Don't Dream It's Over

The plan, if it can really be called a plan, is simple enough: kidnap Sitwell, use his biometrics to access the helicarriers, disable the helicarriers somehow, get the hell out. Step one goes perfectly. Then the Winter Soldier shows up, and it all goes to hell.

Steve isn’t used to being outmatched. Natasha is an excellent fighter, and so are plenty of the people he goes up against in the field, but Steve’s strength and endurance usually give him an edge. The Winter Soldier, however, is just as fast as he is, just as strong and perhaps more skilled, and she has a fucking metal arm and an apparently limitless number of weapons.

Steve’s just lucky she’s out of ammo for the moment, or he’d already be dead.

They fight in the deserted street, slamming each other against abandoned cars and overturned buses, the smell of burning fuel acrid in Steve’s nostrils. He gives it everything he’s got, kicking and punching and blocking blow after blow after blow, and it’s not enough.

No sooner does he knock the knife from her grip than the Soldier draws another one, stabbing at his face, his heart, his unprotected belly—and Steve doesn’t have his suit to protect him. If he fails to dodge any of her blows, she’ll gut him like a fish, and even his enhanced healing abilities won’t save him.

His arms ache and his back aches and he’s sweating and hot and for the first time in a long time, Steve Rogers is scared for his goddamned life.

He blocks, and blocks, and blocks, backing away from her onslaught until he’s right up against an SUV; he ducks under her arm, twists, flings her in a way that would have landed a normal fighter right on their back. The Soldier, though, flips in midair and lands on her feet, already rushing to attack him again. He barely avoids her, diving across the hood of the SUV and rolling across the ground on the other side.

Her metal arm slams down like the hammer of Thor as he rolls aside. There’s a crack, her fist shattering the pavement where his head was a moment ago.

The miss puts her off-balance for just a second, just long enough for Steve to get upright, to grab his shield again. She punches at him, slaps open-handed across his face, but he comes in under the blow and slams the shield into the back of her left arm, between the shifting metal plates.

Before she has time to recover, he grabs her face and flips her over his shoulder with all the strength he can muster. Something gives beneath his hand, and when she lands, her mask is lying on the ground between them.

The Soldier seems winded by the fall; she gets up a little more slowly this time, her back to Steve, and if he had a gun this would be the time to shoot her in the head. But he doesn’t, and he’s not sure if he would, anyway—he feels held in place, by weariness or fear or, perhaps, morbid curiosity as he realizes he’s about to see her face.

She turns, and he sees:

Blue eyes (but he knew she had blue eyes, had looked at them as they fought, had wondered, in those brief panicked moments, if they were the last things he’d ever see).

Strong nose, full lips, slightly cleft chin.

It’s a face he’d know anywhere—the face he’s drawn hundreds, maybe thousands, of times, has mourned and recalled and dreamed about for ten years. He knows the curve of those lips in every mood, the feel of that mouth against his.

He stands, staring, and the Winter Soldier stares back with not a trace of recognition in her eyes, without a flicker of expression in her once-so-expressive face. For a long moment, neither of them move. His heartbeat pounds in his ears like a helicopter coming in to land, and the fight goes out of him because that face means safety, this person means home, and surely all he has to do is speak her name and everything will be alright.

His voice, when it emerges, is cracked with disbelief and wonder.

“Becky?”

There’s a long pause, and he doesn’t know what he’s expecting—for her to vanish like a ghost, or for her mouth to curl in the familiar smile, for her to crack some joke about dumb punks who can’t keep their asses out of trouble, or for her to tell him that she’s HYDRA now, that she will never be his again.

Whatever it is, it’s not for her to turn that blank look on him, brows furrowed slightly, and ask, “Who the hell is Becky?”

