them were sniffing his tail. He swerved the missiles, diving under and over the guns on the side of the Helicarrier.

He went underneath the ship, flying his way to the control centre. A few more missiles were still locked on him. Sam sped towards the glass of the control room of the Helicarrier, and just as he was about to crash into it, he retracted his wings, falling down to the ground instantly, making the remaining missiles explode on the glass.

Sam opened his wings again and flew back up. “Whoo! Oh yeah!” he laughed and entered the Helicarrier through the broken glass made by the missiles.

He landed on the platforms, walking towards the cylindrical machine. “I’m in,” he informed Hill.

Sam replaced one of the chips with their own, just like Steve did and jumped off the platform, flying out of the carrier. “Bravo lock.”

One more Helicarrier on Hill’s screen turned green, leaving only one more.

“Two down, one to go,” she told the team.

***

“All SHIELD pilots, scramble,” one SHIELD lead pilot commanded on his radio. “We're the only air support Captain Rogers has got.”

Down at the Triskelion, the lead pilot was gathering his team of SHIELD agents as they headed to the jets, wearing their uniforms and helmets.

A bomb flew overhead, hitting the wings of a flying Quinjet. It caught on fire and crashed down, hitting some of the SHIELD agents and planes.

Through the explosions, a figure emerged from the explosions. The figure with a metal arm. Bucky launched another bomb at the chaos of the scrambling SHIELD agents, knocking them out.

Bucky was not wearing a mask this time. His entire face was shown. His entire cold aura around him could be visible, his dark eyes forever hard and mean. His hair moved in the wind, giving his appearance an even more fierce look.

This was not Bucky. It was the Winter Soldier.

A SHIELD agent pulled the pin on a grenade and tried to throw it at him. The Winter Soldier used a gun to shoot him before the grenade could even leave his hands. The agent dropped the grenade, and the Winter Soldier picked it up, and threw it into the doors of a jet that was about to take off before it could explode. The jet filled with flames and shook from the impact, killing the pilots inside.

The SHIELD pilots tried to fight back, but the Winter Soldier killed them all easily, and mercilessly.

He only left one jet not in fire and smoke. He stood on top of the jet, shooting the pilot inside through the window a couple times. The Winter Soldier jumped down and yanked the window of the jet out with his mechanical arm, sliding into the Quinjet and taking off into the air, up to the Helicarriers.

***

Councilman Yen still held the gun at Pierce some distance away and the other councilmen watched Natasha disable the encryption. But the access was restricted.

“Disabling the encryption is an executive order, it takes two Alpha Level members,” Pierce told her.

“Don’t worry, company’s coming,” Natasha said.

The sounds of Helicopter blades became louder right outside Pierce’s office. All eyes turned to the chopper outside the window as a figure in a black coat and boots approached them.

The glass doors opened, and Nick Fury stepped into his office, glaring at Pierce with his eye. Pierce stared at him, nodding slowly to hide his shock.

Fury stood in front of him, letting him know he was very much alive. If looks could kill, Pierce would be long dead, even if Fury had an eyepatch over both eyes.

“Did you get my flowers?” Pierce asked.

Fury kept his glare.

“I’m glad you’re here, Nick,” he said.

“Really?” Fury walked closer to Pierce. “'Cause I thought you had me killed.”

“You know how the game works.”

“So why make me head of SHIELD?”

“Because you were the best and most ruthless person I have ever met.”

“I did what I did to protect people.”

“Our enemies are your enemies, Nick. Disorder, war. It's just a matter of time before a dirty bomb goes off in Moscow, or an EMP fries Chicago. Diplomacy? Holding action, a band-aid. And you know where I learned that; Bogota,” Pierce said. “You didn't ask, you just did what had to be done. I can bring order to the lives of seven billion people by sacrificing twenty million. It's the next step, Nick, if you have the courage to take it.”

“No, I have the courage not to,” Fury grabbed Pierce’s arm and led him to the retinal scanner.

“Retinal scanner active,” the SHIELD computer sounded.

Natasha pointed her gun at Pierce, in which he just chuckled. “You don't you think we wiped your clearance from the system?”

“I know you erased my password, probably deleted my retinal scan, but if you want to stay ahead of me, Mr. Secretary…” Fury removed his eyepatch, staring at Pierce with his scarred dead eye. “You need to keep both eyes open.”

