Off the Rails
“My mom tried to talk me out of enlisting…but not Aunt Peggy,” Sharon told Steve as they walked through her hotel in London. “She bought me my first thigh holster.”
“Very practical.” Steve chuckled.
“And stylish.”
As she hit the button for the elevator, Steve sighed. “CIA has you stationed over here now?”
“Berlin. Joint Terrorism Task Force.” She told him.
“Right. Right.” He muttered. “Sounds fun.”
“I know, right?”
Looking down, Steve tapped his foot in awkward hesitation. “I’ve been meaning to ask you. When you were spying on me from across the hall….”
“You mean when I was doing my job.”
He nodded. “Did Peggy know?”
Sharon’s face showed pity and sadness all in one. “She kept so many secrets. I didn’t want her to have one from you.” Then the elevator opened, and they stared at each other. “Thanks for walking me back.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“Steve.” Turning, the duo looked at Sam, who wore a grim look on his face. “There’s something you gotta see.”
“A bomb hidden in a news van ripped through the UN building in Vienna. More than seventy people have been injured. At least twelve are dead, including Wakanda’s King T’Chaka.”
“Come on, answer, dammit.”
Sam watched as Steve furiously clicked buttons on his phone, trying in vain to get ahold of his fiancé. “Steve, Kara’s basically invincible. I’m sure she’s fine.”
“They know about her Kryptonite vulnerability, Sam! They could have had that there.” He was becoming panicked when finally his phone rang. “Thank God. Are you okay?”
“Babe, Nat and I are fine, just shaken up a bit. Someone blew up the UN building.”
“I know we’re watching it on the news now.”
“Babe…they’re saying it was Bucky.”
“What?”
“I’m so sorry. They have surveillance and….”
“He didn’t do it.”
“Steve.”
“I’m telling you, he wouldn’t.” Then he sighed. “I have to go. I’ll call you soon.”
“I can’t believe you hung up on her,” Sam told him. “You sure she’s okay?”
Steve nodded. “She says she and Nat are fine.”
“Steve…that does look like Bucky,” Sam said carefully.
“I know what it looks like.”
Natasha sighed as she lowered herself onto a bench. Across from her, T’Challa sat staring ahead of himself, blood coating his head and clothes.
“I’m very sorry.” She said quietly.
Looking at her, T’Challa started playing with his father’s ring. “In my culture…death is not the end. It’s more of a stepping-off point. You reach out with both hands…and Bast and Sekhmet, they lead you into the green veldt where you can run forever.”
“It sounds a lot like my friend’s culture.” The redhead said to him. “That sounds very peaceful.”
“My father thought so.” He slid the ring onto his finger. “I am not my father.”
“T’Challa…the Task Force will decide who brings in Barnes.” Natasha reminded him.
T’Challa stood and faced her. “Don’t bother, Miss Romanoff. I’ll kill him myself.”
Her cell phone rang as he walked away, and she stood, knowing she had a fight on her hands. “Steve, I know how much Barnes means to you. I really do. Stay home. You’ll only make this worse. For all of us. For Kara and Layna. Please.”
“Are you saying you’ll arrest me?”
Natasha shook her head. “No. But someone will. If you interfere, that’s how it works now.”
“If he’s really this far gone, Nat, I should be the one to bring him in.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the one least likely to die trying.”
“No, Kara would be. Have you spoken to her?”
“I thought you weren’t trying to get in the middle?”
“You’re both my friends, Steve.” She told him.
“Well, I’m sorry, but this is how it has to be.”
Then the line went dead, and Natasha groaned. “Shit.”
“Was that him?”
Turning to look at her friend, Natasha nodded. “Yeah, that was him. He wants to bring in Barnes himself.”
“Well, at least he knows he might have done it. He just yelled at me that Bucky wouldn’t do it. So that’s progress, I guess.” Kara sighed. “He’s in big trouble, isn’t he?”
Natasha nodded again. “He’s off the rails, Kara. If he does this, he’s going against all of those countries. He’ll never be a free man again.”
Kara tried in vain to keep the tears out of her eyes. “I know.”
“Kara, thank God.”
“Tony, we’re fine.” She hugged her brother as they entered her hotel room. “We got lucky.”
“Do we have eyes on Barnes yet?” He wondered, and Kara faltered.
“Uh…”
“The Task Force is still trying to decide what to do,” Natasha told him. “But Steve…he’s going after him.”
“God, this is all a bunch of shit.” Tony sighed and looked at his sister. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “This isn’t how I pictured our lives going when I agreed to marry him.”
“I know…”
“But Bucky is his friend. If it were Kit….” Kara trailed off. “I can’t blame him for wanting to help his best friend.”
“Well, you might want to start,” Natasha told her as she looked at her phone. “They just caught Barnes with T’Challa, Steve, and Sam. They’re bringing them to Berlin.”