Summary: Steve strove to be Right. To do Good. That was what his mom had told him second chances were for, and if he owed her memory to trying. Joining the police force, protecting people, was a natural decision to make. For Steve, it had always been black and white, good and bad. Special Forces team SHIELD embodied everything he stood for.
Except that there was Bucky. Bucky, who had disappeared for years. Bucky, who was a member of HYDRA, the organisation that was so black in its elusive, criminal endeavours as to epitomise. In an effort to haul his oldest and dearest friend from the snake pit while at once putting down the beast he'd fought to suppress for so long, Steve is struck by an unfortunate revelation: there exists a rather impressive field of grey that complicated things.
The world wasn't nearly so simply black and white as he'd initially thought.
Rating: M
Tags: Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes; Alternate Universe - Modern AU; Police Force; Mafia; Assassins; Good vs. Evil; Moral Greyness; Character Development
~Written for the Stucky Big Bang 2017~
Chapter 1
The sound of his heavy footsteps was loud. Too loud, most likely. They would alert anyone to his presence who had an ear to listen for him, but Steve didn't care. He ran down one cement-floored corridor, the flicker of fluorescent lights his only company. He didn't even slow when he crashed into the wall at the end of the corridor but thrust himself bodily from the roughened brick to leap down the adjacent hallway.
A door. He saw a door. The thick, fierce gasping of Steve's breath wasn't purely from the speed of his flight. He was angry. So angry that the heat bubbled within him, making fog of his gasps as they passed through the icy hallway. Frustrated. So frustrated, and that door…
Without slowing, boots barely skidding on the floor, Steve charged his shoulder into the door. It crumpled inwards like plywood rather than the splintered timber it was. The crackle of punctured wood was deafening in the otherwise utter silence. Steve swung his arms upwards instinctively, pistol clasped firmly between his hands, and pointed it at the possible enemy. All he got was –
Silence.
Nothing.
Not in the hall and not even, infuriatingly, in the room. Nothing but darkness just barely penetrated by the corridor's flickering lighting. If Steve strained his ears, he could just barely hear a distant drip… drip… drip… from some unstoppered tap. But in that room…
Nothing. No one.
"Rogers," a voice muttered in his ear.
Steve didn't reply. Spinning from the room, barely hearing his own growl of frustration, he leap over the remains of the door and into the corridor. Hanging a left, he launched himself down the empty passage once more. Another corner, another left, and he was bursting through another door that opened into a gloomy stairwell of cement steps and rusted bannister.
"Rogers, enough," the voice said, a slight sigh to her tone.
Steve ignored her again. He overlooked the necessity of stairs entirely, launching himself over the bannister and maintaining his grasp on his standard issue service Glock only by instinct and long practice. He barely felt the jarring impact zapping through his ankles as he landed, didn't pause for his slight stumble before leaping into full speed once more. The door at the other end of the stairwell didn't stand a chance before his battering-ram force.
"You couldn't have slowed down to wait for the rest of us, Rogers?" Another voice said, and despite the offhandedness of the statement, Steve heard the frustration echoing his own thrumming through his words.
"It's not like there's much of a point," the first voice said. "They're not here. Alright – Steve, Sam, pull back. It was obviously a false lead."
No. No, that couldn't be. It couldn't be true. Steve wouldn't let it be true. They'd been chasing HYDRA for years, and though Steve had only been assigned to their case in the past six, he could already feel the weight of gnawing aggravation that bordered on rage for their evasions. They were slippery snakes, elusive, always finding a way to escape impossible situations.
This lead had been the one. Steve had known it was the one, because they'd moved with such speed that there was no way the members of HYDRA could have gotten word of their awareness. No. Way. And yet somehow, in the warehouse that Steve and his team had infiltrated without even pausing for a stakeout, their targets had escaped.
Again.
How many times did that make it now? Steve had almost lost count.
He bowled down another plywood door, but nothing. Another corridor, another stretch of fluorescently lit walls flickering with seizure-inducing twitches, and another door. And another. In each one there was nothing. No people. The odd table, a discarded chair, in one even a television with its blank screen staring flatly. But no one was there. No HYDRA.
Steve was in the bowels of the warehouse. It hadn't been apparent that it stretched so far underground but at six floors deep he'd finally reached the bottom. And here, charging through a final door that held as little resistance as those above, Steve stopped. He stared at the room, as empty as those before. His hands tightened on his pistol so fiercely that his knuckles ached.
"Nothing," he said, and his voice seethed. "Nat, there's nothing."
In his ear, voice slightly distorted by the earpiece, Nat sighed. "I know. We know, Steve. It was a false lead."
"It can't be nothing."
"And yet it is," Sam grumbled, adding his own equally frustrated voice to their conversation. "Un-fucking-believable."
"How?" Steve said, shaking his head. His teeth were clenched as tightly as his hands, jaw all but squeaking. "How could they have found out?"
"If not false intel, then maybe a mole?" Nat suggested.
"They'd have to have moved damn fast," Sam said.
Steve nodded tightly, even if his team wouldn't be able to see him. Moles, false leads, faulty intel – they were the ultimate of unseen enemies in Steve's line of work. He'd been an intelligence field agent for years and with each passing year that understanding was only more firmly grounded.
Steve hated tracking the bastards who wrought havoc on his city. He hated it.
"Pull back, Steve," Nat said, and it was less of a regretful sigh and more an order this time. "There's nothing here. We're leaving."
Steve nodded again. Frustration didn't even begin to cover it. Dropping his arms with a fierce click of his pistol's safety, he turned to leave. And he paused.
The room was empty. More empty even than those above it, without even a scrap of furniture to it. Brick walls, cement floors, a wooden door that now lay in pieces at the entrance. And yet as Steve turned, it was to behold an image strewn in ruddy paint across the wall.
A skull. Six tentacle limbs curled beneath it. A smile that seemed more like a taunting leer. And worst of all, the symbol of HYDRA still glistened with faint wetness. It had only been newly painted.
"Dammit."
"Damn it all to hell."
Seated shotgun in the car, Steve could only agree with the sentiment behind Sam's words as he kicked a foot beneath Steve's seat. He didn't much appreciate the jostle, but he could understand the need for emphasis.
Nat, apparently, was not so empathetic. "Kick that seat again, Wilson, and you'll rue the day your parents ever gave you feet."
In anyone else, someone of Natasha Romanoff's diminutive stature threatening someone of the size of Sam Wilson in such a way would have been laughable. Steve didn't laugh, and not only because he'd rarely felt less in a laughing mood in his life. Not even when he'd first met Nat had he considered her less than deadly; she was small, but the kind of contained smallness that promised deadliness should one drift too close. There was a reason she was nicknamed 'Black Widow' down at the agency.
Steve barely attended to the exchange. Turned towards the window, elbow propped on the door and knuckles pressing into his chin, he stared with barely contained rage at the sparsely populated sidewalk. Nat said he never truly glared, that Steve's 'glaring' expression was more akin to brooding because "You're not the type of person to get angry like that, Steve," but Steve felt otherwise. He very much felt he was glaring at that moment. Sam's frustrated kicks were empathised with on an innate level.
"How is this even possible?" Sam continued, the growl of his persistent frustration deepening his voice. "We got the intel less than two hours ago."
Nat didn't glance over her shoulder to reply. Like the law-abiding citizen that she pretended to be, she kept her gaze fixed upon the road. Barely a flicker of her eyes towards the rear-view mirror, observed from Steve's periphery, told him she looked to Sam.
Which meant she agreed with him. With his frustration. If Nat didn't agree, she didn't spare even the courtesy of a glance.
"Two hours is long enough to stage a retreat, apparently," she said quietly, words almost muffled by the murmured hum of the car's engine.
"To clear out everything, though?" Sam said. "There was nothing but a skeleton left that could have been in any fucking warehouse in New York. There was nothing there."
"Except the symbol of HYDRA," Steve muttered.
Sam cursed behind him once more.
HYRDA was one of the greatest, most prevalent, and most elusive crime syndicates in New York. Maybe even beyond that, for all Steve knew. HYDRA was a menace that, in his opinion, were capable of stretching it's slimy tentacles just about anywhere.