He and Pierce both did the retinal scan, Fury using his dead eye to do so.

“Alpha Level confirmed. Encryption code accepted. Safeguards removed,” the computer stated.

The screen showed the files getting released into the internet, and Fury just looked back at Pierce, a hint of a scoff behind his cold eyes.

***

“Charlie Carrier's forty-five degrees off the port bow,” Hill told Sam and Steve back at the headquarters. She glanced up at a screen of the camera footages. Two HYDRA agents were entering the headquarter room.

She rolled her chair back to the door and shot the agents with her gun as soon as they entered.

“Six minutes,” Hill told them and got out of her seat, walking back to the controls.

“Hey, Sam, gonna need a ride,” Steve asked as he ran on the Helicarrier.

“Roger! Let me know when you’re ready,” Sam flew towards the carrier Steve was on.

The HYDRA agents were all over the place, one of them shot a missile at Steve’s feet just as he was at the edge of the carrier. With no choice, Steve jumped off the ship, falling down to the ground.

“I just did!” Steve was in the air, plummeting down fast.

Sam spotted him and dived down to catch him. Steve was freefalling, extending his arms so slow his fall. Sam grabbed his hand just in time and pulled him up to the sky with the power he had left to the last carrier.

He landed Steve and himself on the ship, walking beside him.

“You know, you’re a lot heavier than you look,” Sam told the super soldier.

“I had a big breakfast,” Steve said.

From the corner, a figure suddenly appeared and pushed Steve off the edge of the Helicarrier. It was the Winter Soldier.

“Steve!” Sam immediately jumped to try to rescue him, but Bucky grabbed one of his wings and tossed him back onto the carrier.

Sam took out his guns and rapidly fired at Bucky, but the Winter Soldier dodged them, taking cover behind the many containers on the ship. Sam kept his guns and flew off, but Bucky launched a weapon with a rope on one of his wings, aggressively pulling him back down on the carrier and ripping one of his wings out of his jetpack.

The Winter Soldier then ran forward and kicked him off the Helicarrier. Sam fell through the air, desperately trying to save himself. He struggled with one wing, and his jetpack was broken. He detached off the remaining wing and managed to get out his parachute moments before hitting the ground, but without hurting himself.

“Cap! Cap, come in! Are you okay?” Sam asked worriedly.

Steve hung on the side of the Helicarrier, just barely hanging on.

“Yeah, I’m here! I’m still on the Helicarrier,” he pulled himself up to stand safely. “Where are you?”

“I’m grounded. The suit’s down. Sorry, Cap,” Sam let out a small sigh.

“Don’t worry. I got it,” Steve was finding a way to climb into the Helicarrier and Bucky watched from the top, staring with his icy gaze again.

***

An alarm blared.

“Emergency evacuation alert,” a woman on the PA announced as everyone at the Triskelion were running in all directions in panic, desperate to escape the place. “All personnel proceed to designated safety zones.”

The alarms in the corridors blasted in Rumlow’s ears. He had a knife in his hands, peeking around a corner of a hallway.

“All SHIELD agents regroup at Rally Point Delta,” he heard a SHIELD agent approaching.

The moment he emerged from the corner, Rumlow struck him with the knife, making him yelp in pain. He then attacked the other SHIELD agents, shooting and all killing them within seconds.

“Sir, the council’s been breached,” the HYDRA dispatch informed him through his radio.

“Repeat dispatch,” Rumlow ordered.

“Black Widow’s up there.”

“Headed up!” he kicked open the door to the staircase, going in.

Hill saw him in the staircase through the cameras of her incoming survey feeds. “Falcon?”

“Yeah?” Sam replied.

“Rumlow’s headed for the council.”

“I’m on it,” Sam took off his jetpack and suit.

***

Steve’s footsteps thudded on the metal of the platforms. He was in the control centre of the last Helicarrier. His face slowed to a stop when he saw something. Or someone standing right in front of him.

The Winter Soldier stood there, blocking his way to the computer chip machine. His eyes were forever emotionless endless voids that one could get lost into if not careful.

“People are gonna die, Buck,” Steve told him, his voice echoing through the deadly silence.

Bucky still stood there, not moving, nor taking his cold stare off Steve.

“I can’t let that happen,” he looked back at his best friend.

