Chapter Six
The building was quiet, but it meant nothing to him as he checked the offices. The lights flickered on as he crept down the hall, turning the door handles and listening intently to see if someone responded. After clearing them all, he turned his attention to hers.
BOOM!
The door splintered but remained in place.
BOOM!
It swung open and hit the bookshelf before rebounding back. There was a crash of books falling to the floor as the door hit the frame again. He listened, straining to hear if anyone was coming to find out what had caused the commotion. When there was nothing, he pushed the door open and flicked on the light.
He blinked against the sudden light before setting to work. He closed the door as his eyes darted around the room. They'd ordered him to send a message – one that Captain Rogers was sure to understand this time. Rather than having the desired effect, the debacle in the cemetery had made Captain Rogers stick around DC just when they needed him out of the city. Apparently an attempt on his life wasn't enough to make him leave, and neither was his friend nearly dying because of it.
Had they asked him in the first place, he would have suggested going the obvious – yet most effective – route: to get someone to back down, you exploit their weakness. For Captain Rogers, that was Emily Harthorn. History had shown that, if you threatened her, Rogers would come running and they would go to ground until the threat passed. That was exactly what they needed now.
He kicked at the pile of fallen books, trying to find the one that he needed. When he found it, he brought it to her desk, scowling at the clutter he found there. After placing the book a clear spot, he swept the mess onto the floor, her purple coffee mug shattering as it hit the ground. Satisfied for the moment, he opened the book to the chapter listing and ran his gloved finger down until he located her part. He flipped to "Captain America: Film Star Turned National Hero", his eyes running across the first few lines of the chapter before snorting and placing the volume in the center of the now cleared desk. Again, he turned his attention to the bookshelf and grabbed a framed picture, ignoring the motion detector/panic alarm behind it that he'd disabled earlier in the week.
Captain Rogers and Dr. Harthorn smiled up from the frame, heads tilted close to one another as they held a s'more between them and each bit a corner. Returning to the desk, he put the frame on top of the book, careful that it didn't cover up the chapter title. He reached behind his back, slipping his hand underneath his coat and withdrawing a knife from the horizontal sheath across his back. Idly, he flipped it between his fingers as he looked down at the pair before, in the blink of an eye, he lashed out and stabbed the picture. The knife sank through the frame, through the book, and dug into the desk. It had gone through her face and the glass shattered, spidering out until Captain Roger's image was cracked as well.
He grinned and dusted his hands off, satisfied with his work. The next few minutes were spent ripping the rest of her things off the shelves and upending the desk drawers.
As he walked out, he made sure to stomp on the framed picture of her family before leaving the door cracked.
Message delivered.
OOO
"Sir," JARVIS said, interrupting the AC/DC that had been blasting from the speakers.
"Busy, J," Tony grunted while he flipped through the inventory list for what felt like the hundredth time. He was going to have words with Foster about how vague she'd been on the documents.
"Sir, the Empire State University campus police are attempting to contact Dr. Harthorn."
"Send it to voicemail."
"This is the forth time they've called."
"They'll call again… But run a search to see what they might want."
"Of course. Shall I play their messages?"
"In a minute," Tony huffed before the music started again. One of the benefits of having everyone run off of Starkphones was that JARVIS was able to bypass security codes – not that he couldn't have with other products, but it made it less time intensive. Tossing the stapled papers onto a desk, he rolled his lips while approaching the machine he'd triggered the night before. "What the hell do you do?" he muttered, crouching next to it and wiping away a bit of the packing material. It stood about four feet in height and was about three feet around, with bits and pieces of exposed metal jutting out. Two wires stuck out, and Tony had figured out that his crowbar had completed the circuit, causing the thing to start up.
When a chiming cut the music yet again, Tony's head fell forward. "What happened to holding the calls, JARVIS?"
"It's Ms. Potts, sir."
"Course it is. What the hel – Hi, honey," he quickly changed his tone when he heard the call connect. "How's the retreat going?"
"Not terrible," Pepper sighed. "We've got a lot of ground to go over, but things seem to be shaping up. Have you heard from Emily?"
"Harthorn? No – nope. Why?"
"She has me down as an emergency contact and her department head just called me."
"She has you down?" Tony frowned, spinning on the spot and gesturing wildly. "Shouldn't that be Spangles?"
