"Fury!?" Steve exclaimed as the man himself, Nick Fury accompanied as ever by Maria Hill, stood up from where he had been seated at the conference table.
"Captain" Nick acknowledged as Maria nodded in greeting "And Mr Wilson, Falcon wasn't it?"
"Yes sir" Sam said still looking beyond confused as to what the former head of Shield was doing there.
"I will give Stark this; the man has style" Nick said appreciatively looking around the room.
"All due respect Sir" Steve began, his automatic response being to still refer to Fury as Sir "But what are you doing here?"
"Got a proposal for the 'Avengers'" if it was possible for someone to put air quotation marks around words without actually moving their hands Nick Fury had just managed it "If you guys are still in that business."
"Depends on what it is." Sam said at the same time that Steve said bluntly and with an obvious tone of disapproval
"You got Shield back up and running then?"
Fury shrugged
"There was no way something like Shield was ever going to die completely Captain. Now we can stand here and talk about our very different organisations and why they do or do not or should or should not exist or we can talk about what I would like your team to assist mine with. If you cant do that Captain then I'll take my business elsewhere but quite frankly I think you'll want to hear what Commander Hill and I have for you."
There was a slightly tense pause before Steve nodded slowly and gestured for his former boss and the man's second in command to follow him. Outside the room they found Vision and Steve said
"Get the others to the lab"
Knock knock knock.
"James"
Bucky looked up from, and closed his notebook.
"Come in" he said gruffly.
He watched his door as it opened to reveal Wanda Maximoff looking at him, her fingers fiddling with the fraying edge of the flared sleeves of her cardigan. Bucky straightened up, his posture automatically straightening to something resembling military attention.
"Wanda" he said inclining his head towards her.
"James, Vision told me to come and get you. Steve wants everyone in the la- are you alright?" Wanda interrupted herself with a question as she looked at his face.
Bucky guessed his eyes must look slightly red rimmed and that was why she asked. He hadn't been crying but he had come close as he was writing in the book the latest thing he remembered. It was a young memory, he could only have been ten or so years old. In his head he saw his young self crying as a man he recognised from another memory as his father, dug a hole in what must have been their backyard. Lying on the ground beside the hole, partially covered by a blanket was a dog. A boxer. Past Bucky had been crying and though present Bucky was not he had nearly driven himself to tears trying desperately to remember the name of the dog he had clearly loved so much. But try as he might the name evaded him.
"I'm fine" he muttered tersely in response and Wanda quickly looked down and away from his face.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to intrude." Wanda said, her accent thickening slightly possibly out of worry, turning to leave.
"Wanda" Bucky said and she paused and looked back at him "I'm sorry" taking a deep breath he pushed a small smile onto his face "I'm ok. Really."
Wanda gave a small smile back and said
"Ok. We're in the lab when you're ready." and then she left.
As soon as she was gone the smile vanished from Bucky's face.
He wasn't ok.
And part of him was sure he never would be.
"Shield had to go underground after Miss Romanoff released all the files. We never stopped being operational but we had to go back to being invisible."
Fury addressed everyone in the room. Everyone besides Thor was present. Clint Barton had arrived back about five minutes after Fury and was now leaning against the wall beside Wanda playing absentmindedly with a loose arrowhead.
Maria spoke up where Nick stopped.
"Releasing the files started the process of dismantling Hydra but it was far from over. Hydra is still very much operational in parts of the world."
Bucky clenched his jaw slightly as he felt at least three pairs of eyes dart to him and then away as Nick continued
"Recently we've picked up some chatter about this girl" Nick pressed a button and a projection flashed up into the middle of the room.
It showed what was clearly a grainy CCTV image. The only way they could tell it was a girl was that Nick had told them as much. She had a hood pulled up over her head and what looked like a scarf or bandana of some kind which covered the lower half of her face.
"This is the clearest image we have of a Hydra asset. The only name we have for her at the moment is what we're picking up on chatter and they're calling her Ghost."
Stark, Sam, Clint and Banner all snorted slightly at that and Fury gave a wry and rare chuckle.
"Yeah I know but that's what we've got. No name, no history and no facial recognition because of that damn thing on her face. What we do know is that all our most recent information on Hydra in the U.S is all about finding this girl. And" here Fury paused and thirteen new pictures flashed up. Eight men and five women. "we believe that she has come into contact with all these people since arriving in the U.S."
"You 'believe'?" Tony interrupted "You don't know?"
"We have CCTV of her interacting with all of them or coming into contact with all of them. But when we pulled them in, none of them have any recollection at all of who she is, what they said or did or ever meeting her. What we do know for sure is that these three" three new images flashed up, two women and a man "All had sustained contact with her and all three ended up in the hospital suffering from some kind of amnesia, vomiting, headaches and vision loss. They're all ok now but again none of them remember a damn thing."
As Fury spoke Maria put a hand up to her ear piece and left the room abruptly. Steve finally spoke up
"What exactly is it you want from us here?"
"Look long story short from what we know, this girl is gifted, powerful and Hydra want her which means we want her more. But if she is anywhere as powerful as our information is telling us Shield cant do this alone. We want you to help us track her down and bring her in."