But Bucky was not showing any mercy. Steve knew he did not even know who he was. Like an emotionless robot just tasked to follow orders. It broke Steve’s heart to see him like that. An unrecognisable killing machine. But time was ticking, dripping like water from a bucket with a hole.

“Please don’t make me do this…” he pleaded with his best friend.

The Winter Soldier kept so still and so silent. He even darkened his gaze at Steve, standing his spot.

Steve let out a sigh, and he knew he had to do it.

He threw his shield at Bucky, and the Winter Soldier blocked it with his metal arm. The shield rebounded and went back to Steve. The Winter Soldier used his gun to shoot at Steve. Steve used his shield to block the bullets, the sounds of the gunshots reverberating off the glass walls of the control centre.

Bucky shot at him a couple times before managing to hurt Steve on his left stomach. He groaned in pain and pushed Bucky away onto the floor.

The assassin took out a knife. Steve sighed. Both men battled each other for quite some time, before Steve knocked him aside with his shield, taking the seconds to run to the machine, and managing to bring up the targeting blade system.

But the Winter Soldier ran up to him, attacking the soldier one again. Steve fought for a while, holding Bucky’s metal arm down. Bucky tried to resist while Steve’s shield kept his arm down from attacking him further.

The Winter Soldier’s arm was stronger this time. The metal plates of his arm readjusted and had enough strength to throw Steve backwards.

Steve kicked him back hard, the assassin’s body hitting the railings of the metal platforms. Steve scrambled back to the targeting blade system, taking out one of the chips and putting them in his pocket. He turned around, holding his shield out just in time before the Winter Soldier threw another lethal punch at the Vibranium using his bionic arm, both metals vibrating from the impact.

Steve lunged him back. Both men fought fiercely for some time, dodging each other’s punches. Steve punched the assassin back, and in a fit of rage, the Winter Soldier ran up to Steve, pushing him over the railing, and the Winter Soldier also tumbled down.

They landed on a curved surface without railings under the cylindrical machine and under the platforms. Steve’s computer chip slipped out of his hand, nearly falling off the curved floor. The Winter Soldier lunged forward, and they fought again, punching and hitting each other.

The Winter Soldier finally hit him away, making him slide off the floor, but letting Steve manage to take the computer chip along the way.

Steve stopped at the edge of the floor, nearly falling off. The Winter Soldier slid off the floor to the super soldier. They brawled, the chip falling out of Steve’s hand again.

To get it back, Steve hit the assassin’s head hard. Bucky fell backwards and Steve kicked him off the floor, making him fall down onto the glass of the control room, and Steve followed down as well, trying to take back the computer chip.

***

In Pierce’s office, the screen showed a transfer complete of SHIELD and HYDRA’s files.

“Done,” Natasha checked her phone device. “And it’s trending.”

Pierce looked around the room, a mischievous look in his eyes.

Suddenly, Councilman Singh’s pin on his jacket started disintegrating, burning a bright white hole into his sternum.

Councilman Rockwell’s pin did the same thing a few seconds later, making him groan in pain. Councilman Yen dropped the gun and collapsed to the floor with the pin burning the deep hole into his body.

Natasha and Fury immediately pointed their guns at Pierce, but he just looked at them calmly.

“Unless you want a two-inch hole in your sternum, I’d put that gun down,” he told them, holding his mobile device in his hand, controlling the pins.

Natasha kept her gun there, not willing to back down.

“It was armed the moment you pinned it on,” Pierce hovered his thumb right over the button of his mobile device, ready to press it.

Fury looked at her, sighing as he slowly lowered his gun. Without much choice, Natasha sighed and put down her weapon.

***

Steve saw the computer chip on the glass floor and ran towards it, but he got hit with his own shield on the back of his head. The super soldier tumbled forward, landing on the floor.

The Winter Soldier moved closer and aimed his gun at Steve. Steve picked up his shield just in time to save himself from being covered in bullets. He threw the shield back at the assassin after he stopped shooting, but the Winter Soldier just used his arm to deflect it off, the shield rebounding away.

Bucky took out his knife again and lashed it at Rogers until he managed to stab it into his shoulder. Steve grunted from the pain before using his head to hit the Winter Soldier back.

Bucky shoved him aside, crawling and grabbing the green computer chip from the floor. Steve took out the blade from his shoulder, running back to the chip, but the Winter Soldier already had it in his hand.