Weapons dealing. Prostitution. Electronic theft on a scale that laughed in the face of the term thievery, with banks stumbling from a debilitating blow in their wake and shareholders left in a rigid state of incredulity after realising they'd been cuckolded for years without realising. And drug trafficking. Drug manufacturing, even. It was the drugs that were the most expansive problem, the most prevalent. To say that HYDRA was specialised would be inaccurate, but that had a very definite flavour to their endeavours. to Steve's understanding, what he'd committed to memory like lore from his college years, crime was the punishment of those who violated the laws, who threatened or endangered the safety, health and welfare of other individuals.
In Steve's opinion, steeled from years in pursuit, HYDRA embodied crime. He'd been given a second chance in his life, a chance that many people hadn't, and he had sworn to make good of that chance. What better good could there be than to combat the ultimate bad? HYDRA was everything bad about New York. Everything and then some, and Steve dedicated his all to suppressing just that. If nothing else, he owned the fates that much.
But it was frustrating. Frustrating because for, Steve and his partners, for his division of the NYPD specifically allocated to the task of suppressing HYDRA – artfully named SHIELD for reasons Steve didn't pursue after countless deflections of his questioning – hadn't caught them. They'd been on HYDRA's tail for years, but if anything the invisible, exploiting hands of the syndicate only grew more multitudinous.
HYDRA was good. Very good, at what they did and how they did it. It was… infuriating.
That morning, the leak he, Nat and Sam had leaped upon had been on a spur of the moment. From a covert source of one of the agents down at the SHIELD base, it should have been valid. Should have. And yet once more, HYDRA had all but spat them in the face. Did they do it on purpose? Were they taunting SHIELD in their attempt to suppress them? Steve didn't know how HYDRA managed to infiltrate their spider web of informants and information, and that was perhaps the most infuriating part of all.
That, and the fact that they'd gotten the call at four o'clock that morning. At not yet seven and with decidedly less sleep than hoped for, HYRDA's taunting disappearance turned Steve's poor mood to mutinous.
And Nat said he didn't glare.
The city of New York never truly slept, but the rising sun highlighted and emphasised the movement of traffic and pedestrians that surrounded their car. Like a nest of ants quietly working abruptly disturbed by that light, gentle chaos kicked up a gear into mayhem. As they drove, Steve staring out the window, Sam grumbling in the back seat and Nat droving with her usual professional detachedness, they made their way from the warehouse and scene that had decidedly lacked success. Again. They'd been beaten again. Steve wasn't sure how much more of it he could take.
Vaguely familiar streets trickled into those more familiar, and by the time mid-morning dawned, Nat was turning down the bumper-to-bumper road towards SHIELD headquarters. In reality, 'headquarters' was a jumped up name for what their particular division of the NYPD called their base. Or more correctly what Tony Stark called their base. Tony was the one who came up with the nicknames for absolutely everything.
Nat parked them in the underground lot and with the infuriated tight-lipped silence that had fallen even upon Sam they rode the sleekly purring elevator to the ground floor. Expectedly, despite the relative earliness of the hour, when the doors pinged open into the spread of the agency basement floor, Steve was immediately buffeted by a riot of noise.
How barely a handful of people could make so much noise was a mystery to him. How only two was more the issue – an issue in the form of Tony Stark.
" – can't just go and touch whatever you want, dammit, Tony!" a voice bellowed across the room.
"On the contrary, it's practically mine so I can do whatever the fuck I want with it."
"You almost lost weeks of work with your meddling!"
"I'd say I improved that work, actually."
"And look at it! Look at my work station and the mess you've made and – and it's all – it's all just –"
Steve heaved a mental sigh as he stepped into the room. It was shaped more like a hanger than a typical spread of office blocks, because apparently the latest and greatest in ideas for workplace cohesiveness was having visible access to one another's personal space. Steve wasn't sure how much he agreed with that but he wasn't going to protest to the higher ups. He'd learned to choose his battles.
Everyone was there. And by everyone, Steve meant everyone, as he could very much discern from the clear visibility of every corner of the desk, chair and machine-cluttered department. Even their boss had a barely more than partitions for his not-quite office. Steve spotted Clint atop his perch of a chair in the midst of a square of desks so loaded with paperwork and computers that it nearly buried Clint himself. His was typing with his usual fervour, a frown of concentration wrinkling his brow.
Alongside him, Wanda sat with legs propped up on her own desk, slouched with a phone pressed to her ear. She spoke in what Steve knew without having to ask was rapid Romanian. To anyone else, the young woman who to Steve had seemed like little more than a teenager since she'd joined them a year before might appear to be slacking. Steve knew better.
Vision – because for whatever reason, Tony's infamous nicknames had stuck him with Vision and Vision only – was at the next desk along. As Steve crossed the room in the direction of the shouting voices, it was to see his fingers dancing so fast over his multiple keyboards that he put Clint's own impressive typing skills to shame. Steve was the first to admit that he wasn't particularly tech-savvy, but Vision made him look like the ultimate amateur.
Though none stopped in their work, each of the three glanced Steve's way as he passed them to draw alongside James Rhodes' desk. Rhodie wasn't working as the others were, entirely ignoring the battle waging between Tony and the murderously glaring Bruce as though it was an everyday occurrence. Which, while it admittedly didn't happen every day, wasn't far from the truth. Tony had an incessant longing to provoke from Bruce what he termed his 'Hulk' rage.
" – so hard to understand that you're not welcome when it comes to touching my stuff!" Bruce was saying. He stood propped in the doorway to what was the only real section of the basement floor blocked off from the greater room. Bruce wasn't an angry person, but Steve would admit he did become something of a Hulk when people – Tony – touched 'his things'. Calm shifted to furious, contained to aggressive verbal assaults. He could definitely glare with the best of them. Nat had noted as much on countless occasions.
Tony leaned against the edge of his desk, tossing some kind of metallic device that was probably worth more than Steve's entire apartment between his hands. He appeared entirely unfazed by Bruce's anger, which he most likely was. "And I reiterate: it's technically my stuff seeing as I bought it –"
"With SHIELD's money."
"Which is also my money," Tony pointed out, gesturing towards Bruce with the metal object. "Mine."
"You can't just claim everything in the department because of your donations, Tony," Bruce ground out, all but turning green in his frustration. Steve didn't think he was actually trembling in rage but he couldn't be far off. No one seemed quite capable of aggravating Bruce like Tony. "That's like giving a present and expecting eternal praise of it."
"Well, depending on the present –"
"Dammit, Tony, you're missing the analogy!"
"I've got this," Nat muttered from where she and Sam had paused alongside Steve. With what wasn't quite a sigh, she crossed the room towards Bruce as he began stabbing a pointed finger towards Tony to punctuate his rising words. Steve let her go without comment; Nat had a way of soothing the infuriated Hulk in Bruce that the rest of them lack. Or lacked the desire to attempt, anyway.
"What's it about this time?" Sam asked.
Steve turned towards Rhodie. As ever, Rhodie observed the verbal battle raging between Tony and Bruce with the objective calm and collectedness that he always did. "Tony touched his stuff."
"Yeah, I got that," Sam said, leaning against the edge of Rhodie's desk.
"And he momentarily lost the analysis of Bruce's findings from the seventeenth."
Even Steve winced sympathetically. He might not be a forensic microbiologist or understand much of Bruce's words when he spoke about his work, but even he knew that Bruce's work of the past three weeks was a sore spot. A killing at the drug raid on the seventeenth, speculated to be the work of HYDRA. Scans and fingerprints, blood samples and scrapings, were all sent Bruce's way because, as SHIELD's specialist, he was the one to analyse all things potentially HYDRA related.
"He shouldn't have done that," Steve said. "Bruce is right to be angry."
As if to punctuate his words, Bruce loosed a particularly loud exclamation that was more a wordless cry than anything intelligible. Steve found his attention drawn towards Bruce's doorway in time to see Nat pause at his side, raise a hand and all but fling him into the room with a forceful shove. Her gesture was so practiced that no one could disbelieve it was the first time she'd done just that in similar circumstances. She followed after him a moment later.