"I don't think she's changed it since they got back together. But regardless, you haven't seen her today?"
"Nope."
"Can you go downstairs and check on her? I'd call Steve, but I don't want to worry him over nothing."
"No!" he yelped and momentarily wondered when it had become so hard to lie to Pepper – maybe this was one of those 'real relationship' things Rhody had told him about. "I'll go – I'll do that now."
"Thanks, Tony. And let me know what's going on?"
"Of course."
"Love you."
"Love you too." Tony flicked a hand, disconnecting the call, before running it though his hair. "J?"
"Sir?"
"Play the messages."
There was a moment of silence before a man's voice flooded the lab. "Dr. Harthorn, this is Mike Harris with the ESU PD. One of your coworkers called in break in to your office this morning and we need to speak with you immediately. Please call me – "
"Next."
"Dr. Harthorn, Mike Harris again with the ESU PD. It is very important that you call me back. Please c – "
"Next."
"This is Officer Mike Harris calling for Dr. Harthorn. Your office was broken into last night and we are worried about your safety. Please call me back at – "
"Anything else?" Tony asked, rubbing a hand over his mouth.
"One final message," JARVIS answered.
"Play it."
"Dr. Harthorn, please call me as soon as you get this. We've contacted the NYPD in regards to the break in and they would like to speak with you as soon as possible. My number is – "
"They contacted the NYPD?" Tony's voice went up an octave as he gripped the edge of the lab table.
"It appears so, sir. A unit has been dispatched to the Empire State University campus."
"Have you found out what happened? I mean, it's just an office break in – some punk kid probably wasn't happy with a grade or something."
"Shall I bring up the report filed by the campus police?" JARVIS asked.
"Yeah."
The hologram form appeared in front of him, which Tony flicked aside to look at the uploaded images. He frowned while flipping through the pictures of the destruction, trying to figure out what had gotten them so worked up, and then got to the last picture. "Well fuck," he muttered, enlarging the image of the knife piercing through the picture, book, and her desk before shaking his head. "Cap's not gonna like that." Tony scrubbed a hand over his eyes and heaved a sigh. "JARVIS?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Send our security guy to ESU and tell them know we've got Em on lock down. If they need to talk to her, you can splice together enough of her voice data to get a conversation going, right?"
"Of course."
"We'll cover for now."
"And Captain Rogers?"
Tony waffled for a moment between calling him and handling this on his own. "Err," he grunted, brain going slower than normal – he would have killed anyone who kept the news of Pepper disappearing from him but being on the receiving end of a punch from Captain America wasn't exactly a thrilling prospect, even with the suit on.
"Sir?"
"Call the pilot and get the jet in the air to London. Then get Foster on the line so she can explain exactly what the hell this thing is and get here as soon as possible. If I can't figure this out in eight – " JARVIS cleared his nonexistent throat – "Fine, six hours, I'll call him. That gives me until.."
"Two o'clock, sir."
"At two o'clock, we'll set my execution."
"Very good, sir. I've created an itinerary for the pilot – shall I call Dr. Foster now?"
After taking a gulp of coffee, Tony grabbed his phone to check the time. It was early afternoon in London, the perfect time to get yelled at. "Do it."
"Hello?" Jane's voice floated through the lab.
"Foster," Tony grimaced. "What exactly did you ship to my building?"
OOO
Steve pulled his ball cap low over his eyes as he jogged up the steps of the museum. A woman was waiting outside, a leather organizer open across her arm as she tapped her toes anxiously before glancing at her watch. "Ms. Moore? Sorry I'm late," he apologized as he neared.
"Ms. Potts asked for your private tour to begin twenty minutes ago – I can't guarantee that you'll have your full hour now." Her eyes shot up to take him in, darting to his jeans, white t-shirt, and jacket before her eyebrow twitched up at his hat. Pepper – under the auspices of Stark Industries – had call the museum to request one final approval of the exhibit, and Steve obviously hadn't dressed the way she thought he would have.
"It's fine," Steve said. "My fault for not being here on time. I really just wanted to see – "
"You'll have full access to the exhibit," she cut him off before starting towards the entrance. Steve hurried in front of her to get the door, and she raised an eyebrow at him again. The museum wasn't too busy as they cut through the Thursday afternoon crowd towards the escalator. He recognized a few of the planes hanging from the ceiling and the space pod from his studies with Emily and the Military Channel. "We're getting ready to redo that exhibit," the woman said, following his gaze. "The 'Milestones in Flight Hall' has stayed pretty much the same since we opened in 1976."