Steve grabbed his neck and raised him above the ground, choking him. The Winter Soldier still held the chip tightly. Steve slammed Bucky on the floor, straddling Bucky’s arm holding the chip under his, and the other hand holding his neck away from Steve, so the assassin could not move or attack.

He held him in an armlock and pushed Bucky’s neck down, hard enough to hurt. Yet, the Winter Soldier was not letting go.

“Drop it!” Steve ordered him, pushing his body more. “Drop it!”

The Winter Soldier tried to attack him back and Steve pushed down even harder, breaking his arm. The Winter Soldier screamed from the pain, his sounds of pain echoing through the control center room, but he still held tightly to the chip stubbornly.

Steve dropped him down to a chokehold on the ground, his right arm tightening around Bucky’s throat. Both men struggled on the floor, Steve holding onto him tightly while Bucky tried to squirm out of his grip and to pull away his arm from his neck.

The super soldier pried his metal arm off his, keeping his leg down on it to hold him still. Bucky’s face drained of blood, trying to breathe for air. After a little more struggle, his eyes finally closed and he let go of the chip, falling unconscious.

Steve instantly let go of him and grabbed the chip, running back up to the targeting blade machine.

***

“I'm on forty-one, headed towards the south-west stairwell,” Brock Rumlow informed his men, entering a SHIELD office in the Triskelion, high up in the building.

The office was empty, everyone had already evacuated. Still, Rumlow held up his gun in case of attacks.

But as soon as he took two steps into the room, Sam punched him hard in the face, taking Rumlow’s face and hitting it with his knee. Rumlow groaned and grabbed both of Sam’s face, knocking his head hard with his own, pushing him to the floor.

“This is gonna hurt,” Rumlow stripped off his vest as Sam slowly got up from the floor. “There are no prisoners with HYDRA, just order. And order comes through pain. You ready for yours?”

“Man, shut the hell up,” Sam launched a punch at Rumlow.

***

“Lieutenant, how much longer?” Pierce asked, standing by the computer.

Natasha and Fury just stood there, helplessly watching the targets on the screen.

“65 seconds to satellite link,” the radio from the Charlie carrier told him. “Targeting grid engaged. Lowering weapons array now.”

The tons huge guns lowered from all three of the Helicarriers, pointing in different directions from the sky.

At the headquarters, Maria looked at the timer, counting down the milliseconds they had left.

“One minute,” she informed Steve.

Steve climbed back to the top, nearing the metal platforms of the targeting blade system of the last Helicarrier.

A sudden crack spilt the air and Steve fell, clutching the back of his thigh. It was a gunshot from his former friend, the Winter Soldier. He had come conscious again, using his gun to shoot the super soldier.

Steve still desperately continued to get back to the machine, the blood oozing out of the gunshot wound. There was no time to waste. Precious time. Precious lives.

He made it to the top, only to get shot again on his right shoulder. The soldier pushed on, rolling under the railings onto the platforms, and limping his way to the machine with the help of the railings.

“30 seconds, Cap!” Hill warned.

“Stand by,” Steve groaned as he made it to the machine, taking out the computer chip from his pocket.

“Charlie—”

A loud gunshot echoed through the empty control center, and Steve fell before managing to put the chip in. He sat on the metal platform, not moving, and breathing heavily. Steve lowered his gaze to his stomach where his own blood stained the old army Captain America uniform.

The Winter Soldier stood at the bottom of the control center, staring coldly at the shot he had just made on his target.

“We've reached three thousand feet. Sat link coming online now,” the Charlie weapons tech from the Helicarrier bridge stated to his team.

“Deploy algorithm,” the executive officer of the Charlie carrier said.

The technician pressed some buttons on his keypad. “Algorithm deployed.”

“We are on go to targets,” Pierce ordered his men on the radio.

Hill stiffed up as she watched the targeting system aiming at different people.

Hundreds of them from the Triskelion and all over, marking a red ‘X’ at where the targets were. The huge weapons of the Helicarriers aimed in those directions, ready to fire when launched.

The counter of targets on the screen started increasing rapidly, and more coming from the White House and everywhere around Washington. Businessmen in the Pentagon, people just walking on the streets or in their homes, commuters, and even the people in the Avengers Tower were marked with the red cross. The targets were across the states of America, entirely covered in HYDRA’s targets. The counter had already gone over 700,000 people as Maria watched in shock and panic.

