I sat, once again, in the passenger seat of the SUV with the open bag from Fury on my lap. As soon as I'd buckled up, I'd regretted, once again, that I hadn't changed my clothes. Granted, we'd had quite the interruption with Mrs. Ferdinand and there was no way I was going to change my clothes with my bedroom door open, but I was easily sidetracked anyway when it came to missions, so much so that sometimes I forgot to eat. Here's hoping that wouldn't happen this time around. I was going to need energy if I was going to be protecting Captain Rogers, and coffee could only get me so far. And he really didn't need me to be a jittery mess.
I picked up one of the file folders, finding it to be much thinner than expected for such a high stakes mission. I tilted the second file folder up a bit, just enough to see the side, and found it significantly thicker. The third folder was caught somewhere between the first and the second, not too thick, not too thin. It was just right. It could have been in the Goldilocks story, if Goldilocks was a spy and not a psycho that liked breaking and entering and making herself at home in her victim's house. On second thought, maybe she was a spy.
"Did you read the file on Barnes before we left?" I asked as I flipped open the smallest folder. Wouldn't you know it? It was Barnes' file, complete with his personal backstory, military history, and everything we had on his whereabouts as The Winter Soldier up until now.
"Yeah," Rogers said. "He was last seen buying food in a convenience store in Pittsburg."
"Well, that's sloppy of him. Not to mention unhealthy."
I glanced up, looking at the screen built in to the dashboard, and saw that Rogers had, in fact, punched the address of a place in Pittsburg into the GPS. Almost as soon as I realized that, the annoying little thing spoke, telling him to take a right in half a mile.
"Maybe he's ready to be found," Rogers said, hope painfully clear in his voice.
I held back my comment that he could have at least picked an upscale Walmart to be seen in and not some grubby gas station. Something about how utterly genuine he sounded told me he wouldn't appreciate my humor. So I went with something less ill-timed and douchey.
"It's a possibility. Someone on the run that long is going to know you don't go into places that are well known for having video surveillance. If it is true, he should be popping up more," I said. I reached in to the bag, pulling the folders and the laptop out. The folders went on my lap, the computer went on top of the folders, and the bag went in the footwell. I opened the laptop and powered it up, adding, "I'll do a facial recognition scan of the cameras in the surrounding area to see if he shows up again."
While I waited for the computer to boot up, I pulled the thickest file folder out from under it, curious to see who it belonged to. Surprisingly yet unsurprisingly, it belonged to Captain Rogers. Unsurprising because he was a very accomplished military man, and surprising because I didn't know why Fury would put his file in there. Maybe Fury needed me to know about Rogers as much as he needed the Captain to know about me? Sure. Let's go with that.
I already knew at least a portion of what was in his file, but then again, everyone did. He was born July 4th, 1918 to Irish immigrants, Sarah and Joseph Rogers. Joseph died in World War I and Sarah died of tuberculosis when Rogers was eighteen. He'd had a list of ailments as long as my arm and it was a miracle a stiff breeze hadn't snapped him in half before Dr. Erskine had recruited him for Project Rebirth when he was twenty-four. He went into the ice just before he turned twenty-seven and was now the sexiest ninety-seven-year-old in history, which I felt super weird thinking about. Although I guess he was biologically thirty-two, so I shouldn't feel too weird about it. And if people visited his exhibit at the Smithsonian, which I was certain at least half of America had, they'd know at least some of his military exploits.
Some meaning about a quarter. This file was chock full of information on what he'd done in his few years with the Howling Commandoes and Agent Peggy Carter, the good, the bad, and the ugly. I hadn't expected the ugly. At least not from him. He was America's Boy Scout, the ultimate testament to morality and goodness, and here I was reading that he'd been complicit in some shady war-time activities. I guess I probably should have expected it, though. A lot of commanders had done some uncouth things during the war, and he'd been dealing with a different kind of crazy, the kind with weapons that could vaporize people. He'd probably still been a damn moral compass, but in times of trouble, sometimes that compass has to shift a little to stay alive and keep others from dying.
After a few very long minutes had passed, I realized the laptop screen had gone back to black, so I closed the file and stuffed it between my hip and the center console. The reading could wait. I swiped my finger across the mouse pad to wake the computer up and logged in so I could finally start keying in the code for the recognition scan. If I wanted to be a tech savvy companion, I had better start living up to the "tech savvy" part.
"Is that your file?" Rogers asked suddenly. He'd been so quiet, I'd almost forgotten he was there. Almost. Him driving and my years of training had kept him on the fringes of my mental periphery.
"It's yours," I replied, sounding distracted as I typed in a command. A niggling curiosity plinked through my brain as I hit enter, and I looked at him. He was watching the road like a good driver. "You haven't read my file yet?"
"No. I didn't have time before we left the base," he said.
Jesus, I was dense sometimes. Of course, he hadn't read it yet. Otherwise he would have known about… But then why would he think I was I reading my own file? Did he think I needed to see what some random dude wrote about me? I didn't. I'd lived it. That was enough for me.
"Right," I said, looking back at the screen. "Let's pretend I didn't forget about that."
"Consider it forgotten," he replied, a bare hint of a smile in his tone. When he spoke again half a second later, the smile was completely gone. "Is there anything about Bucky in my file?"
Did he mean military stuff or personal relationship stuff? I flicked my eyes towards him, finding his profile rife with concern and determination. He was worried nothing was there, worried something was, worried there wasn't enough, and he was damn well going to fix whatever was wrong with that file here and now.
"That I saw, only his involvement with the Howling Commandoes. I was only able to skim it, though, so who knows what's truly in there," I answered, turning back to my screen once again. I hoped that answer would be enough to tell him there was nothing to worry about and nothing to fix. It wasn't.