And Steve is—he’s falling, or he’s watching her fall, all over again, her white face slipping further away from him, and he’s searching for her among the prisoners in the Hindu Kush and he’s finding her strapped to that damned table, mumbling her name and serial number over and over…

She’s pulled a gun from somewhere and she’s aiming at him, but it doesn’t occur to him to raise his shield or duck for cover. This is Becky, and she’s alive, or maybe he’s dead, or maybe this is all some kind of hallucination, but there’s no world in which she would hurt him, and so he stands stock still and looks into her blank blue eyes as she chambers a round, as she points the barrel at his head—

There’s a rush of air, and Sam is there, kicking her down, pushing Steve out of the way; a bang, and the cars around Becky go up in flames, and she disappears like a mirage, like a ghost, and Steve looks up and he sees Sam, wings folded, and Natasha, clutching her shoulder, and from every direction he hears the sound of sirens. A parade of black armored vehicles is converging on them, and he knows they’re done for. There’s no place left to run or hide, and he knows he should be worried about that, about what’s coming and what he’s roped Sam and Natasha into, but all he can think about is Becky.

Becky is alive. Becky doesn’t recognize me. Becky doesn’t know her own name.

People in tac gear pile out of the vans holding large guns, and a loudspeaker voice says, “Drop your weapons. Put your hands in the air. Kneel.”

The shield drops from his fingers with a clatter. Everything seems very far away, sounds coming in and out of focus like a radio with bad reception. He thinks someone’s talking to him, but he can’t hear it over the words in his own head.

She’s alive. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know her own name.

“Kneel!” someone says, and kicks him in the back of the knee.

He drops easily, still staring ahead into nothing. Cold metal presses to his head, and his arms are jerked behind his back.

Becky’s alive. Becky doesn’t know me.

Metal bites into his wrists—handcuffs of some kind, cinched painfully tight. Above him, a familiar voice—Rumlow, he realizes, it’s Rumlow—says, “Not here. Not. Here. Get ‘em in the van.”

Becky’s alive.

He’s forced to his feet, shoved into the back of a van. His head bangs against the metal side, and then they’re fastening his cuffs to something behind him, twisting his arms at a painfully awkward angle.

Becky doesn’t know who I am.

The door slams. He blinks, and realizes that Sam and Natasha are cuffed to the wall opposite him, both looking distinctly the worse for wear. Sam is looking at him like… he’s not sure, exactly. Like he’s waiting for Steve to have a way out of their current crisis, or like he already knows this is it.

And suddenly, Steve knows too: they’re not going to survive this.

The van rumbles into motion, picking up speed, and Steve looks at Sam, meaning to apologize, maybe, or ask if he’s alright, or… something. Instead, he says, “She didn’t even know me.”

“What?”

Steve stares at his knees, at the rip in his pants where he’d hit the pavement. The skin underneath is unblemished, not so much as a scratch.

“Becky,” he says. “It was her. She’s the Winter Soldier.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Natasha says in a strained voice, “Steve… Becky’s dead. You said you watched her fall, how…?”

The same question has been circling in Steve’s mind since the mask came off, but when he opens his mouth, he finds he has an answer. “Zola. He did—experiments on her, when she was a prisoner. He must have—they must have figured out a serum. She survived the fall.”

He closes his eyes, letting his head thump back against the wall of the van. “Oh God, she survived and I didn’t—I gave up, I stopped looking for her…”

“Steve,” Sam starts, but just then the van goes over a bump, and Natasha gives a little gasp. “Natasha? Are you…” He trails off, and Steve follows his gaze: blood, soaking steadily through the shoulder of her jacket.

“She’s bleeding,” says Sam sharply, and turns toward the guards. “Hey, she’s been shot, we need to put pressure on this or she’ll bleed out.”

Steve has a feeling he’s wasting his time—he’s pretty sure Rumlow and his goons aren’t planning to keep them alive. Sure enough, the guards don’t react at all, faces hidden by their helmets.

“Do you hear me?” says Sam, his voice rising with fear and indignation. “She’s hurt, we need to put pressure on this!”

One of the guards activates a taser, and Steve starts struggling, tugging uselessly at his restraints in an attempt to protect the others.

The taser slashes through the air, and one of the guards yells and keels over; there’s a brief flurry of movement, and then the other guards are down, slumped on the floor of the van. Taser Guard pulls off their helmet, revealing a familiar face.

“Thank God,” says Maria Hill. “That thing was squeezing my brains.”