“Target saturation reached. All targets assigned,” the Helicarrier tech stated.

“Fire when ready,” the executive officer ordered.

The weapons on the carriers started powering up, their assigned targets to kill locked in place.

“Firing in three…”

Steve climbed back up. He had to do it. No time to be in pain. This was the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. He could not let them die just because of pain. Pain only makes you stronger.

“Two…”

Steve supported his body with one hand on the machine, and the other reaching out to put the computer chip in place.

“One…”

The robotic beeping sound of the chip getting inserted into place sounded.

The Helicarrier’s weapons technicians screen scratched and changed into one without the HYDRA targets in place. Just a blank screen, the green of the earth shown on the map.

The chip had overridden the targets, locking it down instantly.

Steve Rogers took a deep breath, trying to keep his breathing steady. “Charlie lock.”

The HYDRA technician looked confusedly at the screen, and the executive officer watched the targeting system go offline.

“Where are the targets?” he demanded. “Where are the targets?”

“Okay, Cap, get out of there,” Hill told Steve as she redirected the Helicarrier’s targets to themselves.

The targets counter decreased to three. The three Helicarriers. The weapons all changed their directions towards each other, ready to fire.

The technician and the executive officer stared at the screen of three targets in surprise, their faces dropping.

“Fire now,” Steve said into his comms to Hill. He was on the platform, next to the targeting blade system, gravely injured.

“But Steve…”

“Do it!” Steve raised his voice. “Do it now!”

Hill reluctantly set off the targets, making them fire at each other immediately.

The impact from the bullets and missiles made the carriers shake, and Steve had to hold onto the railing for support as the Helicarriers destroyed one another.

Black smoke and fire emerged from the broken parts of the ship, the destruction tossing Steve around on the platforms that were getting broken off as well.

He heard screams. Familiar pained screams. He looked down to see Bucky getting stuck under the metal supports that once used to hold the Helicarrier together. The Winter Soldier was trying to get out, but the support was too heavy for him.

***

“What a waste,” Pierce watched the Helicarriers firing at each other through his office window, a cloud of smoke around the chaos.

“You still on the fence about Rogers’ chances?” Natasha asked.

“Time to go, Councilwoman. This way, come on,” Pierce commanded her to move out of his office. “You’re gonna fly me out of here.”

Nick Fury stood still, keeping his gaze at the window. “You know,” he said to Pierce. “There’s a time I would have taken a bullet for you.”

“You already did. You will again when it’s useful.”

Natasha suddenly activated a small electric disc to give herself an electric shock, groaning in pain before she fell to the ground right in front of Pierce, passing out.

He looked at her, stunned for a second before rebooting the pin weapon she wore which the electronic shock had disabled.

Fury had silently swiped a gun from one of the passed-out HYDRA agents on the floor.

Before Pierce could press the button to kill off Natasha with the rebooted pin, Fury cocked the gun and shot it twice at Pierce’s heart.

Pierce fell back and crashed through the glass monitor in his office, the shattering sounds filling the room and the shattered bits littered on the floor.

“Romanoff! Natasha!” Fury went up to her, but she was still lying still. “Natasha, come on!”

Natasha frowned and opened her eyes slowly. “Ow,” she looked at Fury with half closed eyes. “Those really do sting.”

Outside, the Helicarriers were coming apart, clouds of smoke trailing behind as they descended and continued shooting mercilessly at each other. Fire covered the parts of the ship, explosions going on everywhere.

Two Helicarriers crashed into each other, one tearing the other in half.

As the explosions happened, Alexander Pierce was on the floor, exhaling his last breath.

“Hail…Hydra…” he whispered weakly.

Part of the broken in half Helicarrier smashed into the water surrounding the Triskelion, making the water splash everywhere and the ship parts falling into the deep lake. More of it sunk underneath, creating huge waves and discard in the lake.

In his office, Alexander Pierce laid still. The life vanished from him. All along he wanted power. Impossible power. He never liked SHIELD. But years of trust laid to waste. The blood of the gunshots at his chest stained his clean pristine faded blue shirt wine red, his tie slumped to the side. All that all gone to waste. All that for power. All for that fake trust.

***

Steve crumbled down to the bottom of the control room where Bucky was. He groaned from the pain of his gunshot wounds the Winter Soldier had given him.