"He's a good man," Rogers said.
"For you to be friends with him, he has to be," I said. "It's whether or not he's still the man you knew that's the question."
"He is," he said. He sounded so sure of himself, so certain, that I was willing to bet he'd stake his life on it. Hell, he already had.
"Because he saved you?" I asked.
"Yes," was the simple reply.
"And if he's not?"
"I'll help him remember."
"And if you can't?"
He didn't say anything then, and the silence that filled the car was louder than any scream. I looked at him in the flashing shadows of the trees. His jaw was tense and unmoving, his gaze intent on the road ahead of him but clearly barely seeing it through the haze of his own thoughts. I didn't know the Captain well, or at all, for that matter, but I knew for certain that he wouldn't kill his friend and he'd do everything in his power to keep me from killing Barnes, even if he had gone back to the dark side. But there was something else in that silence, something that said him staking his life on his friend being truly rehabilitated was a barely-pretty dress on an ugly truth he didn't want to acknowledge.
"Captain," I said gently, "I know you don't like it, but-"
"He's been my friend since I was a kid," he interrupted. "He kept me alive through more things than I had any right to survive. It didn't matter what back alley I got myself cornered into or how many times I had to ask him for money for medicine that I couldn't afford. He would always help me out. He went above and beyond for me during the war, and it sent him off the side of a mountain. I don't care what I have to do. I'm going to help him."
Shit. I got it now. Barnes wasn't just a friend; he was family, and Captain Rogers blamed himself for the position his family was now in. The guilt ran far deeper than mere words. It was just behind his eyes, and in the way he held his shoulders and gripped the steering wheel. It didn't matter how many people told him it wasn't his fault, how many times people tried to point out how illogical his argument was, a part of him felt guilty. A lot of him just wanted his friend back and didn't want to grieve him again. Gods, what would I do if I were in his position? If I knew my loved one had been brainwashed and manipulated into murder and needed my help? If I could have someone back and know I didn't have to grieve them? Sweet mercy, I would burn the world down without a second thought.
"Okay," I said, softly, then firmly added, "Okay. But I reserve every right to knock him out if he gets out of control."
"Just don't kill him," he replied, some of the intensity seeping out of his tone now that he knew I was at least partially on his side.
"Nah, I'll save that for the bad guys."
Tension flowed out of him like water down a mountain stream, relaxing his shoulders until I realized he'd almost had them around his ears. His hands on the steering wheel relaxed and I heard the leather creaking in relief. He spared a quick, grateful glance at me before settling his eyes back on the road.
"Thank you."
"I've never been thanked for telling someone I'd coldcock their friend before," I joked, trying to soothe his anxieties like he'd done for me. "But seriously, it's no problem. If you say he's a good guy and that he's broken free of Hydra's control, then I trust you. Besides, I can't execute a good man for something Hydra mindfucked him into doing when he's not doing it anymore."
And Hydra had mindfucked him. I'd been cavalier about it earlier but that was my attitude half the time and I wasn't always super stoked to think about Hydra's penchant for brainwashing people, be it through violent means or just being really good at selling their bullshit.
"Not everyone thinks the way you do," Rogers said.
"Because not everyone is me," I replied, typing more commands into the computer.
We sat in silence for a while after that, the only noise the sound of my fingers dancing across the keyboard in a rapid, clicking staccato. It reminded me of someone in tap shoes losing their balance repeatedly, and I couldn't help but crack a little smile at the image of some poor guy falling all over himself in the middle of a dance hall. It was very Charlie Chaplin.
Out of nowhere, Rogers asked, "How long have you worked for Fury?"
"Since I was twenty," I replied, my eyes not moving away from the screen this time. "I worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. before it went to shit."
"You started earlier than I did," he said, sounding slightly impressed.
"Yeah, well, it was either that or more college, and I'd had my fill of sorority bitches and frat dicks fucking off around me while I tried to work," I said. I paused, abruptly remembering that Rogers was not my friend nor was he a regular charge, that he was my superior, and that I should probably watch my language around him. "Sorry, sir. I tend to have a bit of a sailor's mouth off-duty and my lips seem to think I've clocked out."
"It's okay," Rogers said, smiling. "I'm not going to write you up for it."
"Thanks," I replied, giving him a half-smile in return.
"How did you join S.H.I.E.L.D.?" he asked, putting our conversation back on the rails.
"Fury recruited me after I went to join the police academy and offered me something better," I replied. "He said I would be wasting my talents as a cop and that he had something better for me."
"What was Fury doing at a police academy?" Rogers asked.
"He said he was visiting someone in the building, but I think we both know he was doing stealth recruiting."
"What made him pick you?"
"He said it was the way I looked at the room and moved through it. He said it made him think I was smart and already had tools under my belt that would make me better equipped for a different position at a better office. I told him to say more and I signed up."
"What tools were those?"
"I was already paranoid, and I'd already had a lot of hours of martial arts training under my belt," I said, matter-of-factly. I finished the last string of commands, hit enter, and let the program start analyzing every face on every camera across east Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey.
"Good tools to have," he replied, a shadow of a smile falling over his lips.
"Yes, sir, they are," I said, shifting the laptop a little so it would be more comfortable to hold.
"You can call me Steve," he said.
There it was. I knew it was going to come back. I didn't think it would be so soon, but here we were.
"I can, but I won't," I replied.
"Why not?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.
"Why do you want me to?" I countered, sounding combative in comparison.
"I asked you first. You tell me, I'll tell you," he responded. Somehow, he managed to sound like a cultured, level-headed adult when he said that. I'd have sounded like a petulant tween.
I somehow managed to stifle the sigh building in my chest, which would absolutely make me sound like a petulant tween if I let it out, and said, "You're my superior. It would feel unprofessional to call you by anything other than your rank or last name. It would also feel really weird."