Tony pursed his lips as he shifted further in his seat on the edge of his desk. "Well, that's ruining all my fun. Thanks, Nat."
Sam snorted and Steve saw Rhodie's shake his head just slightly, but he was the only one who replied. "You shouldn't provoke him, Tony. He's easily angered."
"You think I don't know that?" Tony said, glancing Steve's way as he tossing the metallic object into the air. Steve couldn't discern what it was any better for seeing it out of his grasp. "It's the only way I can get any kind of fulfilment around here. Even you should know that by now, New Guy."
New Guy. For whatever reason, even after nearly six years and even for the fact that Sam had started at SHIELD at exactly the same time as him, Steve remained 'the new guy'. Even when Wanda and Vision had come along, the name stuck. He didn't know why Tony persisted with the title, except for perhaps that he was hoping to provoke the same response from Steve that he once had.
Steve wouldn't get annoyed again, however. He'd learned better than to state his objection because Tony thrived on disgruntlement. He didn't like the nickname, but he supposed it wasn't all that bad. Certainly better than Captain Righteous, which was apparently Steve's 'official' title, courtesy of Tony once more.
It wasn't frustration for Tony or his provocation that had Steve biting back the urge to grumble. Entering SHIELD and finding a bellowing match warring had momentarily distracted Steve from his morning of frustration that bordered on intense, smouldering rage, but only briefly. In the absence of Bruce's open objection, an objection that had died to muttered complaints audible through his open doorway, the morning's disaster rose to the forefront of his mind once more.
Folding his arms across his chest, Steve pinned Tony with a stare. He shouldn't take it out on him, despite Tony likely deserving it, but he couldn't quite help it. "So you discredit Bruce's work by playing with it?"
Tony snorted. "I wasn't playing with anything. I was helping him."
"Helping him?"
"Fixing it."
"He's the specialist, Tony. Let him do his job."
"Calm your hype, Captain," Tony said with another snort. "There's nothing wrong with supporting a colleague in their work if it affects us all. I'd say my contribution was an improvement; look how much Banner's come to appreciate my automatic back-up system now that it's been tested?"
Tony was certainly in a prodding mood. Steve fought and managed to unclench his jaw, though the cross of his arms he couldn't loosen quite so easily. Tony's seeking 'fulfilment' in his arguments with Bruce was understandable to a degree; after chasing HYDRA without success and with little more than a trail of disasters and footprints to show for it, the satisfaction of a fight was very likely necessary. But did Tony have to provoke Steve too? Bruce had admitted that, despite his at times explosive annoyance, he didn't truly mind Tony egging him on. He'd even told Steve in confidence that, given Tony really had funded the majority of their equipment and more than knew how to use it all, he had a right to it. But Steve? Steve wasn't quite so lenient as Bruce.
Not that morning, anyway. Steve wasn't up to dealing with Tony. To say they were friends wouldn't be entirely incorrect but… not that morning.
Thankfully, Sam stepped in for him. "Can it for today, Tony," he said. "Not today, man. Seriously."
Tony pause in his incessant fiddling to shift his attention towards Sam. To Steve. Then he swung his gaze briefly towards Bruce's door in the direction Nat had disappeared. Everyone, Tony included – or perhaps especially Tony – knew where they'd been but hours before. They were a team, after all. It was simply out of respect for what they knew must have been a failed endeavour that none had asked for a rundown the moment Steve, Sam and Nat had entered the room.
"A flop, I presume," Tony said flatly.
Just like that, his joking amusement died. Bruce's voice and Nat's quietly murmuring replies were all that interrupted the sudden silence. Wanda, Steve noticed from his periphery, had lowered her phone from her ear to focus her attention instead upon him, and Clint and Vision's typing had similarly paused. All watched and waited.
"A flop," Sam said shortly. He glanced towards Wanda. "Thanks for the heads up, by the way. It would have been a good one if it had worked out."
There wasn't any accusation in his words, but Wanda immediately dropped her booted feet from her desk and straightened from her slouch. She looked almost ridiculously young as her gaze shifted between Steve and Sam, eyes wide. "It was a dead end," she stated more than asked, her curling accent thickening. "I am sorry."
"Don't be sorry," Steve sighed. Really, the kid shouldn't feel guilty. "They were there."
"They were?" Rhodie said, abruptly straightening in his own seat.
"They were," Sam emphasised. "Reckon not even a couple of minutes before us, too, though they'd somehow managed to take even their fucking dust with them."
It might have been a bit of an exaggeration, but Steve didn't correct him. The frustration was back in Sam's tone and likely wouldn't accept correction. They were close, Steve and Sam; Steve would even go so far as to say they were best friends, both as partners at work and otherwise. But Sam, like Steve, had his moments when he was quite simply not in the mood.
"I take it the place is properly abandoned, then?" Clint called from across the room. His gaze was sharp as it jumped between Steve and Sam. He had an unwaveringly hawkish stare; there was little that Clint didn't see and it was that perceptiveness that made him such an asset to the team.
"You'd take it right," Steve said.
"But they left a note of sorts," Vision said. "A sign. Perhaps their symbol?"
Sam clicked his tongue. "Now that's just creepy. How do you do shit like that, Vision?"
"I'm right?" Vision asked, his usual mild, slightly vague inquisitiveness tilting his head slightly. Vision was a beanpole of a man, all angular features and narrow-minded focus. He seemed to function as much like a computer as the computers he so loved to work with. "It was the skull and tentacle symbol, then, I presume?"
"The HYDRA thing, yeah." Sam nodded. "Steve saw it. Right down the bottom in the fucking bowels of the warehouse."
"So not only did they make a mockery of you but they managed to get you to check every room?" Tony's tone was as flat as before, disapproving and slightly angry, even, but Steve knew him well enough to understand that his anger wasn't for Steve, Sam and Nat. Tony hated HYDRA with a passion felt only too completely by those who'd been mocked and beaten time and time again. Steve knew that passion.
"Something like that," Steve said.
"I am sorry," Wanda said again, solemnity casting a darkening her '
"It's not your fault, Wanda," Steve said, crossing the room towards her. "Your intel was about as accurate as possible. We were just too slow."
"No matter how fast we moved we would have been too slow," Clint said quietly.
"Most likely."
Silence fell upon the room. It was another defeat, another failure, and though such had happened so many times before that Steve had almost come to expect they would never get one up on HYDRA, never catch even one of their number that was more that a low-ranking crony, it struck a heavy blow. What would it take? How much struggling did they have to endure before they actually caught up?
Catching HYDRA was Steve's life. It was Sam's life too, and Nat's, and everyone else's in SHIELD. None of them had much of a life outside of work, and that made the suppression of HYDRA that much more necessary. It was like a sore and desperate need, and Steve needed it. Just once. Just one person, one HYDRA snake to fall into their trap. Surely he could be afforded that levity?
"Well, this is a sombre mood."
Steve lanced over his shoulder alongside the rest of his team as Nat appeared in Bruce's doorway. Bruce stood at her shoulder, decidedly less infuriated than he'd appeared before. If anything, there was little besides his usual calm to suggest that he'd even snapped at Tony minutes before.
"Sam and Steve were just telling us," Rhodie said quietly. "Tough luck, Nat."
Nat shrugged. "It happens."
"Always," Wanda said tightly.
"Literally every single time," Clint agreed.
No one had any correction to make to such a blanket statement and Nat only shrugged. "Yeah. Every time. But whatever. Steve, Sam, we have reports to write."
"Ah, my favourite part," Sam muttered.
"Just because you're a field officer doesn't mean you don't have to slog through the drudgery that the rest of us do," Tony said.
"I was under the impression Ms Potts assisted you with much of you own 'drudgery', Mr Stark," Vision said, as mildly as ever.
"Thank you for that contribution, Vis," Tony said. "Just give away my secret why don't you."
"It's hardly a secret, Tony," Rhodie said. "Pepper's made sure everyone knows what a slacker you are."