Bucky’s eyes went wide in fear as Steve approached and he tried to get himself out of the metal support, but it was firmly held there, way too heavy for him to lift. A super soldier.

Steve grabbed onto the huge metal piece, but an explosion hitting the Helicarrier pushed him back onto the glass floor as Bucky still tried to get out on his own.

***

Another Helicarrier had lost its engines. It was headed uncontrollably towards the Triskelion.

Sam launched a punch at Rumlow, but the man caught it, attacked Sam and threw him onto a desk, his body hitting through the glass computer screens.

They were still fighting in the SHIELD office, Sam just stalling for time from the arrogant Rumlow.

Sam fell on the shattered glass, not exactly the best cushioning of a fall. He was on the floor, exhausted and in pain. He looked back up at Rumlow, who stood on a table looking down at Sam, purposely trying to make him look small.

“You’re out of your depth, kid,” Rumlow told him.

But Sam could not care. He was more focused on the Helicarrier headed right towards Rumlow and him, going to crash into the building.

Sam instantly got up and ran away from the carrier to the other side of the office without looking back. Rumlow followed his gaze and realised the Helicarrier that was just two seconds away from hitting him.

The ship crashed into the concrete and full-length windows of the SHIELD office in the Triskelion. Rumlow jumped off the table and sprinted away, “Son of a bitch!”

But he was not fast enough. The smoke engulfed him up and the concrete fell on him, making him disappear into the rubble.

Sam kept running only turning back once to see how close the Helicarrier was to him. He saw the end of the office building, hurrying to save his life.

The ship kept going deeper and deeper into the side of the Triskelion, the planes and jets on the worn-out runway tipping out of the Helicarrier onto the ground. Puffs of grey smoke thick enough to choke someone covered the all the damage, and small fires were visible from the outside.

The Helicarrier was close to the end of the SHIELD office, trapping Sam from having less time, but he just sprinted away. The carriers were still firing at each other, creating even more destruction and damage that would have costed damage control way too much.

“Please tell me you got that chopper in the air!” Sam shouted into his comms, still avoiding ending up like Rumlow.

“Sam, where are you?” Natasha asked on their radio.

Sam nearly got annihilated by a falling piece of concrete. He slid under it and continued bolting to the end. The smoke got closer and closer, making Sam on the brink of life and death.

“41st floor! Northwest corner!” Sam shouted again, hopping over debris and broken window glass.

“We’re on it!” Natasha told him as the helicopter she and Fury were in sped towards the Triskelion. “Stay where you are!”

“NOT AN OPTION!” Sam was getting closer and closer to the end of the office. There was a window at the end. He could jump.

Natasha and Fury were at the side of the building, looking at the many floors of the Triskelion. They all looked the same from the outside.

Just as the floor came apart by the Helicarrier, Sam rammed through the window and jumped out of the building. He plummeted down and the chopper was a flew floors down. Fury turned it sideways, and Sam crashed into the door of the chopper. Natasha barely caught him before the door came out of placed and dropped down to where Sam’s death would be if not for Natasha.

“41st floor! 41st!” Sam angrily yelled at Fury through the sounds of the helicopter blades after Natasha pulled him back up.

“It’s not like the put the floor numbers on the outside of the building!” Fury shouted back.

Natasha looked back at the Helicarrier destroying the Triskelion. The chopper flew underneath it as it devoured the building like a plague.

“Hill! Where’s Steve? You got a location on Rogers?” Natasha asked Maria.

The helicopter flew right past Steve who was on the Helicarrier that tried to murder Sam. He was still in the control room, but so hard to see from the never-ending destructions of the ships.

He lifted the metal support with much difficulty and Bucky got himself free, lying on the glass, tired.

Rogers let go of the support, the metal clanging loudly as it hit the floor.

Bucky slowly got up and stared at Steve, not attacking him just yet.

“You know me,” Steve told him.

“NO I DON’T!” Bucky lashed out at him, striking him across the face with a punch with his metal arm.

The Helicarrier they were in already destroyed one entire building of the Triskelion and was still heading down with the weak broken engines.

Steve got up again, looking at his best friend, “Bucky.” The Winter Soldier stared back at him, some hesitation in his eyes. “You’ve known me your whole life.”

Bucky hit him again, Steve falling to the ground.

Another engine of the Helicarrier broke down, the trail of black and grey smoke that could be equivalent to that produced by a factory.

