Steve had started running the second he saw the twins' fellow escapee slip down the wall. The man eerily reminded him of the survivors of the 107th after they got out of the Hydra camp: hurt, thin, dehydrated, and still determined. Steve isn't a professional, but Sam is only half a step behind him.
"I don't see anything immediately life threatening, but we should get him on an IV ASAP." Bucky is behind them, in case some Hydra flunky isn't as unconscious as they seem. Steve wonders what he would do without the two of them. He's self-aware enough to know it would be bad.
"His name's Genma." Wanda had come up next to them, "He got us out. Protected us."
"Hey kid, it's not your fault, okay?" Sam always knows what to say. "Some of these injuries are days old. He's just strained himself too far. Can you help me get him to the jet?" Sam gives Steve a look, to let him know that they'll handle getting the man settled. A glance at Clint shows he's got Pietro. Kids taken care of, Steve turns his attention towards the rest of the team and the Hydra base.
"Stark, can you figure out what the hell Hydra was doing here?"
"Am I the smartest person in the room? Don't answer that. It's rhetorical and the answer is obvious."
"Good. Thor stick with him please."
"What?! I do not need a babysitter!"
"Not a babysitter; backup. We haven't cleared the base yet, Stark."
"Come Man of Iron! Let us hunt the evil of this locality so we may destroy it at its source!"
"Alright, alright. Just don't fry the computers this time Point Break." Stark wanders off.
Steve can see that Sam and Wanda are getting Genma to the jet. Then he moves to help Natasha restrain the unconscious Hydra foot soldiers. Bucky follows.
Sam didn't tell Steve, but the guy – Genma – isn't doing well. He didn't lie, there's nothing immediately life-threatening, but dehydration and malnutrition aren't what Sam is worried about. Genma's ribs are cracked, his fingers need to be splinted, and Sam wants to make sure he doesn't have complications from what looks to be repeated head trauma.
Sam is a field-medic and a counselor; he keeps people alive long enough to get to a real doctor, then he helps them recover. Knowing Dr. Banner was waiting on the quinjet was a relief. It had been hard to convince Dr. Banner to stay back and stay calm while rescuing the twins, but it was worth it now. Bruce Banner may have a [few] PhD[s] instead of a MD, but he's got the training and enough practice to qualify. Sam would rather have Dr. Banner check him over than a whole medical team at a hospital.
He had actually said that once, and Dr. Banner had blushed a red as bright as the Hulk's green.
With the twins safely napping in the next room, watched over by the best sniper in the world, Sam and Dr. Banner can focus on the young man who freed them. Dr. Banner – "call me Bruce, please Sam" – agreed with his assessment of their patient. Right now, he's using a Stark Industries handheld scanner – "Tony, did you make me a tricorder!?" – to check Genma for internal bleeding, especially in the brain.
"This is odd." Too much experience has told Sam that it rarely ends well when scientists use that tone.
"Odd bad?"
"No, he's going to be okay once we get some nutrients into him, but I'd like to do a full MRI. The tricorder doesn't have the power to give me a more in-depth analysis. I'll have to ask Tony about auxiliary power sources…"
"Then what's odd?" Keeping scientists on track should not be in Sam's job description.
"Oh right. It looks almost like there's activity in what should be an unused portion of the brain."
"Meaning?"
"We could be looking at someone with powers like the twins."
It makes sense. Hydra is obsessed with the 'new world order' and all that BS. Kidnapping some poor guy with unusual talents is exactly something they would do. A terrifying thought occurs to Sam, that Genma might not have had those abilities before Hydra got ahold of him.
It takes a second, but Sam realizes he's spiraling into what-ifs that aren't helpful. Dr. Banner is just suggesting the young man might have abilities, not proving one way or the other. Getting himself back on track, Sam refocuses on the patient's well-being.
"What about his fingers and ribs?"
"You splinted his fingers well and his ribs aren't displaced."
"Good." If they had been displaced, Genma would have required surgery.
It takes Steve longer than he'd have liked to get everything settled at the Hydra base. Rounding up prisoners and turning them over to SHIELD, then debriefing is always a chore. But he gets it done, with Bucky shadowing him the whole way.
They used to do this during the war. Take out a Hydra base, free prisoners, gather any information of value, round up the thugs, etc. Steve wonders what Sam would say about this making him nostalgic. Probably something sensible and accepting.
As if his thoughts summoned the man, Sam comes round the corner. Not like Steve was intentionally searching for him or anything.