"I'm only a slacker in the right places."
Listening with half an ear, Steve took himself to his own desk. It wasn't as much of a mess as Clint's, nor as cluttered with computers as Visions or expensive gadgets as Tony's, but it was far from tidy. Steve often found that it was next to impossible to maintain a pristine workspace when HYDRA was concerned. Maybe it was the mayhem and unshakeable frustration of an endless civil war, but something about the entire situation manifested as mess.
Sighing internally, Steve dropped into his seat and absently clicked his computer to life. At the next desk over, Sam muttered to himself as he did the same, Nat passing by them briefly before disappearing behind the corkboard she'd erected in her own space years before. Nat liked to have everything pinned where she could see it.
"I could offer a hand if you'd like," Tony called across the room as Steve began clicking through his computer at a less than enthusiastic speed. He really hadn't gotten enough sleep the previous night to undertake such an unfulfilling task. "Think of it as a favour."
"Not that I don't appreciate you offering that which isn't yours to offer, Tony," Nat said in distracted monotone, "but I'm sure Pepper's got enough on her plate."
"True," Tony said. "But she multitasks like a ninja."
"Remind me why she puts up with your lazy ass," Rhodie said in what was likely meant only for Tony's ears but they all heard nonetheless. Little was private in the SHIELD basement.
"Because I'm wonderful," Tony replied. "I thought you knew that."
"Well, you've told me enough."
"Only because you need to hear if from the primary source. But that wasn't what I was referring to actually. I meant I could offer my own exemplary skills – not Pepper's, thank you, Natasha – to ease the weighty burden placed upon the three of you. I'm a master of bullshitting my way through reports."
"I think that's kind of missing the function of a report, then, Tony," Nat said.
Steve had to agree, but despite his Tony-assigned Captain Righteous persona, he appreciated the less than procedural offer. That Tony had offered at all, and his own assistance rather than Pepper's as Nat had guessed – a not inconceivable guess for he'd done so many a time before – was something. He understood that their job, the job Steve had shared with Sam and Nat in the worst sense of the term 'sharing', had been appalling. Tony was an incessant tease that bordered on bullying at times, but he was a sympathetic and almost compassionate person beneath it all. It said something that he'd been silently funding SHIELD's exploits for years without ever being asked. Offering to help with reports was just another form of that compassion.
"Thanks anyway, Tony, but we're alright," Steve said, sparing Tony a glance and a small, grateful smile. "Really. Thanks."
"Aw, don't go getting sappy on my now, Cap," Tony said, finally rising from his seat on the edge of his desk and skirting it to his wheelie chair. "You might just make me vomit."
"What a tragedy that would be," Sam muttered under his breath.
"Oh, and before I forget," Tony continued loudly enough to carry even into Bruce's room, "we've got a meeting at eleven."
"With Fury?" Vision asked. "I'm assuming it is from Fury that you received the request?"
"Why he always tells you I'll never know," Nat said more to herself than to anyone in particular.
"Because he knows that I'd probably know anything he wanted to say before he actually relays any messages anyway," Tony said.
"True enough."
"Conference Room Three," Tony said. "Eleven o'clock, people. Don't miss it. We've got a wonderful surprise on the table for us. Guests, if you will."
"Who?" Clint asked, pausing in the act of returning to his work.
"No idea."
"Like hell you don't."
Steve sighed, only withholding from scrubbing a hand over his face for the thought that it wouldn't appear particularly encouraging to adopt such melancholy before his colleagues. He wasn't in the mood for a meeting that would likely involve a lot of head shaking and regretful sighs from higher-ups at another failed job, but duty called. Leaning forward in his own seat, Steve set to drafting up the entirely too dry report.
By the time eleven o'clock ticked by, Steve had finished and felt as parched for the dryness of it all as a prune. Throughout the basement with its high ceilings and wooden floors, the rest of his team worked with their usual dedicated yet resigned efficiency. Dedicated and resigned was how they'd been for years; it was the only way any of them could retain their sanity in such a thankless pursuit.
Across the room, Vision still typed at a million miles an hour. Wanda still spoke on her phone, though it was several dozen calls since the one Steve had first overheard. Rhodie was making a mess of paperwork, the scuffle of flapping sheets only seeming to underline Vision's frequent reminded that, "Digital copies are far more practical, James". Rhodie ignored him every single time he said as much.
There was a thumping comingfrom Bruce's room, something that sounded almost like the hacking of a knife, but it wasn't particularly unusual so Steve ignored it. At Tony's desk, what could have as easily been the discovery of a cure to cancer as it was simply an attempt to fix his stapler was splayed before him.
For himself – and Sam, he noticed – it was back to that drudgery that they were all so weary of. Back to skimming through files with a keen eye, watching video footage or reading reports or even flicking through social media with the wide-toothed comb that occasionally snagged on a gold mine. Steve was used to that. He was used to all of it, and it wasn't unusual to find himself wedged between a wall of paperwork and a well of possible leads. None of those leads were quite as good as what Wanda could manage to pluck from nowhere but they were something. Sometimes.
As was to be expected of Fury, when his call to attendance came it was in the form of his face appearing and then dominating Steve's computer screen as it did everyone else's. The expectedness didn't make him any less irked by the image of Fury's bald head overriding the smattering of grainy pictures he'd been studying.
"Alright, princesses," Fury said by way of greeting. "Get a move on. I said eleven."
"You could have told each of us directly if you wanted punctuality," Rhodie said, just as Tony lowered the miniature screwdriver he'd been playing with to gesture towards his own screen with a, "Wonderful to see your beautiful face, Fury, as always."
"Hilarious, Stark," Fury replied, because of course he'd be able to not only see all of them but hear them as well. "Conference Room Three. All of you. Now."
"Even me?" Wanda asked, not quite surprised but a little wary.
"All of you," Fury replied. Then his face disappeared from Steve's screen to expose the pictures that really weren't much more than a grainy mess. Steve likely wouldn't be able to make any use of them anyway.
"He's always such a joy to be around," Tony said, tapping his screwdriver on his desk in a rhythm. "Remind me why we voted him to be boss?"
"He's been the big boss forever," Rhodie said, rising to his feet as Steve did himself. "There was no vote."
"Dictatorship, then," Tony said. He sniffed. "I could think of a better candidate."
"I'm sure you could," Nat said before raising her voice towards Bruce's room. "Bruce, we're heading out."
"Am I coming?" Bruce called back.
"I don't know. Do you want to keep your high-res microscopes? Because I think Fury would be inclined to take them off you if you took to skipping his meetings."
Bruce appeared in the doorway, flipping his glasses onto his head. He only ever wore glasses when he was working on that which required serious concentration. It was like a warning flag of 'Do Not Interrupt' that Steve had long been affiliated with. "Technically," Bruce said, "it's Tony's microscope. Fury has no right to take it off me."
"There, see?" Tony skirted around his desk and crossed the room towards him. He clapped a hand to Bruce's shoulder. "I'm glad we've reached an understanding. Mine. All mine."
Bruce shook his head, and Steve understood what that simple gesture meant. The 'I'll acknowledge your contribution even if I still maintain you're a twat about it'. Steve had felt just way that about Tony countless times.
As one, their team flooded towards the stairwell rather than the elevator and started the climb towards the third floor. SHIELD was only one department of the NYPD, and of that department they possessed little enough space to conduct their pursuing endeavours. It wasn't that the rest of the department and countless other agencies didn't have their ears open, eyes peeled and noses dropped to the scent of anything HYDRA. It was just that only SHIELD, only those on the basement floor, and a smattering of other less than consistently participating members, focused their attention so solely.
That, and Steve knew they were the best. At what they did, anyway. Pride and a little resignation drove the understanding rather than arrogance, for it was impossible not to be when such pursuit was all they were. Steve had slept at headquarters more times than he cared to admit or remember, and most of those times it hadn't been an intentional sleepover. He'd woken with the impression of computer keys on his cheeks for most of those times, too.
