I was trying to keep the chapters short. I really was! I know that a lot of people didn't bother to go see Captain America, which is why this chapter may have some really obvious 'this is what happened' references. I'm covering all my bases.
Enjoy!
"There are seriously more things to worry about right now." Tony looked frantically from Steve's expression to the rest of the team. Everyone was usually tense, nobody had relaxed since they fled underground. But this may have been Tony's Stark's defining mistake.
"No! This is not happening." Steve looks like he wants to round on Tony, probably to hit him or shout him down. But he's rooted to the spot, bright blues ablaze as they dare not tear away from the unfriendly dark pair opposite him.
"Calm down, Steven." The thick German accent that Steve recalled, still there, more violent than ever as it sounded out the Captain's full name.
Johann Schmidt.
His nemesis.
This man was the reason Captain America ever came about. The full circle of consequence. From the serum, to the cube, to the frozen plane in the middle of the Arctic.
Steve rounds on the red face in front of him, the disgusting disfigured skull that had burned into his memory since the first day they met. All those years of pent up anger and stress and hate. Nobody on the team had ever seen this side of their leader, and nobody ever wanted to again from the way he was barrelling so quickly out of control. Steve is snarling he's so upset, and he intentionally flexes every one of his gifted muscles. "Shut up. I don't know you came back to life but-"
Schmidt sneers his laughter, his hellish expression cruel as he cuts the spangled man off mid-sentence. "I never died. What an odd assumption." Those eyes without skin, bug-wide, yet still able to look narrowed with the question that followed. "Did you never learn the cube's true power?" He seemed so smug, yet he was in the same boat now. He was in the middle of nuclear fallout just like the good guys.
Tony jumps in on this, his suit probably the only thing making him feel brave enough to do so. "We learned." He says stiffly, and puts a hand out to each man, as though he were the referee to a death match he regretted setting up. "You know what it does, we know what it does. Can you get it back safely or not?" He asks, and the Skull's eyes linger for a moment on the man.
"Where have I seen you before?" He asks. Then he looks back to Steve and laughs a hollow, triumphant bark. "You must be the inventor's son! That fool wasn't close to my technology in the slightest, and you think that you are, boy?"
"Leave him out of this." Steve says, defending both Howard and Tony at the same time.
"But my dear Captain." He says with insincerity. "It was this 'Iron Man' whom invited me." The smug grin on his face was cut short as Steve lunged, and the two of them exchange blows that would kill a normal man on impact.
Skull bleeds, so does Cap. The both of them are panting, going toe-to-toe in a feral collide of power. Thor steps in, grabbing Johann away just as Tony manages to push Steve back with as much of his reserved strength as he can. Skull calms almost immediately, the smile on his face toothy. "What does he mean?" Steve is screaming at Tony, and the suit clad man has to really push. Eventually Thor comes over to still the smaller blonde.
"Ease, Patriot." He encourages, but Steve is still like a wild animal.
"How did you even get here?" He yells, and Skull takes a seat on a rather old looking desk chair. The security booth of the subway station was shattered, but the team had agreed to rest there for the time.
It was only when they woke up to Steve's scream of fright that they realized something about man with the red skull in front of them was not just a human mutation from the radiation. Stranger things had happened after all.
Slowly, Schmidt gets comfortable, and checks the back of his gloves for damage. He knew he'd managed to split his knuckles underneath the black leather when he'd collided with Steve's open mouth. He could still feel where the man had bit down. "Imagine my delight when I found myself in a broken New York." He starts simply, and Steve is still shaking from the adrenaline.
The blonde solider had stopped this plan of Skull's to bomb New York 70 years ago, but he'd never thought that America would do this to itself. The lines of good and evil were solid back when it was Steve stopping Johann. But now, he didn't know who his enemy was. He snaps his attention back to Skull's monologue in time to catch the highlights.
"Iron Man here found me walking around. Told me he knew who I was from his father's files." Skull stands and the leather of his coat still smells new. It was as though the man had been in suspended animation too, but Steve had stopped listening by that point to find out where he'd come from. Something about space. To Steve, everything bad may as well come from space. "So I agreed. I will help you get back the cube, because we are proving to the Gods that we are the Great Ones who rule this planet."
Thor tenses at that, and his hammer shifts as he readies his weight. "Not you." Schmidt appears to roll his eyes, and his voice is venomous in the echo of the station. "I too am like a God." He sneers, and that earns him a bellowed laugh from Thor.
"What mortal deludes himself?" He asks, and his voice is quietly threatening. Steve is the one who stays at Thor's side this time.
"Calm down... He's just asking for another round. If we kill him, we won't be able to rebuild the portal for the cube." He says, and his own fist clenches, the squeak of his glove protesting indicated that he was just as upset as Thor. "He thought he'd become a God when he used the serum. He can keep on dreaming." Steve's the one who looks smug now, and Thor nods as he puts his hammer down on the floor. Nobody was going to waste strength trying to pick it up.
"As I was saying." Skull hisses his displeasure at the two judging him. "I will be able to get the cube, but I've been told getting towards the 'Tower' is not easy." He looks to Tony, and the man nods stiffly to agree. "So, Captain... We are going to have to devise a strategy, together."
"No." Steve points at Schmidt. "I'd rather die." He growls.
"Very well." Skull is moving before anyone has chance to figure out what happened. The man has both his hands around Steve's neck, and is laughing as Steve punches as his body hovers over him. The two had fallen down and wrestled into the tracks of the station, and Steve was battling for air. "You do not want to work with me, and I do not care if you live another second." He says as he watches Steve lose breath. "You ruined my plans the first time. You will not do it again!"
Tony, Thor and Natasha pull Skull away, and all it takes is a well placed fist from Thor's Godly power, and the skull is down on his knees wheezing for the same breath that Steve was now gasping back into his lungs.
"I'll never let you, Skull!" Steve rasps, and bats at Tony uselessly as the man tries to help him stand. "And," he adds as he gasp in a more steady breath, "I will never forgive you for this." He speaks to Tony, talking to the gold helmet that had snapped over the human face in the conflict.
"I know that." The radio calm of Tony's voice replies. "But this is all we've got. I've run the maths almost a hundred different ways. 96 ways, actually. We need to take back our home." He explains, and Thor is in agreement.
"It is time I face my brother again." He says with a sombre expression. "I shall go to him." He summons his hammer from the ground, narrowly missing Schmidt in the process.
"No, we need you here." Natasha speaks up for the first time in days. She'd been doing a lot of things, but speaking hadn't been a part of that unless it was a direct question. She'd been too busy worrying and planning to hear what people were saying around her. "We'd have told you to go if there was a way we could get by without you." She says, and for once Steve and Tony chime in with the same thoughts.
Odin's son takes his time contemplating this, and finally gives in. "But we cannot linger." He states.