"Look all I'm hearing is a bunch of vague guesses and what ifs and maybes." Bruce said sceptically just as Maria rushed back into the room.
"Sir we just got a solid lead on our ghost."
"Where?"
"Hell's Kitchen. Local PD are waiting for us."
Fury turned to look at the others in the room.
"Looks like I need an answer now. Are you in or out?"
In the end it was Steve, Natasha, Clint and at Steve's insistence Bucky who came with Nick and Maria to the police Station on the outskirts of Hell's Kitchen. They were shown to a room in the back which was sign posted
FAMILY INTERVIEW ROOM
The Detective who took them through was named Crane and it was he who Nick addressed as they walked
"Tell me what I'm looking at here."
"We got a report of another woman who ended up in hospital. Amnesia, all the rest. Did some digging saw her walking with your girl on CCTV. Did a search of the area and found Clara. The hospitalised woman's five year old daughter." Detective Crane indicated the room behind him. "She's in there but she's barely talking. Don't know if she's traumatised, scared or just shy but the most we got out of her is that" and here he checked his notebook and read out "The ghost lady was sad."
Crane looked from Fury to Hill to the Steve to the others and then back to Steve.
"How exactly do you want to handle this?"
Nick looked at Steve and said
"I think you should try."
"Me?" Steve looked surprise "Sir all due respect but why?"
Natasha snorted and said
"Dude. Seriously? When are you gonna remember that your Captain freakin' America? Little kids love you."
Steve looked somewhat embarrassed but squared his shoulders and said
"I'll give it a shot but I don't know guys..."
He walked forwards and walked into the room and Natasha turned to Detective Crane and said with a rare but genuine full on smile
"Please tell me you have an observation room."
"Right this way" Crane said and Clint chuckled
"Captain America vs a five year old girl. This I gotta see."
Steve took in the scene in the Family Interview Room.
A female uniformed officer was crouched down beside a little girl who was playing with a stack of building blocks. The little girl wore a pair of dungarees over a striped pink and white t-shirt and her little hooded sweatshirt was lying discarded on a chair behind her. Pink, purple and white sneakers were on her little feet and her fluffy blonde hair was tied in two plaited pigtails with little white bows around them.
The little girl, Clara, Steve remembered Crane had told them her name, had now stopped playing with the blocks and was blinking her wide blue eyes up at Steve.
"Hi" Steve said a little awkwardly and he could practically see the shit eating grins that Natasha and Clint were both bound to be baring.
"Hi" Clara whispered back.
"Do you uh, do you mind if I sit down?" he asked and she nodded at him, so Steve took a seat on the floor across from her as the female officer got up and retreated to a corner.
"You're Captain Amewica." Steve was surprised that the little girl was talking. "Looks like Natasha was right" he thought ruefully.
"Yeah" Steve smiled kindly at her "You're a smart little lady. Most people don't recognise me without my shield. Hey you know, my real name is Steve."
"I Clawa" the little girl lisped quietly and Steve smiled again extending his hand forwards.
"Well it is nice to meet you Miss Clara. Is it ok if I ask you some questions?" Steve had no idea what he was doing really, but he figured a good start would be to copy all those cop shows that Jill on the front desk recommended he watch. Start at the beginning and ask what you want to know.
Clara nodded and sat back with her legs splayed out in front of her, her little elbows resting on her knees.
"Clara do you remember a girl talking to your mom earlier today? Before the police found you."
Clara nodded. A yes.
"Did she tell you her name?"
A shake of the head. No.
"Did she tell you anything about her?"
Another no.
"What about her face. Do you think you can tell me what she looked like?"
"She was a ghost lady"
"A ghost - ghost lady? What do you mean sweetheart?"
"She was all white an' she looked like a ghost. Her hairw was all white, and herw face and herw mouth and herw eyes."
Steve thought for a minute and was about to ask another question when Clara suddenly spoke up
"She did something to mommy."
"What?" Steve leant in a little and said as gently as he could but with slight urgency "Clara what did she do to your mom?"
"She made her fowget."
"Ma-made her forget? How?"
Clara bit her bottom lip before scooting closer to Steve and kneeling up so she was level to his face. Steve stayed as still as he could so as not to spook her as she put a little hand on either side of his face, resting on his temples.
"She made mommy fowget. Like this."
And then she moved away from him.
"Clara. Hey Clara this is really important. Do you remember the last place you saw the ghost lady go? or did she say where she was going?"
"She asked mommy how to go to Chicago. And she took mommy's puwse."
As soon as he heard that Nick Fury barked out to Maria
"Get me everything we have on Chicago and Hydra and get me someone to track those credit cards!"
"On it" Maria said at once and she left the room, closely followed by Natasha.
"Did she say anything else Clara? Anything? Even if you don't think it's important."
Clara seemed to think about it for a moment before saying
"She called me not my name."
"What did she call you?"
"Katie."
Ta da next bit finished!
Hope it's ok.
Let me know what you think, what you like, what you don't, what you want to see happen!
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More soon.
Geronimo xx