The Central NYPD building – one of countless buildings dotted throughout the city and Manhattan alone – doubled as a police station in the same way that a five-star restaurant doubled as a fast-food joint. The halls were long and a myriad of sharp corners and countless doors. Overhead lights beamed down in constant, unwavering illumination, only enhancing the glow of sunlight penetrating through every reinforced window where they stood in place of walls. Rich, polished floors – marble was only in the primary entrance hall but the timber was almost as grand – pervaded every room, and even the air seemed to sting with the scent of grandeur and importance.
Compared to the SHIELD basement, the hangar where Steve and his colleagues worked, it was like the palace atop the servant's quarters. No one in the NYPD made any attempt to hide the fact, despite acknowledging that each and every member of SHIELD from the technologically-minded Vision to the bark-is-greater-than-his-bite Tony could fell any opposing officers in two seconds flat. Steve considered it a part of his job description to visit the department's gym just to remind them of the fact.
SHIELD was unsuccessful in their pursuit of HYDRA, but its members were far from incompetent.
Faces turned with curiosity, peering through doorways as their team passed but quickly withdrew their attention the moment Steve spared a glance in return. That was the way it always was. They were outcasts, but regret for that fact was overshadowed by a fierce desire to fulfil the greater good. Or it was for Steve, at least.
"Remind me again why we're not taking the elevator?" Clint asked as they made their way through the second floor and up the stairwell to the third. "They have them installed for a reason, you know."
"Strength in numbers, my friend," Rhodie said with a glance over his shoulder. As was fairly typical of him, Rhodie was the one who led them to their meetings. He'd been part of SHIELD for the longest out of all of them with the exception of Fury himself. That didn't mean he was any less reluctant to endure their meetings, but it did make his resignation less resistant in coming.
"Meaning?" Clint asked.
"He's calling you fat because the elevator wouldn't be able to hold us all," Tony supplied.
Clint was silent for a moment, staring at the back of Tony's unturned head. Then, "You know, Tony, I'm wearing my hearing aids."
"Is that so?"
"So I do actually know what you said."
"Good for you."
"Are you calling me fat?"
"Actually, muscle weighs more than fat, so…"
Steve shook his head, felt more than saw Sam roll his eyes at his side and knew that behind him Nat's lips twitched in a nearly invisible smirk. There was truth to Tony's words, even if he did joke. If nothing else, the rigorous training that Nat challenged Clint to on a regular basis left its mark.
Steve appreciated the slight lightening of the mood, however. He knew that Tony had known Clint would be able to hear him; Clint never attended their meetings with Fury without his aids, though at times Nat pondered aloud that she could always pinpoint the exact point that he turned them off in those very meetings. At least Sam was smiling slightly, and Bruce was patting Clint's shoulder in commiseration, and Wanda's rigidly straight back had eased slightly. Wanda had never been particularly comfortable in her attendance. Steve put it down to the fact that she was still relatively new.
Conference Room Three was an identical copy of the two on the floor below and the seven upon varying floors above. A wide room, it was one of the few that wasn't ringed with windows instead of walls, dark paint creating a serious and focused ambiance, and the spread of a wide screen like an all-seeing Big Brother opposite the door. The room itself was dominated by a table as polished as the floors in the building's entrance hall, and the reflection of Fury at its head was almost a perfect mirror.
"You're slow," he said without any real aggression, though the moment Steve stepped through the door he could see that he was right in that regard at least. The room was far from empty and they were perhaps a little late.
"Wonderful," Sam muttered at his side and in spite of himself, Steve couldn't help but agree.
Seated around the room, around the wide conference table, were five cleanly and formally suited members of the Asgard Squad. Steve didn't quite know why they called themselves – or were perhaps called – the 'Asgard' Squad. Probably for the same reason that SHIELD was called SHIELD and each of its members had their own secondary nicknames. For that same reason, Steve had come to realise that their department of the NYPD seemed rather taken by the use of acronyms. And nicknames. And mythological references, as was the case with the Squad.
Thor was their team leader. Thor, and after knowing the giant of a man for years, Steve still couldn't overcome his incredulity that he'd actually called himself after a Norse god. It surely wasn't his real names – surely – and yet Steve was oblivious as to what it would be otherwise. Even Tony hadn't known, or hadn't admitted he'd known.
"That's definitely his name, Steve," Tony had said when Steve had asked, because if anyone were to know it would be him. "Thor. Just like Sif's name is Sif, and Fandral's named is Fandral, and Volstagg's name is –"
"Yeah, thanks for the reality check, I get it," Steve had replied, though he really hadn't. He hadn't been quite sure what to make of the slight smile on Tony's lips either; was he teasing him for his ignorance in believing, or for believing the names to be false at all? Steve didn't know and he didn't ask. He assumed Tony would likely tease him if he did that, too, and teasing was often impossible to differentiate from mockery.
As it was, SHIELD and the Asgard Squad had worked together in close association for almost as long as Steve had been a part of the former. While the squad weren't exclusively focused upon HYDRA, their sniffing after the pervasive drug lords that arose like an unshakeably bad smell throughout New York required involvement. HYDRA was nothing if not a key player in the black market. Steve didn't exactly regret their necessary company but…
"You have arrived," Thor boomed, and he may as well have been using a loudspeaker for the volume of his voice. Thor was… well, he was more than simply big. Bold, brash and beefy were similar descriptive words Steve had heard used for him, and he couldn't help but agree with them, if only in the privacy of his own mind. "I had thought you would never reach the conference."
The way Thor spoke always reinforced the appropriateness of his namesake. Whether it was his Swedish background – something Steve supposed had at least a little to do with his naming choice – or something else, he always spoke in clipped, clear and distinct words that seemed to have jumped out of a medieval history textbook. Steve admired Thor in a way, if primarily because he was good at his job and held himself with a respectable countenance, but his speech? Archaic didn't even begin to cover it sometimes.
"Sorry for the delay," Vision said, as formally apologetic as ever. He was always the first to apologise for a perceived slight. "We might have embedded ourselves a little deeply in our work and lost track of time."
"That's not necessarily a bad thing," Hogun said, the lean man as immaculately sleek as ever nodding his head in understanding. "Not at all."
"We only just got here ourselves," Fandral said, clasping his hands comfortably on the table before himself. "Don't sweat it."
"Your courtesy is appreciated," Vision said, speaking for all of them. Or perhaps more correctly, speaking for himself. Steve regretted laxness, but when it came to the Asgard Squad… to say they and SHIELD rubbed one another the wrong way at times would be one way of describing their relationship. One of many.
"While the mutual exchange of apologies is lovely and all, can we maybe get a move on?" Sif asked, her tone as sharp and direct as always was. She spared an almost deferential glance towards Thor before turning towards where Fury sat, quiet and watchful in his high-backed seat. "We don't have all that much time."
"Time?" Steve asked, skirting the table alongside the rest of his SHIELD partners. "Something's come up?"
"You could say that," Fury said, fastening the one eye visible around his eye patch upon Steve. "Take a seat, Captain. We've got a discussion to start."
Overlooking the use of his nickname, Steve did just that. He found himself expectedly between Sam and Nat, and only when the squeaking of seats and the undivided attention of everyone in the room was turned towards Fury did the man speak once more.
He straightened first. He propped his hands, fingers locked, on the table before him. He shifted slightly himself and then seemed to make the effort to meet everyone's gaze in the room one by one. Steve didn't mind the wait; he rarely struggled to grasp patience, and certainly not for the kind of mind games that Fury played. It was Thor who he wagered would be the most likely to crack and demand a continuation of their meeting. Or Tony, perhaps, because Tony wasn't quite brash with his interruptions but similarly often struggled to hold his tongue.
Both managed, however, which was certainly something, and Fury finally deemed them put through the ringer enough to continue. "We've found ourselves a mole."
For a moment, all Steve could do was stare. Those words, those five words, were more profound and telling than any others Fury could have voiced. Unsurprisingly yet detachedly, Steve realised he'd stopped breathing. Stopped, until he found his tongue and spoke. "A mole? And actual mole this time, not just some –"
"He speaks the truth," Thor said, cutting across Steve with his typical thunderous voice. "We have ourselves… a mole."
