Chapter 2
Also, check out my Spotify Playlist I put together for this fic.
(Keep in mind the chapters, though. The tracks are kind of like a soundtrack.)
When everything had stayed calm around them and the second hour of the flight had passed, Sam nudged Steve’ side.
“You really are as reckless as Bucky said. Man.” Steve shot him a confused glance from the side. He actually looked a little tired right now, although he shouldn’t be.
“Y’know, training for hours and not even taking water along. Gotta stay hydrated, man.”
Sam grinned a wonderful white grin and Steve knew that this guy had way too much fun right now, when a water bottle flew right at him from the back. Grateful, Steve took a few gulps.
“Bucky didn’t say I was reckless”, he replied.
“Yeah he did, but I won’t turn around so you can ask him.”
You can’t ask him. Steve remembered the moment that became reality. When ice was poured over the man he wanted to see alive and breathing. These days Bucky just stood there, in the tube with only one arm and pretended he was dead. How many times Steve had stood in the same room, looking at Bucky, silence between two men who’d never been silent when together.
A sigh escaped him.
“I hope everything will go as planned.”
Sam couldn’t turn around to his friend, couldn’t look him in the eyes just then, maybe for the first time ever, because all the pain on Steve’s face was too much to take. Also, it caused him to feel like he was intruding, like this was a part of Steve too personal to be shared with anyone. Sam concentrated on the night beyond the windows of the cockpit, hands calm on the control board.
“You saw Wanda’s face”, he started slowly, willing to encourage the man next to him, who just wasn’t supposed to be this breakable, this fragile. How could fate be so cruel? To someone who didn’t deserve it in the slightest?
“She almost glowed when you told her to watch Bucky. She won’t let anything happen.”
Sam didn’t know what to say when Steve stayed silent. This man inspired people by just being around, but right now, he didn’t do anything, let alone inspire Sam.
“Sleep a little, I mean it.”
Back came a grunt. But the blonde giant did stand up, obliging a piece of advice by a true friend very much crucial to the success of this mission. Nat would scold him for not listening to Sam, he could feel it.
So Steve strapped himself onto one of those wide benches in the back of their stolen Quinjet, praying for peaceful rest. Sam did too, pray for him to have peace when his eyes closed. He knew he couldn’t handle nightmare-Steve if his life depended on it.
Because Sam, not just a therapist to war veterans with PTSD, but also a human being with a healthy sense of empathy and reason, had discovered what a proficient liar Steve actually was. All these evenings where they had been joking around, when Nat had proclaimed Steve the worst liar she’d ever met, they had completely forgotten - or maybe chosen to ignore - the depth of Captain Steve Roger’s sense of responsibility and selflessness.
He’d lied to them all along, undetected and repeatedly and even soldiers and spies were blind, or longed too much for a lie that they’d decided to trust his every word.
The best liars are never those who make you believe the lie.
The best liars are those who make you want to believe the lie.
Sam inhaled sharply when these thoughts took him captive. Never before did he accept them, as though he could be punished for this knowledge, but he realized that Steve just didn’t let anyone see him. Oh, and how he had learned to defend himself with a shield.
Only the people closest to him ever caught a glimpse of the horrors beneath the perfect, peak-of-human-performance-façade.
And these nights in Wakanda, Sam had met the real Steve and realized that it scared him more than anything. After a few long time, however, he noticed a distinct pattern in Steve’s nightmares.
At first, the raw screams from behind walls sounded disassembled, cracking with every new intake of breath, pained by fear. Then names followed, some loud and urgent, some a mumbled bunch of syllables. Sam had heard Peggy before, he knew Bucky, he knew his own name and he knew Natasha. It hurt to hear those names in the middle of the night, sounding so broken and panicky. Sam’s heart shuddered.
Was it more terrifying, in the wild minutes Steve didn’t stop screaming and thrashing his room, when Sam couldn’t move, fear nagging on his soul like he was a child again and the monster was just next door? Or was it in the eerie silence that followed right after, or maybe even the mornings afterward, when he caught a glimpse of Steve’s room, the room of a disciplined military operative, with neatly folded blankets, clothes and no traces of the forces unleashed by the super soldier in his midnightly wrath?
