Chapter 26
Steve stood at the elevator for a while after it left, just running over everything in his mind again. He had been expecting Tony to cause the meeting to devolve into chaos, but it was him instead. Fury coming in guns blazing set off an anger in him that he didn’t like to let out. But everything had just been piling up since the shooting, since the battle, since the ice, and he couldn’t hold back any longer.
It wasn’t like he expected Fury to be buddy-buddy with them or tell them everything about missions and the inner workings of Shield. Steve understood what “need to know” meant from his Army days. But there was need to know, and then there was being purposefully evasive. And there was whatever the hell Fury just did.
Steve was pretty sure no one would be happy to see their lives compiled into folders and passed out to mostly strangers, even if the person’s life had been sunshine and roses. Fury would probably shoot first and ask questions later if someone found out even the most innocuous fact about him. But for him to do it so casually to Celia made Steve’s nerves rankle. She wasn’t some evil criminal mastermind that the Avengers were going to have to take out and Fury would know that if he could’ve just had patience. Steve probably should’ve called him before now, but he really needed to figure out what all was going on with her before going down that road.
But even if Fury was annoyed by the lack of communication, he should’ve taken it out on Steve. Even after finding out the less than normal stuff about Celia’s past, he could’ve given her a chance to explain. Steve gave the shooter in the elevator more of a chance than Fury gave Celia. He slowly made his way back to the team, ready to do damage control after his unplanned disastrous argument with Fury.
“Where’s your girl Holly?” Tony asked, flipping through the folder Steve had tried to keep from him earlier. Clint and Natasha were looking at the information about the missing man and Bruce was
looking through the shooter’s file.
“Don’t call her that Stark,” Steve snapped, not appreciating the fun Tony seemed to be having with all this. He was glad the man had been able to help bring the meeting to a close without bloodshed, but he wasn’t happy with him making a joke out of it now.
“Oh lighten up. It’s not a big deal,” Tony scoffed, rolling his eyes.
“It’s obviously a big deal to Celia. Can’t you be a little bit sensitive?” Steve ground out. He knew Tony’s default was to make everything into a joke, but he didn’t need to do it at the expense of someone else.
“You’re just salty because your girlfriend might not be the squeaky clean good samaritan she told you she was,” Tony laughed. Steve clenched his fists, forcing himself to ignore Tony instead of letting loose on him like he wanted. The team had enough issues as it was.
“You have to admit, this missing guy thing is a little weird,” Natasha said calmly, flipping through a few pages to show Steve an incident report. Celia had made a scene at the courthouse after the district attorney decided not to move forward with a trial, enough to have to be escorted off the premises.
“Doesn’t mean she killed him. No body, no murder,” Clint pointed out.
“She didn’t deny it either,” Natasha countered. Clint conceded to her point with a shrug. “Say she did kill this man, what do we do then?”
“I don’t know guys, she doesn’t really give off killer vibes to me,” Bruce piped up, closing his own folder.
“Do I give off killer vibes?” Clint asked, a cheeky yet sinister smile on his face.
“I’m just saying, do you think she’s just going to start killing people now that she can heal at the end of the night, because I don’t,” Bruce said, ignoring Clint’s question.
“I can see the potential of it in her,” Natasha commented idly, a sly smile growing on her face. “She’d definitely start with Tony.” Tony squawked out an indignant sound.
“Oh, it would 100% be Tony,” Clint agreed, wagging his eyebrows at the now nervous man.
“I’d like to see her get past Iron Man,” Tony muttered.
“I’ll talk to her when she gets back,” Steve said, figuring it would be easiest for Celia to talk to him, after all the time they had spent together. He didn’t think she’d lied to him about anything so far.
“When she gets back?” Tony asked, confused. “Where is she?”
“She went for a walk.”
“You let her leave! After all this? There is no way she’s gonna come back,” Tony yelled. Tony was staring at him like he was the dumbest man on earth.
“Of course she’s going to come back. She came back before,” Steve insisted.
“That was before we knew all her secrets! She’s probably half way out of the city by now.”
“She wouldn’t do that. Celia promised she’d be back. And she didn’t even take any of her stuff.”
“And as she pointed out earlier, you don’t have to take anything with you to start a new life,” Tony shot back, shaking his head in disbelief. “We need to tell Fury.”
“No we don’t,” Steve argued. “How did you go from renovating a whole floor for her to siccing Shield on her?”
“That was before when she wasn’t a killer!”
“Oh come off it Tony, we’ve all killed before. What makes it okay for us and not her? And I haven’t seen any evidence of her guilt that isn’t circumstantial at best.”
“Accuse me of being unfair, having a double standard, I don’t care. When she gets back here, I want answers,” Tony declared, going back to the bar and effectively dismissing him.
