Title: dancing with the demons
Author: A. X. Zanier
Status: WIP
Rating: R (Language, violence, sexual situations, the usual)
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Disclaimer: a) The characters and basic story ideas of Captain America/Avengers/et al are the property of others including, but not limited to Stan Lee, Marvel Studios, Disney Studios. Any additional characters or story ideas are mine. I make no money from this intellectual exercise. b) This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any opinions or views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the author and are used for storytelling purposes only.
Series: #3 Follows my short heroes of our time
Spoilers: Oh hell yes. Any part of the MCU is fair game.
A/N: So, yeah, Eurovision and Civil War started this whirlwind of writing and it continues with this one. I had hoped two strict canon would be enough, but my brain is a scary place and insisted that this one be written as well. And, sadly, I've set myself up for another one when this is done.
.
dancing with the demons
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"Guys… guys this place is so cool. Your own secret base, this makes you legit now, right? Am I right?"
We had kidnapped… err borrowed Scott Lang to get us up and running from a computer standpoint. Actually, he'd been more than happy to help when I called and asked, we just didn't dare let him know where we'd taken up residence, more for his safety than our own. And he'd been bouncing off the walls for two days for the most part. He'd thought our computer situation had been pitiful, the tablets - high end ones admittedly - supplied by T'Challa just barely keeping us on the grid this far from nowhere.
Scott had given us a bag, specifically a small paper bag, of what look like toys and warned us to decide where to put them before making them big.
Remembering the fuel truck at the airport I understood, but everyone else looked at him as if he'd been insane.
He gotten the servers set up, while we'd mounted the monitors in a nearby room that had been big enough for the task. The ancient desks and chairs would serve well enough for now. Biggest thing was to get back on the grid and be aware of what had been going on in the world while we'd been in the dark.
A couple days, literally, when we'd blown fuses after powering up the mains.
Scott had pronounced the tech overall adequate. Outdated for today, but state of the art back in the aughts. When I told him this place hadn't been used since the eighties he'd just nodded and said, "Hydra always did have top notch tech," and just kept going.
He didn't care that the facility had been Hydra, he was having too much fun playing with all the nifty toys he'd found and those he'd brought with him.
All of which had led to today, where we'd turn the system on and hoped like hell it worked.
"Ready?" Scott asked glancing over his shoulder at us.
"Seriously?" Sam snarked. "Just do it, man."
I chuckled and watched as he hit the power button and all the screens flickered to life about us. Many had been mounted on the walls, but three were on the desk, using that term loosely. Three ancient ugly metal desks jury-rigged together to create a behemoth that would be the central control for the whole system.
All the screens were dark.
"Uh, shouldn't there be pictures or something?" Bucky pointed out, tone more than a touch wry.
"Oh ye of little faith." Scott began typing furiously on the keyboard, code scrolling up the monitor in front of him. "You got those dishes cleaned off and aligned, right?" he glanced over at Sam whose look darkened noticeably.
"Yes, we did," Wanda answered before Sam could let fly with an epithet or three. She looked bored. It hadn't been easy adjusting to living with three men. At least Sam could cook, well, better than me and Bucky anyway. And now we'd added a fourth, who acted like a giddy schoolgirl every time I walked into a room. I had to admit to finding it amusing to a degree. It would make this whole rogue Avenger thing far easier if everyone reacted that way.
"Cool, cool." Scott returned to his typing, as I watched over his shoulder. I had no clue what he was doing. Nat had handled a lot of the tech in the field, since hacking would never be a specialty of mine. As she had always liked to put it; I punched my way out of situations and I did it well.
A soldier not a spy.
And, yes, there most certainly was a difference between the two.
None of here were spies, so we needed working tech to handle that side of it for us. Thus calling in Lang to assist.
"Huh," he muttered, sitting back for a moment before diving in again.
"Problem?" Bucky asked, a frown causing creases between his eyebrows.
"More like the opposite," he mumbled, focused on the work before him.
Buck shot a look my way and I shrugged not having any more clue than him.
Scott tapped a few dozen more keys and suddenly the screens sprang to life all around the room. "I'll need to tweak the algorithms a bit, but you are officially live."