Steve stood up, not fighting back. “Your name…is James Buchanan Barnes.”

“SHUT UP!” Bucky punched him again, harder.

Steve took off his helmet, letting Bucky remember his face.

“I’m not gonna fight you,” Steve dropped his shield. The Vibranium went through a hole in the glass floor, going down into the lake together with some Helicarrier parts. Steve stood up, staring into Bucky’s blue eyes, “You’re my friend.”

Bucky looked back at him for a while, uncertain. After a few moments of hesitation, he just ran forward and pushed Steve to the ground, his super soldier body hitting the floor hard.

“You’re my mission,” Bucky told him coldly.

He repeatedly punched Steve in the face with his bionic arm, as if he were ranting his anger on a stuffed toy. Each punch brough pain to Steve, but he still would not fight. Bucky continued to rant his punches.

“YOU’RE!”

“MY!”

“MISSION!”

Bucky held his fist in the air, staring at Steve.

“Then finish it…Cause I’m with you to the end of the line.”

Bucky’s eyes went wide, all the emotions flooding into him at once. The sounds of the rubble vanishing from his mind. The memories. Steve. Steve Rogers. He was his friend. The memories all seemed fuzzy. But clear enough to remember the important parts.

Bucky’s heart stopped, his body standing very still. He remembered. It was not just his nightmares. He remembered something else other than his dreams. Captain America. He lowered his fist, not taking his eyes off Steve, the memories washing over him.

Steve gave him a small smile. It was barely seen, but Steve knew that Bucky finally recognised him, even if it was just a small bit.

The targeting blade machine fell out of place and hit the glass floor, the sounds of the rubble coming back to them. The bottom of the carrier gave way. Steve fell, his body limp and he could not move from his injuries. He just stared at Bucky who managed to grab hold of the Helicarrier when the floor fell out.

Bucky stared at Steve, still remembering as he saw him get smaller and smaller into the distance. Steve splashed into the water below, his body flat and it slowly sank down and down with the pieces of the broken Helicarrier.

Steve closed his eyes, unconscious of being in the calming silent water. His limbs not moving and simply letting the water take him down to the dark zones at the bottom of the river.

***

Some ripples ruined the calm still river water. Captain America was getting pulled out of the water by someone. By the figure with the metal arm. Bucky.

He dragged Steve to the riverbank and gently placed him there.

He stared at the body and sighed. His body was drenched and most of the blood got washed away in the water, just his wounds left and the blood on his uniform. Steve silently coughed out some water, his eyes still closed.

Bucky took two steps away from him and looked at the surrounding mess. The river was filled with parts of the Helicarriers, and the sky was still grey with smoke, with the Triskelion also destroyed. The job it took to save thousands of lives across the country.

Bucky Barnes slowly limped away from Steve’s body, disappearing again like he always did. But this time, he was free.

-

Steve heard the silent sounds of music. Some R&B music. Marvin Gaye, 1972, Troubleman soundtrack. He opened his eyes a little. There was a lot of white. And he was in a bed. In a room.

Outside the room windows he could see people walking around. Doctors, nurses, patients…a hospital room.

The bed he was lying on was soft, and comfortable. Like lying on a marshmallow. He had some white sheets on. He turned his head around and saw Sam, sitting by his bedside.

Steve closed his eyes again and relaxed on the bed.

“On your left,” he said.

Sam looked up at Steve and smiled.

***

Agent 13 was at a shooting range with other people, all wearing a CIA t-shirt. Her bullets all passed through the bullseye only with incredible precision, and even one of the testers noticed it. Sharon looked at her work as he put down her safety goggles and headphones, admiring her work.

On the other hand, Maria Hill was at Stark Industires about to undergo a lie detector test. After all, it was all Tony’s money.

Senator Stern walked out of the door of a building, talking into his phone until he walked into some police agents who came up to him. Stern started to walk the other way, but the police grabbed his hands and put them behind his back, arresting him.

In a hospital, Rumlow was rushed into the emergency room. His skin was all severely burnt, the red flesh on the surface. The doctors and nurses then tended to him, trying to keep him alive.

***

“Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth?” a female bailiff asked Natasha as he put her hand on the bible. She was at a committee hearing, being sworn. The occasional flashes of the cameras of photographers spread the room with more light than needed.

“I do,” Natasha replied.