"I take it we're not going on that trip to Tennessee, then?" he asked, taking his eyes off of the road for a split second to give me a smile. "It would feel weird, right?"
I couldn't help it. I smiled back. "Oh, we're still going, but I'll be calling you Rogers the entire time."
"Agent Ryan," he started, his smile disintegrating, "we're going to be spending a lot of time together, and it would be easier on both of us if we dropped the last name and rank and just called each other by our given names."
"You spent a lot of time with your former superiors, and I doubt you ever called them by their first names," I pointed out.
"This is a very different situation," Rogers pointed out. "What would happen if you accidentally called me Captain at the wrong moment, or I called you Agent at the wrong moment?"
"I would hope we're both good enough at our jobs to not make those kinds of amateur mistakes," I argued.
"Amateur or not, mistakes happen, and we have to prepare for them," he countered.
"By calling each other by our first names?" I asked, incredulously.
"Yes," he replied, not a hint of teasing in his voice.
I looked at him, trying to see if he was serious or if he was pulling my leg with the best deadpan routine the world had ever seen, and found that he was looking at the road, earnestly awaiting my response. But why? It was the easiest thing in the world to not fuck up. Maybe, just maybe me calling him Rogers would raise someone's eyebrow, but it was a common last name. And I would never be so stupid as to call him Captain in public.
"I don't buy it," I said. I pulled the thinnest file folder out from under the laptop and flipped it open just as Rogers breathed a heavy sigh of what had to be frustration out of his nose.
"We're going to be equals on this, too," he added. "I'm your superior on the base, but if I want you to keep me alive like you're supposed to, I have to listen to what you say. We're going to be taking orders from each other, like it or not."
"Then we can equally call each other by our surnames," I argued, not really seeing the pages in front of me.
"What can I do to get you to use my first name?" he asked.
Did he mean outside of ordering me to? Good question. I thought for a moment, pushing my lips out into a bad case of duck lips, and said the first stupid and impossible thing that came to mind.
"Put a ring on it and I'll call you by your first name," I joked.
"Give me your hand," he said, almost immediately.
There was no way in hell that man had a ring on him. I looked up at him, surprise and apprehension so clear on my face that he could have read me like a book from across a room.
"What? No," I said, leaning into the passenger side door. My face had shifted from surprise to making sure he knew I thought he was flat out crazy.
One large hand let go of the steering wheel and extended toward me, his eyes never leaving the road.
"Come on. Give me your hand," he said again. He moved his fingers in that "hand it over" motion you gave to ornery children and friends.
He wasn't going to let this go. Goddammit, why did he have to be stubborn?! But of course, he was stubborn. It was how he'd gotten accepted into the Army in the first place, and now it looked like he'd set his sights on this first-name business and wasn't going to let it go because he thought he was right. Gods, that was infuriating. Is this what it was like to be friends with me?
With a sigh, I relented, placing my small, pale hand in his much larger, slightly tanner one. His hand was warm and slightly sweaty from holding on to the steering wheel, and it was as impressively solid as the rest of him. I'd only touched him a handful of times, but I don't think I'd ever be able to get over just how solid and warm he was, even if I got to touch him all day, every day.
He flipped my hand in his until my thumb was pointing toward the roof of the car. I wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing, but I knew I was going to find out sooner rather than later. Why waste words when you didn't have to? He moved my hand toward the steering wheel, and I saw him flick his eyes down so he could make sure he was leading me to the right place. That place happened to be the ignition and the keys therein. He slid my ring finger in to the key ring and let me go.
"There. I put a ring on it. Now call me Steve," he said.
I had to give him points for not sounding smug, and I had to give myself points for not slugging his leg as I pulled my hand back. It took me trying to open my mouth to speak to find that my jaw had dropped into my lap. I was honestly surprised that my chin hadn't punched a hole in the bottom of the car and started scraping pavement.
"You sneaky motherf-mmm," I said, pursing my lips closed so I didn't insult a superior, my eyes wide and locked on his profile.
He smiled then, but didn't look at me. "You never said what kind of ring it had to be."
"Goddammit. You're supposed to be a Gryffindor, not a Slytherin," I griped.
The smile faltered and turned in to a confused frown. "What?" he asked.
Shit. Right. He'd only had a few years to catch up on seventy years of pop culture. Eh, I'd educate him later.
"It's from the Harry Potter series," I replied. My tongue stumbled over itself for half a second before adding, "In simple, non-nerdy terms, you're supposed to be courageous, not cunning."
"Why can't I be both?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.
"You can, but…shit, I really can't explain it until you've seen the movies or read the books," I said, sounding slightly exasperated. I really hoped he knew that I was upset with myself for bringing up a concept he knew nothing about that would require explanation from me.
"Try."
I sighed and bit my bottom lip in thought. How could I explain this so simplistically that he wouldn't question it further? Was that even possible? Probably not. He seemed too smart and too curious to let things go easily. Dammit.
"Think of it this way. A Gryffindor will break the rules; a Slytherin will find a way around them," I finally said.
"You can't do both?" Rogers, oh sorry, Steve, asked.
"You can, but it's which tactic you value more that defines which one you are. You can be both brave like a Gryffindor and manipulative like a Slytherin, but simply answering a question like would you kick down a door or pretend you're an important figure to get someone to let you inside would tell you which one you are," I explained. I paused for a moment, then added, "Granted everyone has traits from each of the four houses in them, and this isn't a legitimate psychological test so it's rife with issues, but it's also fake, so it kind of means nothing beyond being fun to speculate about."
The fact that it was fake made me wonder why we were spending so much time on it, but he did need to learn more about pop culture so I guess I couldn't blame him for being curious about me spouting random shit from some series he knew nothing about. And he was curious. I watched a slew of questions dance over his face before he finally settled on one, the one that hopefully wouldn't create fifty more questions.