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Good work."
"Oh, and you are not on any major data service."
"Uh, there's other options?" Sam asked, sounding confused. "I mean not that I want to be caught 'cause we're using Verizon, but I thought that's why you brought that fancy encryption thingie."
Scott nodded far too vigorously in my opinion, in his element and enjoying every minute of it. "Yep, yep. That's what it's for and you'll be using it just in case, but you guys have your own satellite, I'm running you through that. You have access like I've never seen before. They might be dicks, but Hydra has some awesome tech."
I turned to Bucky who shrugged. "Can't say I'm surprised. Can we tell if others are using the satellite?"
Scott nodded again. "There definite usage throughout the system, I'll set up a program to track it. Might be nothing more than computers talking to each other on a set schedule, but I can probably get locations."
Holy shit.
"You're saying we have an in to Hydra private communications?" Sam questioned in clear shock.
"Looks that way. Don't know that there's much out there, though. SHIELD supposedly took the remaining bigwigs down a couple months back."
Bucky snorted. "Cut off one head two more will take their place."
Sam growled softly. "Someone new and worse will take over. Imagine if Rumlow were still alive."
I had to play devil's advocate. "They never did find a body."
"Because he blew himself up," Wanda stated, tone ice cold.
She still hadn't fully forgiven herself for that accident.
"Wanda-"
"I know, not my fault, but the bastard better be dead or I'll kill him myself," she snarled, then sucked in a deep breath before releasing it slowly. "Sorry," she muttered in apology.
I shook my head. "No need." I rubbed my hands together. "Looks like it's time to get down to work."
"Cool. Let the training classes begin." Scott said, bouncing up from the chair and waving for me to sit.
Time to put my words to action.
. . . . .
.
The shout of surprise dragged me up from my work. The cursing that followed got me to set down the brushes and grab a cloth to clean my hands as I walked towards the sound.
I found Scott shoved against the wall, hands up in the universal sign of surrender, Bucky's right arm across his throat with just enough pressure to keep Mr. Lang from even trying to resist.
"Bucky," I barked, hoping I wouldn't have to physically intervene this time.
He twitched, shook his head then backed away still ready to attack.
"Scott, you okay?"
His hand went to his throat and rubbed it. "Yeah."
"Sorry," Bucky mumbled, looking like he wanted to run away. "Didn't know anyone else was awake." He flicked his eyes over to me, guilt written there.
"Dude, you didn't need to go all crouching tiger on me." Scott shrugged, setting his shoulders. "But I get it. You're still running on battle conditions."
"What the hell would you know about it?" Bucky snapped as I walked closer to intervene if necessary.
Scott raised his hands. "Nothing, man, but I have done time. You gotta be aware all the time, least till you can find someone you trust to watch your back. So I get it. Just, I thought I was on your side."
Bucky sighed heavily. "You are. I reacted without thinking." He met my eyes finally.
"Bad one tonight?" I asked, knowing that the memories sometimes came back as dreams, not many of those involving the Winter Soldier pleasant ones. Far more likely to be ones to just feel more guilt over. He had good days and bad ones. This one looked to be starting off bad.
He nodded. "This is one of those days I wish I could wipe those memories away."
Scott shook his head. "No, you got to own them. Accept them, learn from them and move on."
Bucky stared at him as if the man had gone insane. "What?"
Scott shrugged. "They're what make you who you are. Look, I ain't perfect, far from it, in fact, but Hank thought I deserved a second chance. So do you, I'm thinking, but you gotta accept the good with the bad and use it."
For an instant Bucky looked like he wanted to explode with anger, I'd said some of the same things to him over and over again, but he kept complaining I was biased, wanting my Bucky back, a man who had been torn apart and put back together poorly thanks to Hydra, and yet… yet here was this man, this virtual stranger saying the exact same words.
This time they had an impact as I saw understanding on my friend's face for the first time since I'd found him in that tiny apartment in Bucharest.
"You don't know me," Bucky argued, but it was halfhearted at best.