Or probably when Steve smiled kindly at Wanda, encouraging her before school started, when he high-fived Scott after a good joke, when his blue eyes rested on Sam so peacefully, hiding all the pain that he endured as his own burden, that no one was ever to carry other than himself.
Maybe Bucky would carry them, Sam thought, hoping for scenarios unlikely to happen during his lifetime, given how slowly the doctors progressed on his case. No matter how frozen he was right now, he was crucial to Steve’s sanity. These boys knew each other to a degree that he’d seldom witnessed before, they trusted each other too deeply to ever forget the other, brainwashing or no.
Sam cursed silently. They couldn’t make any mistakes. Too much depended on this mission and they hadn’t even prepared for it.
His mind wandered back to his first mission with them, back in DC. He hadn’t been prepared back then. Steve and Natasha had needed his help and hadn’t bothered to ask for it.
Now, that fight was over and in the past and Steve still needed help.
His phone vibrated softly in the jacket he’d thrown over before rushing through and out of Wakanda’s most expensive hallways. As Sam pulled it out, a text message glowed at him. Annoyed, he scoffed at his screen that was way too bright in the dark. The message read Park the bird in Lyon, meet me at the Gare du Nord in Paris around noon. :).
Shit, he thought after a few seconds. There was no way this message would stay hidden from intelligence agencies. We are fugitives again. On the run. He prayed Natasha had thought this through.
Steve slept without distress this time and Sam made it to Lyon in less time than he had thought realistic.
Crowded. The train station in Paris was crowded and that was the only description Sam could find for this somewhat chaotic place. Of course, he’d been to New York and San Fran before, but this was a different way of crowdedness.
If any more people enter the platforms, he thought, anyone standing too close will fall down onto the rails like lemmings huddled too close to the edge of an iceberg.
Sam wondered if anything special was going on in Paris right now, but the city was the center of the country and probably always terribly busy. Additionally, this was a Friday. All the commuters drove home from work right now.
The train was still moving, slow and smoothly hitting the brakes.
Sam checked his phone quietly, pulled it out of his jacket once to see if Natasha sent him another text with instructions, because he certainly didn’t want to spend hours in this place, and pulled it out a second time to see how late it was. Almost 12:30. Come on, Natasha. Where are we supposed to meet you? Give me something.
Steve sat opposite from him, assessing the area with a serious expression on his face that made his jaw look hard and more square than usual.
“Cameras everywhere. Still got the cap?”
Sam pulled it up. Steve wore a hoodie and pulled the hood over his head, although Sam doubted that whoever was looking for them would fail to recognize the big blonde. Not after The Battle of New York, the Disaster of DC, Sokovia’s Shaking and his Berlin Bucky Jailbreak.
London
A dozen agents rushed into an office plastered with screens, computers and desks.
“Alright, ladies. This is the CIA, not the kindergarten. We got intel claiming Captain America and The Falcon to be on the way to a rendezvous with The Black Widow. Pull up camera footage from Paris, Gare du Nord. Come on, people, find me both Rogers and Wilson. Run protocols, give me phones, credit cards, travel records, anything. Last week was a disaster and I will not have it repeated.”
“Instructions for the local asset?”
“Give order to shoot on sight. For both. If they want revenge, this is the price they’ll pay.”
Trained fingers typed in codes and directives, streams of people appeared on the office’s screens and recognition programs ran to add identities to the many moving faces in the crowd.
“We located the Falcon’s phone”, an agent threw in the room, “they are on a train, just entered the station.”
“Tap it.”
The TGV train came to a halt and people exited, fusioning with the masses outside the automatic doors. People pushed from behind and were so close Steve was almost uncomfortable, doubting the big hoodie to conceal his identity to a sufficient degree.
“Don’t look up”, Steve warned, “and take care of your backpack. More thieves here than at JFK.”