"So you think I'm a Gryffindor then?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied. "Even with that sneaky Slytherin shit you just pulled. You would much rather kick in the door than talk your way through it."
"You sound very sure of yourself," he said with a smile.
"I am."
"Why?"
"Because I read your file," I replied, my tone just shy of deadpan, with only the slightest hint of teasing to it.
"Just how much is in that file, anyway?" he asked, a smile clear in his voice.
"Did you really visit a brothel in London?" I asked. That wasn't in there, but he didn't know that.
Steve looked between me and the road, his eyes wide with shock, utter disbelief falling over his features.
"That is not in my file," he said. "I never did that."
"Hmmm," I hummed, sounding unconvinced as I turned back to the smallest file we had, still held open in my lap. "Your file must've been mixed with someone else's."
I could feel him give me the side-eye of humored irritation and grinned, big enough for him to see that I was pleased with myself. He may have won the name-game, the little shit, but I was an expert in annoying people and I'd be damned if he wasn't going to fall victim to my teasing just like everyone else, especially since he'd opened that can of worms himself by making this way more personal than it had to be. Oh yeah. He was going to regret this.
My grin quickly faded as I concentrated on reading Barnes' file. While Rogers…Steve, had a lot of early-life personal information in his file, Barnes did not. I guess it was because it wasn't seen as being as important, but it was still odd. His military exploits were well-documented, including his time before the Howling Commandoes and his statements on Hydra's experiments in the 1940's. We didn't have a lot on him as The Winter Soldier, though, as it seemed like Hydra wasn't super keen on keeping their shit in the S.H.I.E.L.D. system when it came to his murder sprees, and we had even less on his trail since he'd pulled Rogers… fuck, Steve, from the river nearly a year and a half ago. Speaking of Steve, why was he so worried about what was in his file regarding Barnes when I had all of this? Was he worried I would judge Barnes based solely on what he'd had to do during the war and what Hydra had forced him to do in the decades since? Eh, probably.
"How much is in your file?" he asked into the silence.
Wow, he really knew how to slice the jugular of the already dying mood, didn't he?
"Less than what's in yours," I replied. I tried to sound nonchalant, and I think I did pretty well except for that ever so slight threatening tone that said to drop it. But he wouldn't, he couldn't, and I knew it. At least he wasn't asking me what was in it.
"If you're worried I'm going to judge you because of what's in it-" he started.
"I'm not worried you will," I said, matter-of-factly. "I know you will. I've done some fucked up things."
"We all have," he replied.
I thought back to his folder, to what the pages had said he'd had to do in the war so he could keep people safe. But his story was different from mine, and he'd find that out soon enough. I did regret some of the things I'd done, wished it could have had a happier ending, a less bloody one, but I would do it over again if I had to. Other things I didn't regret, and if I could, I'd gladly step in a time machine so I could do them all over again. He would understand the former. He'd lived the former. He would never understand the latter, and he would never condone it. He was too good a person for it. What worried me was whether or not he would trust me to hand him a bottle of water after he read what I'd done, let alone let me protect him. Either way, I was going to have to live with it.
Nevertheless, I said, "True."
This day was slowly swinging back in the direction of sucking and I wished it wouldn't.
"So," he said, softly, almost carefully as he changed the subject. He was holding true to his word that he wouldn't push the subject, but I think something in my reaction, something on my face, made him understand just how much I hated thinking about what was between those manila flaps. My little show at the base told him some my disdain, sure, but something about this conversation drove it home and I wasn't about to ask what it was. Whatever the case, it seemed he didn't want me thinking about my file anymore. Bless his gigantic heart.
"What are you?" he continued.
I frowned at him, narrowing my eyes in confusion. Did he mean besides an emotional wreck? "What do you mean?"
"Are you a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?" he asked.
"Oh," I said, the corners of my lips turning into a smile as I let out a soft breath. This change of pace was making my head spin, but I guess this was what you did when you were trying to get to know people. You threw them for a bunch of loops. "I'm a Slytherin."
"Does that mean you'll talk open doors for me?" he joked, trying to make the air in the car light and breezy rather than the heavy blanket it had started to become. I appreciated the effort. I really needed to get over my shit if I was going to be able to do my job. Was that why Fury had assigned me this case? So I could stop being such a fucking crybaby?
"You'd probably break a window five seconds after I knocked," I quipped.
Steve let out a heartfelt chuckle, one that told me he probably would do exactly that, and I couldn't help but feel better. This entire situation was a tad too mercurial, with me trying to be a professional and failing miserably in every way, and with Steve trying to get me out of my strict shell while he maintained his own boundaries and probably didn't trust me any farther than a squirrel could throw me. I would have said than he could throw me, but he could easily bench press a semi-truck. He could throw a human body pretty damn far.
"It's very Gryffindor to deviate from a plan like that if it suits their needs," I added.
"Then you wouldn't be surprised if I told you I was going to deviate from the Tennessee plan?" he asked.
It was nice to know we already had an inside joke. It gave me a bit of hope for the future. You know, if I got my head out of my ass.
"It would surprise me if you didn't, actually," I replied.
I clicked back to the surveillance footage to see if I'd gotten any hits yet and found absolutely none. Unsurprising, but still disappointing. I wanted this done and over quickly, but it wasn't going to end in the few hours we were going to be on the road, and it certainly wasn't going to end in the one we'd already been on it.
It suddenly dawned on me that we were going to need a place to stay while we searched for Barnes, you know, since this wasn't going to be a quick job like I wanted. I dug out one of the disposable phones and a fake ID while I pulled up a new tab for a Google search. I looked at the ID I'd dug out, for a Victoria Johnson, and resumed my search for a hotel near the convenience store where Barnes was last seen.