"So? I've read up on you. On James Barnes, you were never anything but a good man with a good heart by all accounts. And besides he," he hooked a thumb in my direction, "calls you friend. I'd say that's the best endorsement possible." He looked from me to Bucky and back then shivered. "Now, it's fucking freezing in here. I'm gonna make some hot chocolate, you guys want any?"
Bucky stood stock still for a moment, still in shock perhaps over the revelation he'd just been hit upside the head with then shrugged. "Sure, why not?"
I trailed along, trying to hide the feeling of relief that flooded through me. I don't know if Buck would have been handling the dreams better if we had stayed in Wakanda, probably though, as being in a Hydra facility seemed to bring the worst of them to the fore.
Scott had the milk heating on the stove before anyone of us spoke.
"You guys need more windows," he muttered, staring at the concrete walls about the room.
Buck snorted. "Wouldn't be much of a secret base if they could see in."
"Huh. True. But you really need reliable heat. Where are we? Canada? Northern Rockies?"
Buck shot a look at me.
"What? I didn't tell him. And we blacked out the windows for the flight." I hadn't wanted to knock the man out or put a hood on his head for the trip, be his bad luck to end up air sick.
"Jeez, guys, math nerd here. Flight speed and time gave me a rough radius and the fact that's fucking cold even this deep in the mountain gave me a reasonable guess as to where. Do you think I'm gonna rat you out or something?"
"No, but you could be... encouraged to tell." We'd done it to protect him and his family, not because we didn't trust him, He'd proven his worth in Germany.
He shook his head. "My family is well protected and stubborn. You think the government didn't go after them when you broke me out of the Raft? We're good." He turned about to slowly stir in the chocolate and the scent of cocoa filled the kitchen. "You guys know you can call on me anytime for help, and not just for setting up your wifi, right?"
"We know," Bucky responded, watching the man with new eyes. "And I'm sure we will. You have some pretty cool toys too."
I snickered. Bucky had been fascinated by the disks that made the miniaturized pieces of equipment full sized. Hell, we all had been. Pym's tech was pretty damn amazing and had fueled all kinds of rumours during the Cold War according to the files I'd looked over. Then again, a lot of what The Howling Commandos had done had been the stuff of legend. The Hydra weapons alone straight out of science fiction, but, then again, so was I.
Tall tales and exaggerations to tell by a campfire, or over a cup of hot cocoa on a cold night.
"Sorry about the heat, the furnace is older than dirt and keeps crapping out at unexpected moments. Finding parts has been challenging, but we've managed so far." Me and Sam had been beating on the poor thing for weeks now with only marginal success. Those of us with normal temperature regulation had taken to bundling up and piling the blankets three and four thick at night. Poor Wanda walked around the place in a heavy coat some days while me and Bucky could get by in shirt sleeves. We got cold, but the temps in the base never dipped below thirty no matter how cold outside, except in the hangar. That big door in the roof not having much insulation. I couldn't wait till summer to see how hot it would get in there.
"I'll poke at it tomorrow," Scott offered. "I'm not too bad with the mechanical."
"It's dead, they just don't realize it yet," Bucky commented, watching Scott thoughtfully.
"We'll see." Scott turned off the burner, hunted down three mugs, and poured a measure of hot chocolate into each. He handed them around, then stuck the pot in the sink and filled it with water to soak.
Steam rose from the mugs and we all took a few moments to sip at the sweet treat.
"So, why here? I mean, I get that you needed a base of operations, but there's got to be dozens of abandoned bases all over the planet. There must have been one a bit more centrally located. Europe maybe."
Bucky grinned. "Should we show him?"
I shrugged. I trusted Scott enough to bring him here, maybe he'd have some ideas on how to make use of what we had found. "Sure."
"Oooo, show me what?" He seemed giddy as a child on Christmas morning and I had to admit I found it refreshing. How bad could exile be if he seemed to find it normal?
Mugs in hand Bucky led the way deeper into the complex to the biggest room after the hangar. He swung open the door and let Scott walk in first, he made it about two steps before stopping dead, head swiveling back and forth as he tried to take everything in.
The room had to be at least a hundred yards deep, twice as wide with a ceiling twenty-five feet high. Not that we'd measured it. The aisles were wide enough to drive a jeep down with room to spare and the shelving units wide enough to park one on.