Something about Thor's expression, his tone itself, gave Steve pause. Thor was all about the chase, about doing his job and getting it done right, and Steve could understand that. Yet his expression was one that bespoke personal investment. Something about this mole clearly struck close to home. Maybe it had been bad chase to snag entrap them, or the mole was a difficult character who –
"What's the catch?" Rhodie asked before Steve could formulate further question. He and each of the rest of Steve's colleagues had clearly noticed something was afoot. "So close behind the last lead –"
"That amounted to nothing and it was always going to," Fury said, and Steve felt Wanda shift in her seat several down from him. Really, Fury could have been a little kinder to the girl. She'd provided them with more leads in the last year than they'd had in the three prior. Wanda didn't speak up for herself, however, and Steve didn't get the chance to and Fury continued. "It's my regret that we have to move so quickly, but this leak – if we act quickly we might actually be able to get something this time.
"So then what's the catch?" Clint repeated Rhodie's words. He wasn't looking at Fury but instead had his gaze locked upon Thor across the table. "Something's not right. What is it?"
Thor made to speak but Fury beat him to it. He was likely the only person that would actually manage to smother Thor's attempts simply because he was so unwavering. "Tomorrow night, Friday the second, we have intelligence to suggest that there will be an exchange of firearms between two parties in covert circumstances. One of these parties are members of HYDRA."
"Firearms?" Nat said flatly. "Really?"
"I'm not comfortable with firearms," Wanda said, shifting uncomfortably. "And I thought HYDRA dealt primarily in the drug trade?"
"They do," Thor said. "Hence we are here at all."
"Thanks for the update," Sam said in little more than a mutter. "Wouldn't have known it otherwise."
"A little respect would be nice," Sif said, all but glaring at Sam. "We're dealing you intel. Appreciate it."
"We're sorry, my lady," Tony said, mockery distinct in his tone. Steve wasn't surprised that he would step up to Sam's defence. He might tease them incessantly in the SHIELD basement, but an outside threat was a mutual foe. "Did we offend your delicate sensibilities?"
Volstagg, hitherto silent and keenly attentive, grumbled in what sounded like a growl. "You watch what you say, Stark. This is no joking matter."
"Who said we were joking?"
"Firearms are not laughing matter either," Thor added.
"Yes, thank you for that update," Rhodie said, the blankness of his expression deceptively mild. "We as police officers wouldn't have realised otherwise, ignorant as we are."
"Well, you certainly act ignorant much of the time," Sif sniffed.
"Ignorance is relative," Vision said. "I'm sure there is much that you are also ignorant of that we aren't."
Volstagg growled again. "You trying for funny talk? 'Cause it's not funny."
"Not at all, I only meant –"
"He was not," Wanda said sharply. "You'd do well to pull your head in."
"You're awfully young to be spouting orders, little girl," Sif said, lips thinning.
"She's not so young," Nat drawled.
"She's practically a child still," Thor huffed. "And you speak of ignorance?"
"Can we all pipe the fuck down?"
Like a knife slicing through the rising aggression, Fury's words silenced them all. He'd always had that effect upon them, SHIELD and the Asgard Squad alike. It didn't matter that he cursed at times in such a fluent manner that Steve found his vocabulary swelling, or that he accompanied his words with a silencing glare. If nothing else, Fury was direct; Steve wasn't the only one to respect that directness and meet it with the attendance it deserved.
Fury's glare grazed around the room. He, like Steve, like all of them, acknowledged that SHIELD and the Squad didn't get along. If there was one of them, perhaps, they might manage; Steve had worked alongside Thor all of once out in the field, and when it was in the midst of action he was agreeable enough. In a conference room was a different story entirely, but they had to make it work because this…
They had a mole.
Throughout the argument, likely induced as much by Fury's words as the Asgard Squad's company, Steve's mind had been ticking over the possibility. A big part of him wanted to leap upon Fury with a torrent of questions. Intelligence? A lead? What was the information? Tomorrow night? An arms dealing? It definitely involved HYDRA?
And on top of that, a mole? Who was it? Where had they come from? Could they be trusted? Who were they in league with? Most importantly to Steve: was it worth using the information they could provide if they were a less than redeemable character?
Steve had a flurry of questions that needed answering and had barely heard the grumbles of argument around him. He was more than inclined to let Fury take the stage, which he did with the ease and fluidity of a practiced professional.
Once more, Fury drew his single-eyed gaze around the room, the eye patch over his left eye glaring just as fiercely to silence those before him. He met Steve stare for stare for a moment before speaking once more. "We don't have time for petty squabbles. A pissing party is for toddlers and schoolboys. I would have thought better of law enforcement officials."
No one looked chastised, but that didn't mean they weren't. Steve had grown to the understanding that, as he himself had, those currently seated around the table were very good at concealing their discomfort. With some things, anyway. Less confrontational things.
When Fury apparently deemed their silence to be enduring enough, he continued. "Alright. So. Getting down to it. Friday night at approximately oh-one hundred hours, an exchange of firearms is set to go down. It's our job to stop it and apprehend anyone on the scene."
"Where?" Nat said, and she was all professionalism once more.
"Dogend Docks," Sif said, any animosity she'd held similarly disappeared from her tone. "Bay Three."
"That's very specific," Tony said bluntly.
"Our mole is specific," Hogun replied.
"Our orders?" Steve asked, gaze still fastened upon Fury. "Or do we even have any? How specific is the intelligence concerning this exchange?"
Personally, Steve preferred to fly with his own orders. He didn't think he was quite the leader to warrant the title of 'Captain', but he was more at ease when it was his own plan put into action. The specificity of the intelligence they were afforded would be a dependent factor as well; the more specific the more of a plan was needed.
"Even in HYDRA, apparently the communal exchange of information isn't exactly equal," Fury said. He leaned forwards in his seat slightly. "What we know is this. The time. The place. The exchange."
"The numbers?" Rhodie asked. "You said it was a covert exchange."
"Numbers are minimal, but there is little enough information to be gleaned besides this fact," Thor said, and as he continued, the edge of his accent crept more fully into his voice. Distress, Steve thought. He seemed just slightly distressed. "Our source tells us that the interfacing parties will be small."
"Small?" Clint said, raising an eyebrow.
"Small."
"The size of a party means nothing if those who are a part of it are competent enough," Nat murmured.
Steve silently agreed to her remark, but as he stared across the table towards Thor, the burly man's lips thinned and brow settled in a frown, concern niggled. "This mole," Steve asked slowly. "Who –"
"Are we're all going?" Bruce interrupted, and a glance his way saw him twisted in his seat to regard Fury unblinkingly. "All of us?"
"That might not be appropriate," Wanda said curtly. "I dislike firearms."
"Join the club," Hogun said.
"Because I'm just putting it out there," Bruce continued, and Steve knew what he was going to say even before he said it. He knew almost to the word. "I'm a microbiologist. I don't do the fighting and apprehending."
"Which there will definitely be," Nat said with a nod.
"You can't tell me that a punching bag didn't feel the imprint of your fists after Tuesday night, Banner," Tony said, sparing him a glance as he raised both eyebrows.
"I'm not a fighter," Bruce said stubbornly.
"Not everyone," Fury said before Tony could counter Bruce once more. "Banner, you'll stay here. Vision, you too."
"Understandably," Vision said with a slight inclination of his head.
"Wanda, I want you on the line the whole time, do you understand me? You'll be in charge of our communication."
"Sir," Wanda said, tipping her own head. Steve caught the hint of a relieved sigh.
"The rest of you, though." Fury swept a finger alongside his gaze around the table. "You'll. Work. Together."
"I think that's easier said than done," Rhodie muttered, to the agreeing nods of more than just a few of the SHIELD members.
Steve frowned. He understood Rhodie's words and agreed with them to a degree, but in this situation they did need to work together. And he might not work alongside the Asgard Squad all that much but he knew that necessity dictated they must. The Squad were good, after all. Unlike SHIELD's frustratingly regrettable struggle with HYDRA, the Squad had been reputedly successful time and time again with their drug busts. They were practically sniffer dogs.