"What are you doing?" Steve asked, flicking his eyes to me.
"I'm looking for a hotel for us to stay in," I replied. "If I can find one near where Barnes was last seen, we might have an advantage."
I found a good hotel and decided to spring for a room that was a tad more expensive. Or a lot more expensive, depending on what they had. I dialed the number to the hotel and waited for an answer.
"Thank you for calling Hyatt Place Hotel. This is Rebecca speaking. How may I help you?" a chipper female answered.
I went through the motions of asking if they had rooms available and requested a room with twin beds that was on a higher floor. I was told that they didn't have twin beds, but they did have rooms with two queen beds and a sofa bed. I booked one of those and made sure it was on one of their highest floors. Just like with my apartment, it was much harder to snipe people if you were up high and they were down low. Not impossible, but harder. It would make a fast getaway a little tougher, but I could work with that. I gave her an approximate time that we would be there, and she told me our room should be ready by the time we rolled into the parking lot. Hooray.
Once I hung up the phone, I filled Steve in on the details and changed the address on the GPS.
"A sofa bed?" he asked.
"Yeah. A sofa that turns in to a bed and then back in to a sofa," I replied, explaining as if he were stupid enough to not know or be able to figure out what a sofa bed was. I knew he was really asking why we needed a sofa bed but, whatever. The words were already out of my mouth and they weren't going back in. "Once we find Barnes, you two can take the queens and I'll take the sofa bed."
"No, I will be taking the sofa bad. You will be taking one of the queens," Steve argued.
"No, I won't," I said. "The sofa bed is closer to the door, whereas the beds are closer to a window that is six stories up. I'm your bodyguard. I take the sofa bed. Besides, with how big you are, you'd break the damn thing in half."
Steve laughed at that. Hey, at least I was still funny. I was half afraid I'd lost my touch.
"If I didn't break the barracks, I won't break a sofa bed," he said, that hint of laughter still clinging to his tone.
"Well, I don't want to risk it, seeing as how someone would still have to sleep on it even if it was broken. I take the sofa bed once we find Barnes. And I take the bed closest to the door," I said.
"Are these orders?" Steve asked.
I looked at him. Like a good boy, he still had his eyes on the road. His face was still soft from laughing, but I could see just from looking at the profile of one eye that he was getting ready to turn hard and stubborn. Too bad for him, I was harder and more stubborn than he would ever be. Hopefully. I mentally shrugged to myself and stared out of the windshield.
"They kind of have to be," I replied. "Like you said earlier, my job is to protect you, and if I have to tell you how it's going to be in order to protect you, then that's what I'll do. Trust me, bossing you around isn't my idea of a fun time."
"It isn't?" he asked incredulously.
I smirked and shifted a little in my seat, resting my elbow on the window ledge of the door and scooting my legs toward the center console.
"Maybe a little bit, but it still feels weird," I replied.
"Like calling me Steve feels weird?"
"Yeah. Kinda like that. I mean, you're…you. You don't need someone to boss you around, and you sure as shit don't need a bodyguard. This entire situation is weird."
"Yeah," Steve agreed, looking over at me. "Yeah, it is."
I glanced at him, catching his breathtaking blue eyes with my impossibly green and gold ones, and knew that being his bodyguard would be the easiest job of my life. It wasn't just that he was super-human strong and incredibly smart; it was that I knew he wouldn't put me in danger if he didn't have to. Or maybe he would. I didn't know. There was something about him that just drew me in and made me trust him more, made me think that he would do everything in his power to keep me safe while I did the same for him. If I didn't know any better, I'd have said it was a side effect of the serum or that he had telepathic abilities and could alter peoples' wills to suit his own needs. Unfortunately for me, I think the pull was all him. It was all morality, kind-heartedness, and iron will that drew me to him, that made me want to fight for him. I knew with everything I had that he needed to survive, because he would make this shit hole of a world a much better place if we only gave him the resources. It was a cause I would gladly die for. Of course, some of that pull may have been purely sexual because that serum had granted him physical perfection and he looked damn good, but I'd never been willing to fight for lust, let alone die for it. I'd fuck for lust, but that was about it.
With that last thought, I turned my eyes back to the road and found a goddamn deer standing in our path.
"Steve!" I shouted.
I flung my hands up as if I could stop the deer from flying through the windshield. As I heard Steve's sharp intake of breath, it dawned on me that I could. Goddamn, I was an idiot sometimes.
The world slowed down until it felt like I could see a fly beat its wings, adrenaline making my vision so crystalline it was almost painfully sharp. I knew that Steve's reaction time was incredible, super-human, but I also knew that we were too close for him to hit the brakes and have us stop before we crashed in to the deer. We were just going too fast. A thousand ideas ran through my head as to what I could do.
There was a chance it would bolt, but the phrase deer-in-the-headlights didn't mean that someone got moving quickly so I wasn't going to put any of my money on the animal booking it into the woods. I could nudge it with my power, but it might lose its little deer mind and run back in front of our car. No, the best thing to do was grab the stupid thing and raise it well above the hood of our car, otherwise this mission might very well be over before it even started. I just hoped its little deer heart could handle the excitement.
I sent out tendrils of my power, wrapping it around the deer just as I felt Steve slam the pedal into the floorboard, and lifted it up to watch its gangly legs kick wildly, its hooves trying to gain purchase on open air. When we finally screeched to a stop, the poor deer's hooves were frantically waving mere inches above the top of the windshield. I carefully set the deer down on my side of the car, hoping that it wouldn't keel over from a heart attack the second I did, and gratefully watched it as it bolted into the woods, hopefully going off to tell its deer friends how it will never cross the black river again. Please never cross the black river again, little deer.