On every surface were boxes.
And in every box were files.
Millions of files.
Hydra files.
Bucky had chosen this base because it had handled administrative data flow for the vast majority of Hydra's entire system. Bases, and ops, and operatives; outdated to a degree, yes, but still useful. Given our plan to track down remaining Hydra bases and tech this place couldn't be any more perfect for us.
If we could come up with an efficient way to get through the files.
A daunting task to say the least.
Looked like Wanda might get that chance to be a secretary after all.
"Hydra files?" Scott asked, goggle-eyed.
Bucky nodded. "Decades if not centuries worth."
"This is so cool. Oh, oh, you're gonna go after whoever used that Hydra tech in Prague aren't you?"
Damn the man was smart. "That's the plan. With Hydra supposedly dead their toys are just lying about for anyone to find."
"And there's more than a few groups you probably don't want getting a hold of it. Stark being at the top of that list."
There had to be a story behind that comment, but this did not seem to be the time for it. I'm sure, now that we were online, that I could do some digging and discover why Pym seemed to dislike Stark so much.
"We need an efficient way to get through all of this," Bucky waved at the files.
"Aside from hiring a fleet of temps, scanning them into the computer may be the best option, but even that will take time." He sipped at the hot chocolate, thinking. "I'm sure it's organized somehow, we figure that out it'll make it easier to target the files you want."
He wandered into the stacks, brushing dust off boxes as he went.
"They're coded, we just haven't figured out what they mean yet." I mentioned. It wasn't like we hadn't tried doing something with the information, but we'd been more focused on making the base livable than going through the file room.
"He doesn't know?" Scott asked, waving vaguely in Bucky's direction without ever turning to look at him.
"Assassin, not paper pusher," Bucky reminded, trying to hide the smile. "The letters, for lack of a better word, aren't from any language I recognize."
"You have a list of every letter?"
I shook my head. "Not yet, why?"
Scott shrugged. "It's a code. Once I have all the parts and a selection of combinations I should be able to decrypt it."
Well, I guess Scott had turned out to be the right person to call after all.
"Tomorrow though, I still need some more sleep."
I couldn't argue with that.
"What were you painting?" Scott asked as he walked back towards us.
Buck shot me an odd look and I just sighed. I had been hoping they hadn't noticed, but given I had paint smeared on my shirt and hands I guess I should be happy they waited this long to call me out on it. "Nothing," I mumbled.
"Cough it up, Steve," Bucky teased. "Self portraits maybe?"
I shook my head. "Come on."
I led them back through the hanger to what we'd dubbed the garage. Another huge room, though dwarfed by both the hangar and the file room, the ceiling high above us, and with a long tunnel leading to an exit nearly a mile away. We'd found the remains of several Jeeps and turned them into two functioning ones, which, once we'd gotten the door clear, allowed us to drive to the nearest town for supplies instead of flying the quinjet.
One wall had been covered with a huge Hydra image, the many legged kraken like creature irritating me with it's presence, so I had decided to cover it with something new.
The centerpiece was a red star, out of which would come two white wings. They had been sketched out, but not painted in yet, the star only half done. It was simple, but had felt right.
Bucky cocked his head. "SSR wings? Like we had on the Commandos uniforms?"
I nodded.
"And the star fits both of you. WInter Soldier and Captain America." Scott stated, getting what I had been trying to do easily. "Now you need a name."
I shook my head. "They can call us whatever they like, we're just going to do our jobs."
"Piffle," Scott commented, "you'll end up with something horrible."
"Like Ant-Man?" Bucky suggested in a dry tone, but his eyes held a smile.
"Exactly," Scott agreed with a nod. "I kinda inherited that one, and it is accurate enough. How about The Dark Avengers?"
"God, no. The Avengers are Tony's now."
"You mean Ross's, don't you?" Bucky complained, a sneer curling his lips.
I shrugged. Both were accurate at this point. I gathered, thanks to the limited news I'd been able to absorb, that Tony wasn't too happy showing up to help after me and my team had already arrived. The council that made decisions as to whether or not the Avengers should be deployed, stuck with their thumbs up their asses. I sympathized with the situation, but I had warned him. We simply went where needed. Didn't ask permission. Didn't demand. Just did our damn jobs and moved on.
