"Are you telling me," says Steve, slowly, "that while we were gone, a sleeper agent took my place?"
"Um," says Tony, "yes? And, oh, yeah, the world nearly ended, can't forget that--"
"Back up a sec," says Steve, massaging his temples with a gloved hand. "A sleeper agent? Was undercover as me for--how long? And nobody noticed?"
"Sam did," says Tony. "Also, Maria Hill fucked up so bad this time, and before that the world nearly ended, and before that the Red Skull came back to life--Cap? Cap, you okay? You're twitching."
"We were just gone for two months!" says Steve, voice reaching a higher volume than Tony expected. Wow, he's got to be really upset about everything.
"Hate to break it to you," says Tony, waving to the calendar that Nova kindly bought to spruce up the place, "but it's currently May 2016. What's the last thing you remember?"
Steve's eyes grow wide.
"Three fucking years?!" he yells.
--
Bucky says, "Man, Steve, only you of all people would get a goddamn HYDRA agent for an impersonator."
Steve buries his hand in his face and makes a noise that sounds vaguely like why. He's been doing that more and more frequently since they got back and someone asked Steve point-blank if he was the real Steve Rogers this time. "I just don't get it," he says. "How could we be gone for three years?"
"Technically three years and a month, give or take," says the other Bucky, longer hair pulled back into a ponytail. He'd been one of the first to show up and greet them, and also drop off some files at their doorstep to bring them more up to speed. Bucky supposes his double's not that bad, and anyway, at least he's not evil like Steve's twin seems to be. "Hey, ever visited Aravel?"
"The ice planet with the incredible view?" Bucky asks.
"The planet we had to camp out on because we ran low on fuel and you stuck your cold feet on me?" Steve grumbles.
"Come on, Rogers, you've had worse than my cold feet," says Bucky, nudging his old partner's shoulder.
--
"You're real?" says Sharon. "You're--really real?"
"Yeah," Steve confirms. "It's me."
She hugs him.
--
They put the sleeper agent behind bars about a month ago, Steve learns, after Sam got suspicious and did some digging. Before then, though, he'd been so convincing that Steve half-suspects he could've kept it up forever, had Sam not figured something out.
Prison is a cold, cold place, and solitary confinement cells even colder. Steve's every footstep echoes throughout the halls, and he'd borrowed his shield back from Sam for a bit--protection, should the sleeper agent try to take him out.
The guy's in a white prison uniform, when Steve gets there. He looks up and says, "Oh."
"Yeah," says Steve. "Oh."
"I was wondering when you'd finally visit," says the sleeper agent. He hadn't even given his real name, Steve's been told. If it hadn't been for Sam--
God, he looks just like Steve does.
"I was hoping not to," says Steve, and the other man's face twists into a sneer, and he can see the missing tooth from here. Yeah, the sleeper agent doesn't look like Steve himself quite so much when he does that. "I just have a question for you, actually."
"Shoot, but I can't guarantee I'll answer."
"Why?" Steve rests a hand on the bars, voice surprisingly calm considering the boiling rage threatening to spill over. "Why would you go to all this trouble? Why would you wield this," he raises the shield up, "if you were going to dishonor everything it stood for? Why drag my mother into your lies?"
"How else was I gonna sell it?" asks the sleeper agent. "You're a relic, Rogers, and so's everything you stand for. Truth? Justice? The American way? Look around! I managed to fool everyone into thinking I was you for three years, so much for truth--"
"Until Sam figured it out," says Steve. "Look around. I'm not the one currently stuck behind bars, last I checked. I'm not the one who decided to spit in the face of a legacy older than me."
"How is Captain America older than you? You were the first, everyone knows that."
"I wasn't talking about the shield," Steve snaps, voice like a whip-crack. "I was talking about my mother. I was talking about her grandmother. I was talking about everything the both of them went through so my mother could come here from Ireland and give me a better life." His fingers tighten around a bar, hard enough to leave indents. "But yes, let's talk about the shield. Let's talk about World War II, and all the people that died then, in the battlefields and in the death camps. Let's talk about them, you Nazi bastard."
"I'm not--"
"HYDRA," Steve interrupts, "got its start in Nazi Germany. I don't give a rat's ass what you're going to say to excuse it and yourself. As far as I'm concerned, you are." He lets go of the bar, leaving impressions of his fingers in the metal. "And this country deserves better than that. The people who died for this country, who died when they didn't have to, deserve better than that. My mother deserves better than that."
"Did you come all the way out here to make a speech at me?" the sleeper agent snaps.
"No," says Steve, "I came all the way out here to tell you that you're going to be transferred out of here in the morning, and that you'll be having a nice, long stay in supermax." He smiles, then. "See? Truth and justice right there."
--
"You're you, right?" says Sam, sitting down next to Steve. It's a beautiful day, and Steve's tossing breadcrumbs at birds, his shield at his side like it belongs there. "Like, really you?"
"Yeah, Sam, it's really me," says Steve.
"So, uh," says Sam, "you're. Probably gonna want it back."
Steve looks down at the shield. "Well, I do miss it," he admits. "But if there's one thing the double did right, it was make you Captain America. Even if it was for the wrong reasons." Steve lifts the shield up, presses it into Sam's hands. The weight of it, after just a few months spent wielding it, is comforting, familiar to him now. "Thanks," Steve says, earnest as ever, and Sam realizes suddenly that he's missed him, for three long years. "For clearing my name. For figuring it out."
"I knew you wouldn't," says Sam. "But also, Christ, next time, before you and Barnes go on a secret mission to outer space, leave a note."
"We were gonna come back in a week!" says Steve. "Anyway, you did pretty well as Captain America. Keep doing it."
"What about you?" Sam asks. "I mean, I worked out a thing with the double where we could both be Cap, but that was before I found out he was, you know, a double."
"Nah," says Steve. "I think I'll take a break for a bit, try and catch up on everything I missed. Again. Anyway, the shield's in good hands with you."
Sam smiles, then sets the shield aside and pulls Steve into a hug.
"Don't ever leave for outer space again," he whispers. "Swear to God, Steve."
"I won't, I won't," says Steve, hugging back just as tightly.
--
fin.