After a few seconds, a beeping sounded behind them, a female voice blared through the speakers placed high on green metal pillars and signs up above, announcing the departure of their train.
A phone left behind on an empty seat glinted in the sporadic beams of sun breaking through clouds and the glass ceiling at Paris central station. Sam sighed. It had taken him quite some time to befriend with the plan to leave his phone behind as diversion.
“Bye, Candy Crush Level 153”, he whispered. Just when he wanted to divert his eyes, something bright flashed on the display of the phone, just for a second. A text message. Sam’s heart skipped a beat. He prayed the text wasn’t from Nat, saying that they needed to meet somewhere else.
Maybe it was just an app notification, he tried to reassure himself. Slowly, he turned towards the soldier a whole head taller than him, than almost everyone, who hadn’t noticed his sudden unease.
The two men hadn’t moved far from the rails yet, still awaiting Natasha’s arrival.
Their concentration was on peak right now, their eyes whirred around to capture every nuance of their surroundings, to notice every hint of danger. The upper level was much calmer, with fewer people scurrying around than downstairs.
Steve noticed a homeless person snatching stuff out of people’s pockets, wallets and keys and loose money, but kept his focus on the cameras and skimmed the rumbling crowds for men in tactical gear, for men in dark suits and for men with suspicious earpieces. Public places were playgrounds for intelligence agencies and he was, albeit not an easy target, way too far up on their priority lists, thanks to the Sokovia Accords.
A criminal. And he wanted to get out of here as soon as possible.
Right now, the only objects surrounding them were a ticket automat, a newspaper booth with familiar faces greeting them, one even lined with a distinctive dark goatee. A line of people stood right in front of it though, all of them unaware that they shielded Steve, who had for a long time been the shield of a whole nation, and his companion, from silent observers. But it was no coincidence, either, since Steve had observed the rotating cameras on the ceilings. The hardest task today was probably going to be avoiding all of them.
Suddenly, something vibrated in the pocket of his hoodie and he almost scolded himself for not noticing the phone in there. He had left his' in Wakanda on purpose. That meant that they, the CIA, Interpol, P.R.I.D.E., whoever, had either found them. Or someone worse. Sam shot him a somber look when he too examined the device in the blonde’s big hand.
“Who gave you that?”, he whispered and Steve shrugged. This was a brand-new phone, prepaid. Slowly, he answered the call, but waited.
“Sir, subjects are exiting the station, based on their phone’s location.”
“What? I don’t understand. Location provided was the station…?”, their bosses’ tone was impatient. He’d done this for over twenty years. He knew his team was losing time. Phones rung in the office, agents forwarding directives.
“We don’t know, Sir. It may be a diversion.”
A different agent with headphones perked up.
“Affirmed visual on two subjects standing near the ticket machines, matching descriptions.”
“Follow them, Michaels. Pull it up to the big screen. I wanna see it. Johnson, activate parameters for the asset. They should enter his target area soon. And get me an audio feed. Put it on the 1.”
The camera stream appeared on the main screen, right where the CIA supervisor stood, headphones held to his ear. He eyed the glowing wall with the live feed. One of the targets, Steve Rogers, pulled a phone out of his navy blue hoodie jacket.
“Who is calling them? Why don’t we have their conversation yet?”
“It’s a third phone, doesn’t belong to them.”
“Where did he get another phone? Tap it!”
Natasha’s voice greeted Steve’s ear and he almost let out a sigh of relief. This was in every way better than the CIA or anyone else who planned on chasing and detaining them. Steve could hear that she was moving too, with car noises in the background before feet hit stairs in a fast and steady rhythm, the noise merging into one composed of human mumbling.
“Get going, boys, head towards the pastry store”, she directed.
“You really need to stop calling like that.” Steve pulled Sam with him on her command, behind the ticket machine, then around a pillar, escaping a camera that had just moved towards them. So they do know we’re here and they’re looking.
Before them was a big area full of passengers and tourists, that Steve knew he could cross in roughly thirty strides. That would be exactly the time frame they had - else the camera would catch them. His eyes fell on Sam. Would he make it in time?