"Well, if you don't pick something they will and that asshat Ross with vilify you to every news outlet on the planet no matter how many people call you heroes." Scott paced around the room.
He really wanted us to be the good guys again.
"Let him," I stated. "Deeds and not words will make the difference."
"A few more times late to the party and that UN Council might not exist any longer. Their effectiveness has been more than a bit… lacking." Bucky may have not been all that thrilled with being back out in the world, but once he'd decided to do this, to be the hero again, he hadn't looked back.
"So, your whole evil twin routine is gone?" Scott asked, real curiosity in his voice.
Bucky shrugged. "The programming is still there, but as of now the band-aid is holding."
Scott nodded. "Good. Good." He looked over the garage. "This would make a good training room."
I'd thought the same thing. With the quinjet we didn't require a lot of regular vehicles. If we needed some onsite we would… acquire them. "It will be, eventually."
"Eventually?" Scott inquired. "Don't you guys have to train. Okay, maybe not you two, but the others are normal humans right?"
"We're broke," Bucky grumbled, "and don't exactly have a way to earn funds."
Scott lit up like fireworks on the Fourth of July. "Froze your accounts?"
I nodded. "Yes, why?"
He grinned. "Oh, I can fix that for you." He spun about and was out the door a moment later.
I glanced at Bucky who looked more confused than I felt and we trailed after.
We found him in front of the computer, his fingers interlaced and flipped about, the knuckles cracking loudly in the quiet room. Then he began to abuse the keyboard, windows popping up across several of the monitors as he worked his virtual magic.
"Scott, what are you doing?"
"No way Captain America should be without funds, so I'm getting them back for you. Sam's too." He glanced over at me, "Wanda?"
"Uh, a stipend of some sort that Stark set up?" I answered. Stark had felt guilty enough over the Ultron mess that he'd paid for everything for Wanda, made sure she had her own money, though I had no clue how much.
Scott whistled. "Jeez, you could buy a small country with this." His fingers kept moving over the keys and, while I got that he had somehow managed to get to our money, I had no real idea how.
Part of me, the do things by the book part of me wanted to tell him to stop, that the government had frozen our accounts for a reason and that the law was the law and we had broken it, but…
But we shouldn't be punished for doing what we believed to be right.
So I let Scott keep going.
Less than twenty minutes later he leaned back in his seat and finished off the rest of the now cold cocoa. "All right, it's in a series offshore accounts that no one but you guys can touch. I put a portion aside to collect an absurd amount of interest so you'll have emergency funds. The rest will be available within twenty-four hours. I'll make hard copies of the passwords and such, but you guys should be good to go."
Bucky had taken over one of the other chairs, feet up on the desk a look of calm on his face. "Thank you," he said.
"No problem," Scott said with a nod. "Now, I'm am off to bed so that tomorrow I don't kill myself trying to fix the furnace."
I laughed softly. Once he'd left the room I turned to Bucky, who hadn't moved.
"Maybe we should have started with that," he pointed out, the banking pages still up on the screen.
The numbers there were impressive, but even I knew it would not be enough in the long run. "We need to expand our skills." I'd relied on others to handle the serious tech for too long. We no longer had Tony or Nat and while Sam and Wanda were far more tech savvy than either of us, I doubted they could have done what Scott had just accomplished.
"Into what? Counterfeiting?"
I chuckled. "Whatever works, I suppose. Sell calendars with all of us posing in our skivvies?"
Buck shifted, bare feet coming down to the cold concrete floor as he stood. His eyebrows popped up for a moment. "It'd sell well, that's for sure. Or you could go back to selling bonds. Money going to our pockets, of course. You'd fill those tights well."
"Never. Again."
"Never?" Bucky countered. "Tell me that when we run out of fuel and food. When Sam gets hurt bad enough to need a hospital stay. We have no protection. We have no support. We have nothing but this base with crappy heat and all the Hydra tech we-" He stopped dead, a look of realization on his face.
"Buck, what? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Go wake Scott up. I have one hell of an idea."