"The more of us that work together as capable officials the more of a chance we have of overcoming them," Steve said, stating the obvious that he knew each member of his team already understood. "So long as the Asgard Squad has no objections?"
Thor shook his head. His fists were clenched as he rested them on the table before him. "We have no problem. My warriors –"
"Warriors?" Sam snorted.
" – are more adept at apprehending drug dealers and the lords of such matters, but we are capable of versatility. We all have the capacity to fight and wield a pistol."
"That's very heartening," Nat said from Steve's side, and he wondered that she could do so and keep a straight face. Thor was – well, he was definitely archaic. "We'll be glad to have you aboard."
"Or you aboard for us," Sif said, primness to her tone and the arch of a single eyebrow.
"Or us for you," Nat said obligingly.
"So wonderful to see you playing nicely for once," Fury said.
Steve heard the satisfaction in his voice despite the mockery. He turned towards Fury just as the man's face hardened from any expressiveness he might have temporarily worn. Then he asked as he'd meant to before, "This mole. He's trustworthy?"
"No mole can really be trustworthy," Clint said.
"As trustworthy as moles come, then," Steve corrected. "More importantly, can his intelligence be trusted?"
A ripple of shifting quivered through the Asgard Squad and Steve reflexively glanced their way. Discomfort abounded, but it was Thor that his gaze rested upon. It was Thor who replied, too, his tone clipped and accent thickening once more. "He can be trusted as far as any mole."
"Which is not far," Sif added, "but…"
"Trusted enough," Thor finished. "I have faith in him."
"Faith?" Steve asked, frowning. The way Thor spoke made it sound definitely personal. "Faith in a deviant? I hate to sound sceptical, but –"
"Do you?" Tony prodded.
" – faith isn't usually something I'd associate with moles," Steve continued, ignoring the interruption. "Once more, I regret that I might sound sceptical but –"
"Do you?" Tony repeated.
"- is it really appropriate to use information from a personal source?"
"Personal," Clint echoed. "You know this guy from outside of work, then, huh?"
'Outside of work' in anyone else would have been a casual association, but the connotations of work were entirely different in law enforcement. For Thor, his mole could be anyone from a drug lord or a runner to an old work friend who'd been lead astray. Steve had confidence enough that Thor would do the right thing as he'd been doing for years in the force, but even so. Personal matters shouldn't be associated with work. Not in their business.
"I do," Thor said, his expression growing harder by the minute. "That I do."
"Pray tell, don't keep us waiting with baited breath," Tony said with an exasperated sigh.
"He's my step brother."
For a moment, no one spoke. No one even seemed to breathe. Steve stared at Thor and it was all he could do to bite back an incredulous, "Please, you've got to be kidding me." It's not that it didn't happen; quite often, and more often than he'd care to admit, Steve knew that families of law enforcers ended up on the wrong side of the fence. That it had to happen to Thor, however…
"Futu-i," Wanda cursed.
"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sam said.
Clint leaned back in his seat, loosing a long exhale. "Well, I guess I should have seen that coming."
"How would you have possibly seen that coming?" Vision asked curiously.
"Yes, you should be so ashamed at your near-sightedness, Clint," Nat said, lips twitching.
"And so the plot thickens," Tony added, because he never had been one to remain apart from contributing to a conversation. "Absolutely wonderful. Is it 'bring the family along to work' day?"
"Tony," Steve said shortly.
"I'm just saying. Does he have a name? A glowing reputation to add to his resume of a mole?"
Thor's expression was positively stony. "My brother Loki is many things, but in this instance I do not believe he is lying."
Silence spread once more. The Asgard Squad eyed the members of SHIELD but Steve barely noticed them. He stared at Thor and it was all he could do not to shake his head incredulously. Really, a name like Loki? With a brother Thor? That was just –
'"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Sam said once more.
"Ha," Tony barked in a laugh. "I should have guessed that."
"Do not make a mockery of my brother, Stark," Thor grumbled. "I have little tolerance for such indiscretion."
"Your brother the mole, you mean?"
"Alright, Princesses, enough," Fury said, inserting himself into the exchange with his usual ease. "As wonderfully entertaining as this is – and really, it is – we have a case and a deal to blow. Shall we?"
In an instant, Steve's attention was focused. He could feel that like-minded attentiveness spread through those on either side of him too, straightening the backs and sharpening gazes, and as one the topic of the unfortunately-named Loki and fraternal relationships was dropped. Steve swung his gaze to the screen as it flared to life with white windows already clicked open and pictures from various scenes. From the docks, Steve noted absently. His attention jumped quickly from image to image, cataloguing and committing to memory.
"What we're looking at here is our primary location. Now, from what our mole has suggested, we can expect HYDRA at least to have some security in place. From our last encounter, Asgardians, we can similarly expect to find them in possession of sub-machine guns; Heckler and Koch MP5 if our analysts have any credit to their names. There'll just as likely be…"
The docks were dark. Very dark, and for more than the depths of night in which Steve found himself. There were no streetlights but for those at a distance, and Bay Three was a ghost house, empty and yawning and silent. Along the docks that hadn't been used for their intended purposes for years, the absence of movement, of life, was starkly apparent.
New York City was rarely still, rarely silent, yet that night at Dogend Docks it was certainly so.
Or at least it was when Steve first arrived. It hadn't changed much in the last hour that he'd been staked out, wedged between a pair of crate stacks that towered higher than his head, but Steve knew it would, because the bust was going to happen. It was going to happen, despite the fact that each and every single time he and his team had attempted to pin HYDRA they'd slithered loose.
This time. This time would be different. It would be different to how it had been barely two days ago in the abandoned warehouse that shouldn't have been abandoned. Two days… it hardly felt like such a short time. So much had happened since.
But Steve wouldn't think about that. He wouldn't consider the plan that he and his team, he and the Asgard Squad, had sketched out and committed to memory like lore. He wouldn't think about the stats that Fury had presented to them, of the weapons that would be used, of the speculated numbers, of the similarly speculated items of transaction.
Firearms. It was hardly new for HYDRA but it had been sometime since they'd gotten wind of a bust of such a nature. HYDRA reputedly focused their efforts on drug manufacture and dispensing. Steve didn't think about any of that either. He didn't think about it because he knew it all, and to think when he was in the field had never been a good idea for him.
Instinct. In the field, it's just as important to rely on instinct and reflexes as it is upon planning.
In his years on the force, Steve had learned that much.
No sound filtered through his earpiece. None had been heard for minutes on end, and when it did come it was from Wanda back at headquarters, or Clint where he sat in their getaway car should the need for a chase or quick departure be needed. Neither had said anything for a time, and Steve knew why. They were counting down the minutes just as he was. The seconds, even.
Two minutes.
Steve shifted on his haunches, swapping the knee that touched the ground to steady himself. It wasn't quite cold, despite the early spring casting a chilled rather than lukewarm ambiance to the night, but Steve doubted he would have noticed either way. The thickness of his Kevlar vest, thick, tight-fitted trousers, and dark jacket over the top was insulation enough.
One minute.
He adjusted his hand on his pistol. Service pistol, standard issue, as always. It wasn't wonderful, wasn't exceptional, and Steve had shot with better before in simple practice. But the Glock was familiar and the G17 shot well enough; he'd been using Glocks for years. The weight of a handgun, the feel of the metal beneath his fingers, the grip not quite cold for the pressure of his hands – it was reassuring in a way that Steve detachedly appreciated.
Not calming, however. Steve wouldn't be calm. His heart wouldn't slow and his senses wouldn't ease from their sharpness until it was over. Until those HYDRA bastards were caught. It was idealistic to think they could all be caught, but Steve could dream.
Thirty seconds.
"We're on the countdown," Clint said into Steve's ear, his voice just slightly distorted through the earpiece. "Taking thirty."
"If the timing's exact," Fandral muttered a second later. "How punctual can we expect criminals to be?"
"When considering a weapons exchange of potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars?" Wanda murmured. "Perhaps a little. Just this once."