As I watched the animal disappear into the woods, Steve's very relieved yet somehow still worried voice came from behind me.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I replied. I turned to look at him, finding him half-turned toward me, his gaze steady on the tree line, probably making sure that the deer wasn't going to run back the other direction to side-swipe us. "Yeah, I'm good. Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay," he replied, his eyes turning to me. They flicked down before his face flooded with concern. "Are you sure you're okay?"
That was a weird question. Hadn't I just said I was fine? I pinched my eyebrows at him in a subtle frown, puzzled. "Yeah, why?"
He raised his eyebrows and silently nodded at the dashboard in front of me. I frowned harder, my eyebrows knitting together so hard I could feel a headache coming on, and looked in front of me. I wasn't impaled or something, was I? No, he'd be freaking out way more if my body had gone the way of Vlad the Impaler. I looked at the dashboard, hoping nothing red was splotched on the hard plastic, and found my hands clinging to the glove compartment so hard my knuckles were white.
"Oh," I muttered, shocked. I unkinked my hands from the spot they'd clawed themselves onto and found the joints already stiff and added a very soft, "Well, that happened."
I didn't even remember catching myself or lifting my legs to keep the laptop from crashing into the footwell. Jesus, this whole lack-of-control thing had me wound tighter than I thought. Then again, maybe it was just the whole being-a-passenger-in-a-car thing, since I wasn't the biggest fan of that ever since Fury's incident and I was a control freak on my best days, and no I didn't want to go to therapy for it, Mom.
"I'm good," I said louder. "Deer showing up in the middle of the road is just a little nerve-racking. It's been a bit of a fear of mine since moving out here."
"Really?" Steve asked. The curiosity sounded real, but there was the tiniest hint of teasing to it even though we had literally almost slammed head-first into one of the damn things. Either he was trying to make me feel better or be was being city-boy ignorant as to how much damage deer could do to a car. I was betting on the former, as "ignorant" was not a word I would use to describe Captain Rogers.
"Hey, deer are dangerous, okay?" I argued. "And where did you learn how to drive, anyway? An empty parking lot? What was that?"
"London in 1943," Steve said as he eased off the brake. He flashed me a half smile, keeping his eyes on the road this time. "Not a lot of deer around there. Or Nazi Germany."
"Well aren't you just full of excuses?" I shot back.
He chuckled softly. "Just a few. What's so dangerous about deer, anyway?"
"You mean besides their ever-present need to throw their stupid deer bodies through windshields?" I scoffed.
He laughed at that, the humor lighting up his face all the brighter after the stress from the near-miss, and I swear I felt the last dregs of tension evaporate from the car, and I couldn't help but chuckle too. Gods help me, his smile was contagious, and I needed a laugh. I'd had plenty of close calls, but none had been quite like that. Apparently, there was a massive difference in adrenaline for me when it came to fighting bad guys and not hitting woodland animals. Maybe it was because, in a fight, that adrenaline had somewhere to go. Or maybe the adrenaline just faded to the back of your mind because you were too busy focusing on not being killed to focus on anything else. When you were staring down an unmoving animal and the choice to hit things was almost completely taken away from you, you were riding on fear and fear alone. The only focus was keeping the car from hitting a body, which took significantly less focus than, say, hand-to-hand combat, even if you were swerving all over the road. Your heart had time to set up shop in your throat and try to choke you, and once you swallowed the muscle back down, all you could think to do to relieve the tension was laugh. Or that was all I could do. All we could do.
"Yes," he replied, humor still high in his tone.
"Well, the males have antlers so you're clearly missing the obvious on that one," I said lightly.
"Clearly," he murmured.
"And don't underestimate how sharp those hooves are," I added. I pressed all of my fingers together to make what looked like either a hand spear or the worst duck shadow puppet on the planet and jabbed at the air. "They just get right in there and gouge at you until you're done for. You're lucky I was here."
"To save me from the deer?" Steve quipped.
"You're damn right," I replied, emphatically. "Those furry fuckers aren't touchin' you. No way, no how."
Steve laughed again, and I allowed myself to swim in the sound of it. It wasn't every day I made someone so synonymous with seriousness laugh multiple times, especially within the span of a few minutes, even after we'd just been through a close-call, and I had the feeling he didn't get to laugh like this nearly as often as he'd like to. Maybe the stress of looking for his friend was starting to wear on him, and he was at that point I'd been in earlier, where when you're close to one emotion, you're close to all of them. No matter the reason, his laugh was music to the ears, and I let myself indulge in the guilty pleasure of its sound for just a moment.
"Well, thank you for saving me from the deer of the world," he said, only half teasing.
I contentedly sank down into my seat, not entirely unlike a duck settling into a nest, and crossed my arms under my breasts. If he was going to half-tease, I was going to half-way be pretend pouty. The other half was me being legitimately proud of making him so much as smile. The seatbelt tried to worm its way up my chest to dig into my neck, so I clenched a fist around it so I wouldn't lose blood supply to my brain as I put on my little show.
"You're welcome," I said, lifting my chin haughtily.
To my utmost surprise, he leaned toward me a little as if he were going to impart on me a great secret, his eyes still on the road.
"You know the windshield of this car is reinforced, right?"
"Against bullets!" I argued. I pulled one of my arms out to gesture at the glass in front of me. "A deer is way bigger than a bullet and unless there are bars across the window, that damn thing is going to end up in your lap."
He settled back into his seat, his chest shaking with a quiet snicker. Oh, so that was how it was going to be?
I sucked my teeth at him and crossed my arms again. "Yuck it up, city boy."
"I just think it's funny how passionate you are about deer," he said.
"I am not passionate about deer," I protested.
"You are a little."
"I'm passionate about not dying because of them," I said.
"See?"