"How are the twins?" They'd been in Clint's care, last Steve saw.
"They're asleep for now. Wanda wants to be woken up when Genma does."
"How is he doing?" Steve had tracked the kids' path back through the base to their cell. They had left a pretty clear trail of Hydra foot-soldiers. Those thugs also told a lot about the fighting ability of their opponents. Or at least, their injuries did. Most of the Hydra agents looked like they got on Natasha's bad side, not like they fought the twins.
"I have him sedated and on an IV right now. As long as he doesn't strain his ribs or fingers, he'll recover quickly." Sam gets that expression that means one of the team is doing something weird and Sam is reevaluating being the resident 'normal-person.' "Dr. Banner found something – and I quote – 'odd' on the scans."
"Bad odd or good odd?" It never bodes well when a scientist uses that word.
"You know, I said damn near the same thing." Sam doesn't look that concerned though. "Neutral odd. Our guest may have abilities like the twins. I figure it's why they grabbed him."
It makes sense. Steve has to resist the urge to go check on Bucky. Bucky is completely safe and is monitoring the situation at the Hydra base through JARVIS.
"Can you tell how long they had him?" If Hydra was trying to recreate the Winter Soldier…
"Assuming the age of his bruises mark the beginning of capture, I'd say they grabbed him three days ago. Except I'm pretty sure he's got accelerated healing." Sam looks disconcerted again.
"How can you tell?" Steve's not sure he actually wants to know.
"Wanda says he aligned his broken and dislocated fingers right before breaking them out." They share a cringe born of experience. "On the x-rays, it looks like they've had a few days to begin the healing process."
"What does that mean for him?"
"Again, you'd need to talk to Dr. Banner for specifics, but it means that he's probably been there closer to a week."
"At least they didn't have the poor guy longer." But it does get Steve thinking.
"Oh no. You've got the face."
"Face, what face? I do not do a face."
"Steve, you always do a face when you know something you think is too horrifying to say out loud."
"I do not."
"The Winter Soldier is your best friend and trying to kill us? Face. Hydra infiltrated SHIELD? Face. Clint took the last of Stark's coffee? Face. Somebody messed with Natasha's stuff? Face."
Steve has to laugh a little. Sam has a point. Everyone who knows him says he's normally pretty easy to read. Doesn't mean he can't clean up at poker though. It surprises Stark every time, which is hilarious.
"Alright, alright. I have a face."
"Yes you do. Now take your face and tell me what's causing it."
"Inside that base, it looks like the guards pissed off Nat. And they were like that before we got there." Steve doesn't want to say it, but somebody has to. "If Hydra didn't teach someone to fight like that, who did?"
"Shit." Sam hadn't thought of that. He hadn't wanted to think about that. His life was so much less complicated before some overachieving troll came running into his life with an "on your left." Sam honestly wouldn't change it for the world. Today at least.
Having Hydra out there is bad enough, but an unknown organization with the resources to train someone up to Natasha's level? There's no way that's going to end well.
"Maybe we're jumping to conclusions. He could be law enforcement for some sort of overseas SHIELD equivalent."
"I hope so. We'll have JARVIS comb the databases."
"I have taken the liberty of beginning that search, Captain Rogers." The voice from above surprised Sam the same way it always did.
"Thanks JARVIS." The pararescue-turned-superhero-wrangler had seen too many movies to risk being rude to the excessively powerful AI. Also, the Ultron Scare was pretty bad. Even Stark had agreed to talk about the resulting nightmares. Though Sam had had to recommend him to a friend who has experience in the unusual and a willingness to be discrete. Trying to be a friend, coworker, and counselor would not end well for anyone's mental health. "Any progress?"
"At this time, there aren't any matches for facial recognition, I'm widening parameters as we speak."
"Thank you, JARVIS." Steve's just as polite, pretty much all the time. To everyone who hasn't given him a reason to be otherwise.
"If we're lucky, we can get him back to the people who are missing him." Sam aims for optimism. It doesn't always help, but it doesn't hurt either.
"We can hope." Steve doesn't seem all that hopeful; after spending weeks in each other's' pockets chasing a ghost, they don't keep up pretenses anymore. "What are you out here for anyway? I thought I'd have to drag you away from your patient."
Sam has to admit that's happened before. He tends to get tunnel vision when people are hurt. After a mission, Sam will triage everyone and go down the line till he's certain everyone is okay. There was an adjustment period for everyone when Sam and Steve brought Bucky back a couple months after the Hydra-SHIELD Incident.