They're always punctual, Steve thought to himself as he glanced to his watch. The muted green of the digital seconds was barely visible through the darkness. They were damn punctual in their escape from the warehouse.
"Fifteen seconds," Clint said.
Steve shifted again. He edged forwards just slightly, silently, and peered around the edge of his concealing crate. He knew that, like himself, the rest of his team, the rest of Thor's team, were stationed at various points along the docks, congregating around Bay Three and thinning in their numbers in either direction. There weren't many of them, and they didn't call for the backup that other divisions might have deemed necessary, but they would win. They would beat them. This time, they definitely would, because they were the better force.
They had to.
"Five… four… three… two…"
Clint trailed off into silence, and that silence, the silence of the docks, the silence that was absent in just about anywhere else in New York City, pervaded once more. Steve peered around the edge of his crate into the inky darkness, the Bay and the empty warehouse that bore not a glimmer of movement. He knew they were there somewhere, knew they would come because they couldn't not. How could they not?
"Where…?" a voice murmured, and Steve was too focused on the darkness, the stillness, to even discern whom it was.
"They'll be here. Surely, they will."
"His intelligence wasn't faulty. I know it."
"They'll come."
And yet nothing.
Steve shifted once more. The tightness of his muscles protested to his unerring tension. The thudding of his heartbeat, a constant sound in the back of his head, grew with every passing second. And with each of those seconds, Steve felt his frustration grow. He was a patient person but this… six years and nothing? And finally a lead that should have been something and yet –
"You've gotta be shitting me," Sam said, a growl chasing his words.
"Maybe they're just late," someone said.
"HYDRA are unerringly punctual," Nat said curtly. "It must be a –"
A gunshot sounded. The crack, the echo, the rebounds of that echo – it could be nothing else. Steve was on his feet in an instant. The darkness wasn't shaken, no stillness alleviated, and yet –
"Fucking assholes!" Tony barked, his voice startlingly loud through the earpiece.
"Shit! Shit, shit, shit, not Bay Three." A voice that sounded like Rhodie. "Six. Bay Six, they're –"
Steve was running. It was dark, there were smears of hurdles in his way, but he was running. Heartbeat pounding nearly as fast as his steps, he tore away form the warehouse at Bay Three, and all but flew southward to where Rhodie was positioned.
Not Bay Three.
Bay Six.
Tony had said it right – the fucking assholes. Steve just wasn't wholly certain which people he or Tony was referring to.
He kept his gun held tightly as he ran, lowered but ready. He all but skidded around another pile of crates and it was to the sound of others' footsteps, the frantic tread of his team, that Steve tore down the docks. The blackness of the air was alleviated only slightly by the grey tinge of distant streetlamps, but it was enough. For that greyness, Steve shed the last of his distant uncertainty of tread and launched himself across the concrete grounds between the Bays.
Warehouses passed in a flash.
The sound of gunfire sounded once more.
Once, twice, then in rapid succession. Of course it would be an arms race.
And Steve ran.
He'd barely caught sight of Bay Four, barely torn past Bay Five to catch a glimpse of the silent warehouse all but identical to that Steve had been crouching beside for a whole hour, when the figures appeared. Not his teammates, Steve knew; he knew because they barked their positions, their actions, who they chased, with the efficiency of trained officers. Even the Asgard Squad knew the drill. But those figures, clad as darkly as they and wielding weapons just the same – Steve knew who they were.
HYDRA, he silently seethed, picking up his pace to a flat out sprint. You won't get away this time.
Shots were fired. Actual shots, and it was dangerous, but Steve dove into the calamitous midst nonetheless. It was only by instinct that he ducked as a faceless, black-clad figure spun in his direction, pistol raised and cracked another shot. Steve dropped to the ground, and someone cursed behind him as the deliberate slam of a body bespoke their similar dodge. Not a felling, Steve knew; that curse had been in anger, not pain.
And then he was on his feet again. Steve was standing, and he was running because HYDRA – dammit, HYDRA! – were making a break for escape, for the route away from the docks and they were getting away. Steve saw it. He saw those black smears of movement as they flooded into the night, disappearing behind crates and into the deeper darkness of shadows. Abruptly, he didn't think about the deal. He didn't even consider whether the transaction had taken place and what it would mean if it had. He didn't truly know who HYDRA dealt with and just how worthy of his infuriated attention they were.
It didn't matter. He would damn-well catch one tonight. He would.
They fled and Steve chased them. There was none in particular he sought, but he sped in their wake nonetheless. Steve was a fast runner, he knew; he could outdistance any of the rest of his team. 'Stupidly long legs' Sam always teased him, like it was a bad thing.
It wasn't. Steve knew it wasn't, because though figures peeled off into the darkness, he gained upon one. Upon one in particular, and that one carried a weight that could have been weapons, could have been cash, could have been enough evidence for a conviction. Steve was so close he could almost taste it.
He would have caught them. Whoever they were, Steve knew he would have caught them, and he nearly did as the figure darted towards the nearest streetlight – why the light? – before making a sudden break to the deeper shadows that swallowed the entrance into the docks. Steve followed, jaw clenched so tight that he could hardly breath. He almost would have been able to reach out and catch the escapee.
Except that was when the bodyguard appeared.
It was to be expected. Loki had apparently informed them that all HYDRA transactions were accompanied by at least as many bodyguards as there were transactors. Steve should have expected it, but he hadn't. When the figure sprung into existence before him, seemingly rising from the shadows like a wrath itself, Steve nearly ploughed into them. It was only sheer dumb luck that prevented him from doing so, and that luck, he would reflect, saved his life.
The man – for it was distinctly a man – came at his in a fluid rush. Not with a gun but a knife. In a series of slashes, somehow Steve found himself stumbling backwards and actually dropping his Glock. He dropped it, which was impossible but somehow happened. And he didn't even have a second to lunge for it before the man was on him again.
A slash of a knife, the thud of a bladed edge striking his Kevlar and actually sinking in. Steve didn't feel it, but he was still shocked. Stunned, even. Horrified, because it was so close. Then he flowed into reflexive action.
Steve knew how to fight. He and his team practiced on one another in the safety of the department gym. They were good at fighting. Great, even. Sam always said that Steve himself was an exceptional fighter, just like he was an exceptional runner. "Stupidly long arms," he always said. Steve was thankful for his stupid arms in that moment. It was likely only that which saved him.
He blocked in a stumble. He dodged in a wayward lunge. He ducked a swinging slice that he swore took off strands of his hair, and he didn't breathe for a second as he did so. Glimpses of the man were all he caught – an impression of dark closes and fitted as his own, of shaggy dark hair, of goggles that were… were they night goggles? Steve didn't know. He didn't' get a second to double check, and hoped to God that they weren't because he was clearly already at a disadvantage in their fight. The man didn't just wield a knife. He was a weapon himself.
A blow to the chest. A slice to his face that managed to cut his cheek. A cuff to the side of his head with what must have been the hilt of the blade because not even a fist could leave Steve's head ringing so badly. In seconds of their confrontation, Steve knew that he was outmatched. Maybe in another time, in other circumstance when he wasn't so surprised by the sudden retaliation, he would have held his own. But then? Then, Steve knew he would lose.
That he managed to get one punch in, a fierce punch to the face that sent the man stumbling, was more a product of luck than skill. The push-kick Steve followed it with rocked him further but only just. It was enough to get his breath back.
For a second, anyway. Only for a second, because after that second Steve forgot how to breathe entirely. He forgot about the docks, about his orders, his duty and responsibilities. He even might have forgot about HYDRA for a second because…
The goggles clattered to the ground. The man straightened, and for a heartbeat his was thinly illuminated by the glow of the street lamp at Steve's back. Face pale, blank, focused, the man stared at Steve for all of a second. The blade of his knife reflected the light in a flash and for that moment, everything seemed to stop.
Steve didn't breathe, but somehow he still managed to utter a single, choked word.
"Bucky?"
A/N: Well! This was a long first chapter! And, as it happens, all ensuing chapters will be just as long. I hope that's not a problem?
Anyway, I hope also that you enjoyed it so far. Please let me know with a review. Thanks for reading!