Steve sighed, glancing down at the papers on the table. He’d be lying if he said he had no urge to flip through them, get a little more info than he had. He’d been creeped out to learn that students were taught about Captain America in school, but at least the lessons mostly stuck to what he did during the war. If the history books went in depth about his personal life, it would be much more uncomfortable.
“I’m going to the gym,” Steve muttered, ignoring Bruce’s reproachful look. If he couldn’t let loose some of this built up tension, he would explode. He stopped at his floor to change into some workout gear, then trotted down the stairs to the gym floor. He decided to stick to the treadmill. Even though he wanted to do more, it wouldn’t do anyone any good if he set his shoulder back. Steve told Jarvis to let him know when Celia returned, then started his run.
Natasha had set him up with an Ipod a while ago, telling him his long runs were a good chance to get caught up on things he missed. The rest of them would bombard him with playlists of whatever it was they liked, but Steve preferred the audiobooks Bruce would send. A nice story was a lot easier to run to than Tony’s classic rock, in his opinion.
He didn’t put in his earbuds though, settling into the run with only his thoughts for company. On one hand, Steve wanted to make sure he heard Jarvis when he announced Celia’s arrival. On the other hand, he wanted to give himself a chance to think about the past few days again.
It was hard to believe all this started two short days ago. It seemed like so much longer, but then again, time didn’t really feel the same to him anymore. What was two months ago for him, was almost 70 years for everyone else.
Back then he was fighting a war and now he figured he still was, just a different kind. Besides the first battle, where it was all about saving the world and surviving, most of what he was fighting was behind the scenes, sneaking in and out. And having to play along with what the superiors wanted. In the Army, you had a clear mission and you executed it. Now, it was about waiting to be dispatched to take out whatever threat Shield deemed worthy. It felt so clinical, instead of being about helping people. Steve wanted to be out doing something good, instead of waiting around for something Fury thought of as important enough to call in the Avengers for.
And he figured that was part of the reason he pushed back so hard against Fury. Steve was unhappy with his role right now and Fury was there to take it out on. Steve could agree with Tony that it hadn’t been the right way to go about it, but he doubted Fury would ever be receptive to any kind of questioning. It didn’t go well when he was confronted about the alien weapons. But challenging Fury now had a few benefits. It helped turn some of his ire away from Celia and onto Steve. And it started the long overdue conversation Steve had been reluctant to start before now. They’d have to settle things soon enough.
His thoughts switched to Celia. Did he want to believe she hadn’t killed that man? Of course. Did he think it was possible she did? Steve figured everyone could be pushed to that point. He would have to confirm it with Celia, but he figured the man had been the one that stabbed her and killed the woman she was trying to help escape. At least he hoped it was and that she didn’t have another person out there who did something to her that could be classified as aggravated assault. If that was the scenario, part of his mind could justify Celia killing the man. Steve had killed people during war, Natasha and Clint killed people during missions. The closest to what Celia possibly did was what Tony had done. Tony hadn’t been working for anyone when he killed the people he did after his capture. The only sticking point is if Celia did it out of self defense or revenge. Revenge was a slippery slope.
But say Celia was guilty of this murder and other crimes they weren’t aware of. What did they do now? Do they turn her over to Shield for prosecution? Celia would never be able to be put in a normal prison, with her healing ability. If that secret got out and how it happened, who knows who would start gunning for him. Would having this ability earn her a clean slate with Shield if they could use her? Natasha was able to do her job after a very dark history. But would Fury even be amenable to the idea after the meeting today.
And what did Celia want to do? The meeting didn’t really settle things like they’d hoped, but he didn’t think she planned on leaving the tower. Steve wasn’t sure if Celia going back to her job was the right call either, but that was just another thing they'd have to talk about. He was hesitant to take away anymore of her choices, after Fury outed her past. Steve wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to wash her hands of all of them.
“Taking it easy there Cap?” Bruce joked from his left. Steve startled a little, so in his own head that he didn’t hear the other man come in. He turned off the machine, annoyed a bit that Bruce was already down here to end his workout.
“I barely got started,” Steve muttered, taking a drink from his water bottle.
“You’ve been down here for two hours,” Bruce laughed, shaking his head. Steve choked on his water a bit, coughing to clear his throat. He hadn’t realized he’d been down here so long. It felt like maybe ten minutes to him.
“Jarvis?” he asked, hoping he had just missed his message about Celia coming back.
“I have nothing to report,” Jarvis responded. Steve ran a hand down his face, cursing the fact that he hadn’t tried harder to keep Celia in the tower. Or at least gone with her. She hadn’t said how long she would be gone, but he didn’t expect it to be this long.
Steve snatched his towel and marched to the elevators. He really didn’t want to believe she’d run, but a nagging voice in the back of his head, which sounded frighteningly like Tony right now, was telling him it was possible. And with how often she helped other people do it, would he even be able to find her?