“Hill?” Steve says dumbly. “What are you…”

“Oh, didn’t you hear?” she asks brightly. She kneels down next to Sam, and starts fiddling with his cuffs. “I got demoted.”

“Uh, yeah, but…”

“There you go.” She releases Sam, who sits forward, shaking out his shoulders and rubbing his wrists. “There’s a first aid kit under the bench there, next to Steve.”

She sets to work on Natasha, brisk and efficient as always. “You alright there, Romanov?”

Natasha gives her a weak smile. “I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not as comforting as you seem to think it is,” says Sam, returning with the first aid kit. “I’m gonna move your jacket, okay?”

“Do what you have to do,” she responds. There’s a click, and the cuffs fall off. “Oh, thank fuck, those were really hurting.”

“So is there a second part to this plan?” asks Steve, as Hill unlocks his manacles. Unlike the others, his feet have been cuffed together, too. HYDRA was taking no chances.

“We’re gonna climb out through the floor of the van,” she says.

Steve blinks. “Won’t that just get us run over?”

“Barton’s behind us.” She crouches down to release his feet, and Steve stretches his newly-freed arms with relief. “When he gives the signal, we’ll go through, and he’ll pick us up.”

“So Peggy did get ahold of him,” he says.

“Yeah, we managed to get things figured out this morning.” She finishes with his feet, pulls out something that looks like a soldering iron, and proceeds to melt a hole in the floor. “It was a bit difficult, since, well… no one knew who to trust.”

“Yes, I can see that being a problem,” says Steve drily. He skirts the hole she’s carving in the floor with her weird laser-device, and crouches next to Natasha.

“Nat? How you doing?”

“Fine,” she says, through gritted teeth.

Steve looks at Sam, who’s wrapping layers of gauze around and around her upper arm.

“It’s just a graze, luckily,” he says. “Still a lot more bleeding than I’d like, but… it could be worse.” He ties the bandage off, then helps Natasha pull her jacket back on, pinning the sleeve to act as a sling. “As long as we can get you stitched up pretty soon, you should be fine,” he tells her.

“Thanks.” She winces a little as he settles the jacket into place.

“No problem.”

“Two minutes. Copy,” says Hill, and Steve realizes she’s wearing a com. “Okay, we got two minutes, then we’ll go out.”

“What about our gear?” asks Steve.

“Barton got it. Your shield and the wingpack—that was it, right?”

Steve nods.

“Great. I’m Maria Hill, by the way,” she adds to Sam. “Former Deputy Director of SHIELD. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Sam Wilson. I’d shake your hand, but, well…” He makes a gesture, indicating his blood-covered hands.

“Understood.” She glances at her watch. “Alright, thirty seconds. Cap? How do you want to do this?”

“The van’ll be stopped?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Sam first, then Natasha. Hill, you go next, and I’ll take the rear. If the vehicle starts moving, I’ve got a better chance of getting through without injuring myself,” he adds, when Hill looks him askance.

“Okay.” She positions herself on one side of the gap, Steve on the other. “Standing by.”

There’s a jerk, and the van stops. “Now!”

Sam hustles through, rolling away from the hole underneath the vehicle. Steve helps Natasha down, then Hill. The van starts to move just as he drops down, and he has to flatten himself to the road to avoid getting hit on the head.

“Stay down,” Hill commands. “Don’t move.”

The van speeds off, and another vehicle bears down on them—a truck with high clearance. They stay motionless, squeezed into the middle of the lane, and the truck’s wheels go neatly on either side of them. It slows just as the back wheels clear Steve, and Hill says, “Get in the back!”

They scramble out from beneath the truck, Sam wrenching the tailgate down at a run as he tries to keep up. Hill dives in, and Steve tosses Natasha in after, heedless of her complaints. They’re all inside, the vehicle picking up speed, when Steve takes a running leap and makes it in.

Hill slams the tailgate shut behind him, and they all sit in breathless silence for a minute.

Steve’s the first to speak. “Hey Hill,” he says. “Please tell me that’s Clint driving, and not some random stranger.”

She huffs a laugh, and digs a com out of her pocket. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?”