“Don’t look at me, I’m right behind you.”
Natasha was still on the line.
“3…2…1”, she counted and Steve moved, quickly but not overly rushed. Running would be suspicious. Something silver glinted in the corner of his eye but disappeared when he turned his head. A second later, it was there again, a short flash.
“There is someone with a special camera, on the upper level to your left”, Natasha provided and her fist hit something that grunted, probably a man.
“Where are you?”, Steve asked when Sam slipped into the spot behind him.
“You don’t wanna know. Watch the guy in the green jacket behind the soda machine”, she added, “pretend to look at the pastries to your right. The shop’s camera is broken.”
“What a coincidence”, Steve mumbled.
People actually didn’t seem to recognize them, which was good. On the other hand, they also didn’t notice the danger they were about to face, if the worst case scenario ensued. Suddenly, Steve spotted a few men standing together in front of the ticket machine, the exact spot they had stood in a minute ago, one of them a hand on an earpiece, speaking into it. Crap. They were here.
“We gotta hurry, Sam”, he motioned over there and pulled him closer towards the soft and sugary pastries on display.
“You don’t say. Check out that guy up there.”
Steve’s eyes made out a tall man clad in a fancy black business suit, hands gripping the metal railing at the edge of the level while his lips moved to no one in particular. But he stood on the other side of the hall and from his point, he would only see Steve’s back at most. Good enough for now.
All of the sudden, a sharp whistle made Steve’s ear sting. Fire burst inside his head when Sam pulled him down and the store employees shrieked in shock. The shot had been soundless, but imperfect. They wanted Captain America’s head.
“We need to run, just a few meters, come on!”, a near-panicked Sam pulled him forward with wide eyes.
“Sir, we lost visual on targets.”
The CIA task force chief cursed, ran a hand through his short hair, but forced his eyes on the screens that lit up the entire office.
“They can’t disappear. It’s a train station. We’re controlling the exits. Find them again. Get the team in there.”
“The entire team?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, Mrs. Henderson suggests-”
“I don’t care what Janet says, Michaels. Get it done. Now.”
Steve and Sam had vanished by slipping past the stores to the right, taking advantage of a very narrow gap between the shop’s walls. The super soldier raised a shaky hand towards his ear and thick red blood smeared over all his fingers. Sam shuddered at the sight before him, the rugged, bloody ear now a stark contrast to the light blonde hair. Torn off flesh and blank cartilage. Gross, he thought. No way I’ll forget that view.
“Sniper”, Steve hissed into the phone and only received a grunt.
Quickly, Sam checked their surroundings. No one would hit them in here. The blonde pulled his hoodie up again. His heart was still beating world-record-fast. A sniper. This was more than just the CIA chasing criminals.
Did Natasha know what was going on before getting them into this? The warm blood dripped onto his neck, some even running down his back.
“Are you alright”, Sam wanted to know and Steve, pressed into the wall, clenched his teeth.
He’d be, later. Now this just hurt. He wondered how much of his ear had been torn off.
“Sure”, he growled. “Let’s get out of here.”
“A hit, Sir.”
“Good. Get them.”
On the other side of the shops, a stream of people walked as if nothing had happened. Just when Sam wanted to step out and move with the masses, Steve pulled him back.
He’d spotted three armed task force assets with the same idea.
“Quick, Sam, get up“, he ordered and they both pulled themselves up onto the stores roofs, that didn’t meet the ceiling. They lied down on their bellies, watching how the three men entered the gap, exactly where they’d stood seconds ago. When they crouched down to examine Steve’s blood on the ground, he grabbed Sam’s backpack and flung it over the edge, hitting someone’s head. The backpack was heavy. That guy didn’t stand up again.
Next, Steve jumped down, ignoring how everything was spinning around him.
He grabbed one guard by the collar and hit him against the wall. The other one held his gun out, Steve disarmed him immediately. Next, he buried his foot into the agent’s stomach. The stumbling man landed a fist in Steve’s face though. But he wasn’t prepared for the following rain of punches knocking him out.