"You know what?" I started, looking over at him in faux vexation. He turned his head slightly to show he was listening, ready for any argument I threw at him. Thankfully, I had a really good one that no one lower on the totem pole had ever thrown at him before. "Shut up."
Steve's eyebrows raised in surprise and he looked at me again, a grin pulling at his lips, humor making his eyes sparkle like blue topaz jewels. My breath caught in my chest. Dear gods, the man was hot. I was trying my damndest to keep the fact in the very back of my mind because the last thing I needed was to be attracted to him or any colleague of mine, superior or not. But it was really fucking hard when he smiled like that. Or said nerdy shit about Smaug. Dammit, I could not be this distracted by him every time he smiled at me if I was going to protect him! Those thoughts, those stupid feelings, had to stay locked away, so I shoved them into the recesses of my mind and vowed to never look at them again. Please let me never look at them again.
"Watch the road, pretty boy," I grumbled just as he turned away from me. Holy shit, he'd been looking at me for maybe half-a second and it had felt like a lifetime. That man's power was not in his muscle; it was in his charm. Maybe if I were less charming, he wouldn't grin at me anymore and there wouldn't be a problem. Yeah, let's try that. "If another deer pops up, I'm testing your theory by sending it to your side of the car."
"I definitely understand your nickname now," he said, his tone just shy of being completely dry.
"Oh, I get why people murder in cold blood now," I whispered. "Fucking McIntosh."
"You wouldn't do that," he said. He sounded very sure of himself for having just met me. Either this trust thing was coming along great or he was trying to ease me into a false sense of security.
"To McIntosh, I would," I said.
"I don't buy it," he said, throwing my own words from earlier back at me.
"You can't open the book of my life to page 175 and think you know me," I scoffed.
He laughed again, and I honestly couldn't believe how well this was going. He must be trying to lull me into a false sense of security, right? No one was this affable and nice, especially not when they were on the kind of mission he was, especially when they were talking to me.
"I know you wouldn't do that to him, at least," he amended.
Now we were getting somewhere! He knew I was a terrible person. He was just playing nice to make this little outing easier for both of us. Well, easier for him. It would be easier for me if he were an asshole because then I wouldn't find him attractive, but that was never going to happen so here we were.
Drawing hard on my angsty teen days, I sighed hard. "You're right. I would only maim him."
"That, I believe," he said.
A flash of white in the corner of my eye drew my gaze away from his smiling face and found a sign finally signaling that we were close to the highway. We'd be in Pittsburg in no time. Hopefully. If there was traffic, I was going to be pissed. I'd seen what had happened to our people when there was too much traffic. It made me itchy to think that I was stuck with nowhere to run, or drive. Hello paranoia, my old friend.
An alert on the laptop pulled me out of my suddenly despondent train of thought. I'd received an e-mail. Yippee skippy. I hoped it was that cute guy from down the street! Oh, who the hell was my sarcasm kidding? It was work and I knew it. Steve, upon hearing the notification, lost most of his humor and glanced at me. He was a smart man, as I'd already established in my own mind, so he knew it was something from headquarters and that it was probably something about Barnes.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Dunno yet. Gimme a second or five," I replied.
Pushing myself up, I put my feet back on the floor where they belonged rather than jammed into the sides of the footwell to keep my legs up, and let go of the seatbelt when I knew it wouldn't smack me in the neck. I went to my e-mails and found that I'd received something from one of Fury's many classified e-mail addresses. It wasn't titled, just had a single period to fill space. That was helpful. I clicked it open. Inside was a cryptic message from Fury and a downloadable file.
"Got this from the Cap exhibit a while back."
Well, that was about as helpful as the e-mail title. I clicked the file to download it, then opened it as soon as the computer would let me. It was a black-and-white photo of the Captain America exhibit. Standing in front of the Bucky Barnes memorial was a man in a dark jacket, jeans, and a black baseball cap, his face well hidden from the camera with the brim of the hat. This photo did literally nothing to help me. It took me a second too long to figure out that it wasn't a photo. It was a video. How I'd missed that, I had no idea. Maybe I'd spaced out? Probably.
Regardless of me missing the obvious, I clicked over to the media player and started the video. The man walked very calmly around the meandering crowd, his head down to avoid the cameras, as if he'd done this before, and his focus seemingly glued to the James Barnes memorial. He made his way to the thick, etched glass and stood there for a few long minutes, long enough to read the memorial and have some deep personal thoughts about the only assumed loss of Rogers' troops. The man took a sudden step back and glanced up to the top of the memorial, as if he were sizing it up. In a split second, he turn his gaze down and started walking out of the exhibit.
I rewound the video and clicked pause the moment the man looked up. Like most, if not all, surveillance, the image was grainy. However, I could make out shoulder length dark hair that was tucked in to the collar of the jacket, and a set of downturned lips. The jaw was strong and covered with dark stubble, with what looked like a cleft in the chin if the shadow there meant anything. The eyes were a bit harder to make out, but I'd have bet good money that I was staring at our missing person.
"It's Barnes," I breathed.
The SUV swerved and lurched, and I went flying forward in to my seatbelt for the second time in fifteen minutes. My hands clung to the laptop, making sure it didn't go flying to the floorboard as Steve whipped the car over to the side of the road. I was glad I'd sat up when I'd gotten the e-mail, otherwise I would have had a seat belt cutting off my air supply. I wanted to curse him for scaring the hell out of me, maybe glare at him or punch him in the arm for good measure, but I honestly didn't blame him too much for his reaction. I hadn't given him any information other than the fact that I'd received something on his lost best friend. I didn't think slamming on the brakes was entirely necessary, but hey, I wasn't the one who'd been searching for someone for months on end.
We stopped and he threw the car in park so he could turn to me without worrying about letting up on the brake.