“Why haven’t we heard from Captain Rogers?” one of the committee members asked her once she sat at the circular table, with tons of reporters around her.

The annoying clicks of cameras, scribbling on notepads and microphones that the news reporters had made Natasha a little more irritated than she would have liked.

“I don't know what there is left for him to say. I think the wreck in the middle of the Potomac made his point fairly eloquently,” she looked away from the flashing lights.

“Well, he could explain how this country's expected to maintain its national security now that he and you have laid waste to our intelligence apparatus,” the committee member stated, the many amounts of badges on the left side of his uniform, and the American flags put around the room.

“HYDRA was selling you lies, not intelligence.”

“Many of which you seem to have had a personal hand in telling.”

“Agent, you should know that there are some on this committee who feel, given your service record, both for this country and against it, that you belong in a penitentiary, not mouthing off on Capitol Hill,” another committee member spoke.

Natasha looked at him, “You’re not gonna put me in a prison. You’re not gonna put any of us in a prison. You know why?”

The committee member shugged his shoulders a little. “Do enlighten us.”

“Because you need us. Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we helped make it that way. But we're also the ones best qualified to defend it. So if you want to arrest me, arrest me. You'll know where to find me,” Natasha got up from her seat and walked away, the reporters following her, the clicks of cameras and flashes still going on.

***

Fury opened a truck door. There were many boxes inside, mostly closed. He went to a locked box. He pressed a button on it and took out his passport. He took out his eyepatch as well, sliding it off his bald head. He took a pair of sunglasses and wore those instead.

He poured a bottle of oil all around the insides of the truck, holding a lighter and dropping it in the stream of oil. The place flooded into bright flames quickly, burning any trace of Fury’s existence.

The light of the fire reflected on Fury’s sunglasses as he watched it, watched his existence burn away for the greater good.

***

Fury walked through a cemetery, a hood on his head, joining Sam Wilson and Steve Rogers standing by a limestone grave in the soil. A small bed of flowers laid on the dirt in front of it.

“So, you’ve experienced this sort of thing before?” he asked Steve as he walked up to the grave, staring at the stone.

“You get used to it,” Steve said.

The gravestone had Fury’s name on it. ‘COL. NICHOLAS J. FURY’. Below his name bore the epitaph: “THE PATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS MAN” EZEKIEL 25:17.

“We've been data-mining HYDRA's files,” Fury turned back to the super soldier. “Looks like a lot of rats didn't go down with the ship. I'm headed to Europe tonight, wanted to ask if you'd come.”

“There’s something I gotta do first,” Steve told him.

“How about you, Wilson?” he looked at Sam. “Could use a man with your abilities.”

“I’m more of a soldier than a spy,” the man replied.

“All right then,” Fury put out his hand for Sam and Steve to shake. “Anybody asks for me, tell them they can find me right here.” He gestured to the gravestone and walked away from the both.

“You should be honored, that's about as close as he gets to saying thank you,” Natasha Romanoff came up to Sam and Steve once Fury was gone.

“Not going with him?” Steve walked up to her.

“No,” Natasha smiled.

“Not staying here?”

“Nah. I blew all my covers. I got to find a new one.”

“That might take a while.”

“I’m counting on it,” Natasha said. “That thing you asked for, I called in a few favours from Kiev,” she passed Steve a brown file of papers with some lettering on it in Russian. ‘дело No 17’ was written in huge bold letters on it. “Will you do me a favour? Call that nurse?”

“She’s not a nurse.”

“And you’re not a SHIELD agent.”

“What was her name again?”

“Sharon. She’s nice,” Natasha smiled.

She leaned in and lightly gave Steve a kiss on the cheek. She pulled away and looked at Steve’s blue eyes for a moment before turning to leave.

“Be careful, Steve,” Natasha turned around. “You might not wanna pull on that thread.”

As she disappeared into the distance of the cemetery, he opened the file.

A picture of Bucky in cryofreeze was on the front page, and the others had information about him and the Winter Soldier transformation. Below on the file was a paper clip that held a small old black and white photograph of Steve’s former friend, the one he recognised. Bucky Barnes. Before he went to England and before Steve got the serum.

Sam came up to Steve and took a glance at the file, before looking away.

“You’re going after him,” Sam said.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Steve stared at the file, reading through it.

“I know,” Sam looked back at Steve. “When do we start?”