The file dump had contained a lot of information, and Stark had gone through everything he found interesting or relevant. Whatever he had found about the Winter Soldier had horrified him. Apparently, the various organizations that had Barnes had thoroughly documented what was done to him and what he was made to do. Including the assassination of Stark's parents. Sam had spent a while as the buffer between Stark and Steve, since Steve was being a buffer between Bucky and everyone else. It had taken a while for Stark to balance the emotional response to his parents' killer to intellectually understanding that he was a tortured and coerced POW.
Aside from that major conflict, there had been awkward clashing as everyone settled into their new situation. Clint and Natasha were wary of everything after SHIELD was discovered to have been so corrupt. Bringing in a legendary assassin – even if he was something of a friend – had left them downright jumpy. Steve had to go from being a paired operator on a long-term mission to a tactical leader who intermediated with trustworthy remnants of SHIELD. Dr. Banner was suddenly dealing with new people and feeling like his niche had been taken.
On their Bucky Hunt (Sam had called it that to mess with Steve and it had stuck), Sam had taken to patching them (including Natasha whenever she dropped by) up when they needed it. Extending that to the rest of the Avengers seemed natural. At first, Sam hadn't realized he had kind of stolen Dr. Banner's job until Stark made a comment. He had gone to Dr. Banner's lab and apologized to the (very embarrassed) man. They had quickly come to an understanding. In the immediate aftermath of a mission, Sam had the most experience with triage and basic care. Since transitioning back from the Hulk took so much out of Dr. Banner, Sam could take care of the team in the meantime. Any long-term physical care would be handled by Dr. Banner and for mental health concerns, Sam would make the judgment call. Sometimes the individual just needed a friend to listen and other times Sam recommended a specialist he knew.
Even Sam talked to someone. The team had quickly gotten into the habit of pointing Steve at Sam after a bad mission, when someone had been hurt badly or enemy fire had gotten a bit too close, or when Sam had been at someone's bedside for way too long. Sam didn't know whether he should be annoyed at being so easily read, or flattered that they cared so much.
Sam had had other difficulties. He had months of experience in reading Steve and calling him on his BS. Suddenly he was trying to be more of a second in command than a partner. 2ICs solve a unit's problems before they get big enough to bother the commanding officer with. 2ICs also don't disagree with their CO in public, and they definitely don't say the CO is being stupid. He had also found himself trying to step back and give Steve and Barnes space. Trying to solve problems had always been his thing, but Sam had been trying to balance too much.
Barnes had actually made Steve sit down with Sam and Stark to talk everything out. It had been so awkward and if Sam had to ever do that again, it would be too soon.
In the end it was worth it. In the field, Steve's tactical genius and experience put him in command. Out of the field, especially in the political arena, Stark would pull the strings. The Avengers could hide behind Captain America's reputation and the government pretended they had a say in what the Avengers did.
"Well," Sam redirects himself back to the conversation, "I can't so anything else in there, and Dr. Banner has everything covered if there's an emergency, so I thought I'd get some clean clothes that would fit our guest."
"Yeah, I suppose he's about your size." Steve's brow is furrowed the way he is when something personal is bothering him.
"What's wrong?"
"It's just," Steve hesitated, "wait until he wakes up to offer them to him?"
"Of course, why?"
"Waking up in uncertain territory to find someone has changed your clothes is not reassuring."
"Do you want to talk about it?" Sam can tell this is personal, and he has a very bad feeling.
"When I first woke up in SHIELD, they had the room set up like a SSR hospital room."
Sam does his standard 'there is nothing wrong with how you feel' look.
"Everything was slightly off. The fabric on the sheets was too soft, the paint color was off, the 'nurse' didn't respond right. But the worst part," he shudders, "knowing that somebody – possibly the enemy – changed my clothes while I was unconscious."
"You thought Hydra had you." Sam let's his honest feelings into the words; all the righteous indignation and painful understanding.
"Yeah."
Sam hugs him. His mama always said, 'hugs may not solve everything, but they come damn close.'
"Captain Rogers," JARVIS speaks from overhead, "I was to inform you when Sir and Prince Thor returned. They have just landed."
"Right," Steve takes a deep breath and pulls himself together, "I'll go see them. Thank you, JARVIS."
Sam lets him go, and makes note to keep an eye on him.