"Em – Dr. Harthorn told me," he nodded. She tilted her head to the side and studied him again.
"Dr. Harthorn, the woman who coordinated the Captain America exhibit?"
"Yeah."
"Ah. You seem well connected, Mr. Conner," she smirked. "Excuse me for asking, but have we met before? You look very familiar."
"No," he said quickly before shrugging. While it was inevitable that he'd one day be found out as Captain America, he really didn't want it to happen in a public place. "I don't think we have. I have one of those faces, I guess." As they neared the exhibit entrance, she flipped through her organizer and withdrew a badge, which she handed to him.
"You'll need to wear this for the duration of your tour. Ms. Potts requested that you have unlimited access to the exhibit. I will tell you, however, that we don't have the audio-visual components playing on a loop yet. If you want to watch them, you'll need to locate the button outside of the video booths to start it. Once it has cycled through, please remember to turn off."
"Okay."
"I have a meeting with the rest of the PR staff, but my assistant will be out to let you know when your time has run out. If you have any corrections you believe need to be fixed, you'll need to get in touch with Dr. Marcus, the head curator. I believe Ms. Pott's assistant has his contact information."
"Thanks," Steve nodded. Ms. Moore studied him again as they stopped outside of the tarp blocking the exhibit's entrance.
"You're sure we haven't met?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
"Can't say we have," he replied before motioning to the entrance. "May I?"
"Of course." He reached to shake her hand before smiling and ducking under the tarp.
The main hallway was dark but he easily navigated it, following the sounds of people talking. He emerged into a larger room where a mural of the team greeted him, reading 'The Avengers – Earth's Mightiest Heroes'. Steve raised an eyebrow and shook his head before casting his eyes around to see the rest of the room. He'd gotten a quick glance at it the night he'd searched for Emily but now that he had a chance, he wanted to look around.
They'd made a memorial to those that had died during the Battle of Manhattan in the center of the room. He took a moment to pay his respects at before tossing in a few bucks to the donation bucket beside it.
He knew the layout of the exhibit even though he'd never been through the entire thing. Steve remembered Emily coming home from DC after her first meeting, flushed with excitement as she described what they were going to do. They'd sat up late after another trip, one of his pencils in her hand as she tried to draw him a diagram of the museum, a smudge of graphite on her nose from where she'd pushed her glasses up and another on her cheek from moving her hair.
"And here," she said, drawing a vertical line on a second piece of paper as she leaned against the bar in her apartment, "is where my stuff is going to start. It's a pretty big room so I've got a lot of space to play with." Steve nodded, looking at the side of her face as she bit her lip and sketched out a square; she was standing between his legs as he sat on one of the bar stools, his hand on her hip with his thumb stroking her side. "I'm thinking of having a mural on this wall right here, and maybe have some replicas of your and your team's uniforms. And then in the middle of the room would be bios of all of you – 'cause believe me, I'm going to have all of you in the exhibit even if the curator wants it to be all about you. I mean, you're awesome and all, but your team was pretty epic too, especially given the social issues going on during that time. Do you think they would be okay with all of that? I can ask Senator Jones, Tim Dugan, and Lord Falsworth, but do you think Morita and Dernier would have been okay with it?"
"Huh?" Steve asked when she turned and looked at him. Em huffed and some of the excitement seemed to dim in her eyes as she tucked a rogue strand of hair behind her ear, adding another smudge to her cheek.
"Look, I know you're not really thrilled about all of this, but – "
"It's not that," he cut her off. He smiled, licked his thumb, and reached over to wipe away some of the graphite on her face before wrapping his hand around the back of her neck and pulling her closer. His lips hovered over hers as he said, "You're just really distracting when you're excited about something," before kissing her.
"Good save," she teased, chasing his lips as he pulled away.
"Wasn't a save. You're gorgeous, Doll." He loved that she still blushed and dropped her eyes when he complimented her.
"You know," Em said, turning so that she faced him, her hands falling to his thighs. "I could use your help with all of this. Any input you could give me would be really helpful."