Steve pulled himself up to the roof again, returning the backpack and motioning for the nearby platform that was the upper level.
“Jump”, he ordered and everything spun again.
They both jumped, ripping the skin on their fingers when holding onto the rusty iron baluster. They had just pulled themselves up when a grenade flew at them. Steve pulled a vending machine out of the wall and over the explosive. After a loud boom, M&M’s flew through the station, people screamed and Natasha asked if they were alright. Part of the level’s floor collapsed, almost pulling a bleeding Sam with it, downwards. But they rushed further out of reach from the sniper and his friends, through store’s backdoors and more streams of people. Steve was glad no one noticed the red soaking his jacket. Most people just panicked.
“Camera! Tie your shoes, right now!”, Natasha urged and this time, Steve pulled them both down, his head erupting hotly in protest, which he ignored.
“All clear, now move to your right. Hurry up, too.”
They moved, always following her instructions, always checking for potential danger. Steve had entered a state of golden haze, where every movement around him seemed slower than usual. He wasn’t sure if he’d just lost too much blood or if that was adrenaline. He didn’t even feel the fiery pain in his ear anymore, all that was left was nausea.
“Maintenance door ahead”, Natasha announced and a loud bang clanged not only through the speakers but also on the metal of said door. Steve quickly joined Natasha, who kicked three men’s asses in the narrow hallway behind. Even with impaired balance, he still managed to fold these goons together like cardboard. Sam took care of guarding the door.
“Listen, we’ll get out of here really quick, I have a car parked nearby, but you can’t be seen with me.”
“Nat, what’s going on?”, Steve inquired with limited curiosity. He didn’t want to know, he needed to know. Whoever was coming after them, this was something bigger than he had assumed.
“We’ll talk later. Use the exit next door. Wait for me at the bus stop and check the phone.”
With that, she left, her step a little less quick and graceful than Steve remembered. She must’ve taken out quite a couple of men, taken not just a few hits.
A few minutes later, the two men stood at the bus stop she’d pointed out, their patience fading with every second. Again, the phone rang and Steve answered.
“What now”, Sam asked, eyeing the streets. No Natasha. “Tell her to hurry.”
He noticed a few men pushing through the main entrance of the station, at the other side of the street, who seemed very intent on finding someone - them.
“Move closer to the guy in the blue jacket next to you, make it look like you’re talking. Offer him some bubble gum from your pocket.”
At this point, Steve was slowly growing tired, but he pushed it away. He repeated Nat’s instructions to Sam.
“But they can see us”, Sam protested.
“Perfect”, she said. “They’ll come for you when the bus stops. I’m right behind.”
She was right. The bus stop turned into chaos as soon as the bus stopped. The men from the entrance rushed over and injected the guy who’d taken the bubble gum with syringes. His legs buckled and they dragged him out of the bus violently before lifting him into a van. Steve and Sam had already disappeared in Natasha’s car and stayed down when she pulled ahead of the bus, hoping to maintain her cover.
Nobody saw them though, so they drove off in an Audi that probably didn’t belong to her.
“We lost them, Sir.”
“Don’t you dare get your asses out of here before you have them; I expect their exact locations by tomorrow morning!” The team was dismissed for a quick power-break, albeit not without a distinctive grumble of deep annoyance. Only one agent was held back under the strict gaze of his superior. The first quickly closed the door and turned the room’s communication systems off.
“Any updates on Project Limestone? Tell me you have good news, Adam.”
“Yes, I do. The asset has reached the assigned destination. Plus, our associate requests a meeting, Colin.”
Both men stayed quiet for a moment. Failure meant exposition. And that would be the end of them all. This had been planned for too long to fail now. Meeting here was impossible.
“Well, invite him to the upcoming security event in Amsterdam. It shouldn’t be too hard to pull up a cover for him. No one will suspect anything, not after Wakanda opened up with the Accords.”
“On it, Sir.”