"May I?" he asked, reaching for the computer.
Jeez, he was polite for a guy who'd nearly thrown me through a windshield. Okay, maybe I did blame him more than I was willing to admit. However, I simply nodded and handed over the laptop. He stared at the screen for a moment, then another, as if he was willing the screen to give up its secrets. Another moment passed before he looked up at me. His eyebrows were pinched over serious blue eyes. Just like that, all of the humor was gone, and I felt a bit of sorrow for its loss. We'd been having a good time, and I had the feeling that he didn't get to have nearly as many good times as he wanted. Plus, selfish as it was, it had felt like we were making some serious progress in our bodyguard/charge relationship. Now we were making progress in another area, but just barely, and this area wasn't nearly as fun.
"When was this?" he asked.
"According to Fury, a while back. Let me see it again?" I leaned over, turning the screen back to face me.
Steve allowed it. I looked at the video. Surveillance videos usually had time stamps, which was why the criminal justice system loved using them as evidence. Yay for technology!
Oh, yay. Our video had a time stamp. Thank friggin' goodness. The video was dated about a month after the reveal of the Hydra infestation and was taken at about seven at night. Plenty of people had been wandering around the exhibit, and people generally had more time to do that at night, even if it was tourist trap D.C. It was a smart move on Barnes' part. Go to a crowded place, surround yourself with civilians so you could go as incognito as possible while not worrying about being attacked, and get the hell out as soon as you could in order to avoid detection. He had almost succeeded in that last bit, and honestly, it was a miracle we'd even found the footage. He'd looked up for a split second, and the Cap exhibit almost always had people roaming around. Picking him out of the crowd, even with how closely monitored the exhibit was, would have been impossible if he hadn't had the urge to look up. It was a damn good find, especially since the video was so grainy and I really only knew who I was looking at since that's who we were looking for. Five bucks said the only reason we'd been able to identify him was because we got an update to our facial recognition scan system about a month and a half ago.
"It's dated about a month after Barnes disappeared," I said, turning the screen back to Steve.
"So he was still in D.C. after S.H.I.E.L.D. was destroyed," Steve said. "Why didn't he just come find me? Why go to the exhibit?"
There was so much pain and confusion in his eyes that it almost hurt to look at it. On some level, he must have felt betrayed. This was supposed to be his best friend, and brainwashed or not, you'd think your best friend would turn to you for clues as to who they were rather than go to a memorial to read minimal, objective statements about themselves. Of course, I was probably projecting the betrayed bit on to him. I did have a shoddy moral compass, after all.
I fought to not reach out and touch Steve's arm, fought to not give him physical comfort to dampen the pain in his eyes. It was one hell of a fight. It was so much of a fight that I actually caught myself absent-mindedly reaching out to him and had to force myself to pull my hand back to rest on my thigh. I didn't know if he'd seen it, what with being so wrapped up in finding out that Barnes had stayed in D.C., but he was an observant man, so who knew.
"Maybe," I started, "he needed to objectively look at himself before he talked to you. All you'd give him would be happy memories of your lives, and he's more multi-faceted than that. He's had more life experiences beyond your friendship. He has to find out who he is on his own before he can come back to you and learn about himself through your eyes."
I really hoped that made sense to him. When he looked up at me, I saw a flicker of understanding behind the pain in his eyes. Was I going to need to elaborate? No. No, I wasn't. I saw that flicker grow to a flame as he realized what Barnes was doing. He still didn't like it, but he understood, and that seemed to be enough for him. Thank goodness. Steve had biased memories of Barnes, and even when Barnes was trying to kill both him and Fury, Steve had insisted that the good man he knew was still there, even when all evidence was pointing to the contrary. Barnes needed to know what he'd done in the war, and for Hydra, and then he could come talk to Steve. Then he could learn about the good man he was. Hell, maybe he would find out that he was a good man on all his own. I hoped.
I gently pulled the laptop out of Steve's hands and set it on my lap once again. He didn't fight to hold on to it, something for which I was extremely grateful. He'd gleaned all the information he could from the still frame. Unfortunately, now he looked a little glassy-eyed, like he was locked too far inside of his own head. I counted that as a double-edged sword. He was comfortable enough around me to lose himself, but he was also losing himself. I needed him here if we were going to get anywhere, physically or otherwise.
My hand reached out, and this time I didn't stop myself. I touched his forearm, which was so tight with tension that I could feel every muscle under his warm skin, hard and unyielding as rock. Not good. His eyes cleared and he looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. Shit. Really not good. I needed him at the top of his game, dammit. Fury was right. Steve couldn't do this alone. He was too close to it all. Even his moral compass was being pulled out of whack by the magnet that was his extreme emotions. I'd never heard of him doing shit like this. It bothered me. He was supposedly always level-headed and logical, even when he was pissed. I'd heard that much about him from people who'd worked with him in the past. Now, he was a wreck. His own personal mission was getting in the way of his logic and reasoning, and it bugged me that it was up to me, the person who was known to have issues with logically sound personal missions, to ensure that he was being reasonable.
"Do you want me to drive?" I asked, my voice as gentle as I could make it.
It was my way of asking if he was alright without asking if he was alright. I knew he wasn't. He knew he wasn't. It was a matter of just how not-alright he was.
"No," he said. "You have to keep an eye out for threats."
At least he was alright enough to have reasonable thoughts about safety. That was good. I gave him a curt nod and pulled my hand back. His arm was still tense enough that my fingertips could make out the rise and fall of different muscles as he moved to grab the steering wheel, but if he said he could drive, I'd believe him. I needed to believe him. That was how that trust thing worked. He pulled back on to the road, and once again we were on our way to Pittsburg, only this time I was worried about him as much as I was worried about other people on the road.