"Sure," he shrugged.
"Maybe…" she looked up at him through her eyelashes, "you could help me with some of the murals?"
"Me?"
"Yeah you – you did go to art school – "
"Only for a year – "
"And who knows more about Captain America and the Howling Commandos than Steve Rogers?"
"Dum Dum, Gabe, Falsworth, and you," he smirked, raising his eyebrow. Emily rolled her eyes and motioned to the diagrams.
"This is the extent of my artistic ability. I have to break out the a ruler for stick figures, Steve – do you want all of your accomplishments represented by crooked stick figures when I go to meetings?"
"It could make things interesting."
She smacked his arm and scoffed, "Fine, don't help me." When she turned back to the bar, Steve slid off the stool and put a hand on her hip, pulling her attention back to him.
"I can't promise it'll do any good, but I'll help out if you want me to."
Emily beamed at him before standing on her toes, cupping his face, and peppering it with kisses. When she finally pressed her mouth to his, Steve wrapped his arms around her; when they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers, the tip of his nose nudging the bridge of her glasses. "Love you, Sweetheart."
"You're alright," she teased. She shrieked and jumped backwards into the other stool when he squeezed her sides. Laughing, Em broke out of his hold and darted towards the living room, Steve hot in pursuit.
Steve shook away the memory, smirking as he remembered breaking her stupid papasan chair when he tackled her in it – she'd been a bit upset but he promised to buy her a new one.
After trekking through the display on Thor and Loki, Steve stepped into a smaller hallway. On the wall to his left was a dark monitor and a welcome back message from the President, along with a bit of information about him; a minimalist painting of him with and the title of the exhibit (Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage) covered the entrance with a painting of him saluting just inside.
He stepped into the second hallway and slowly walked the length of it, taking in the mural that he'd drawn on the back of a scrap of notebook paper for Em and asked her to include. Soldiers streamed down the hall, leading the way to the main exhibit. He followed them, ignoring what was on the other wall and marveling at his concept brought to life. It had been important to him that the exhibit include all of the work that others did – hidden among the company were the faces of men that had given the Commandos their extra ammo that they really couldn't have spared, traded out their comics and paperback books after they'd read them hundreds of times, and bunked down in cold barns in the middle of winter with them.
Steve spent the next twenty minutes wandering around and looking at the display cases. One held the medical bag Morita had carried across Europe and had used more than once to patch up the Commandos – and Steve really hoped that he'd had the presence of mind to take out the hidden girlie pictures out of the lining before the Smithsonian had gotten it. He'd smirked at the five 4F applications displayed next to the letter from the Army Selective Service System, accompanied by the list of illnesses he'd suffered from. Steve flushed when he stumbled upon the case holding some of his sketches – Emily had warned him that it would be included – and some of the letters he and Bucky had written to one another while in boot camp.
One of the looping graphics kept drawing his attention. Steve walked over and stood in front of the screen, looking at himself in uniform before the serum. That was the face he still expected to see in the mirror: thinner, pale, a weaker jaw, and a good ten inches below his current height. He looked at the picture of himself as a dumb twenty-four year old kid, remembering how excited he'd been when Erskine had agreed to give him a chance at joining the military, how he'd wanted to do his part so badly without really thinking about the cost it would have and the horrors that he'd see.
The picture faded, and Steve was suddenly face to face with himself. He looked turned away after a moment and continued to wander. When he came across the biographies of the team etched in glass, Steve found himself staring at Bucky's face. Emily had explained that they'd wanted symmetry along the pictures, so Steve couldn't be too upset that Buck looked stern (heroic, Em had corrected him) rather than wearing the smirk he usually sported.
"Hey Buck," he said quietly. "Long time no see."
OOO
"The meeting's almost over, but you're welcome to join," the woman behind the desk said, motioning down the hall.
"Thanks," Steve nodded. His phone started to buzz in his pocket, and when he checked the caller ID and saw it was Tony, he paused half a second before sending the call to voice mail. He wanted to have a long conversation with his teammate about his contribution to Project Insight, and right now just wasn't the time. Another woman's voice was coming from down the hall, so he followed it – ignoring the phone as it started to ring again – and leaned against the doorframe rather than entering the room and interrupting.
"Some stuff you leave there, other stuff you bring back," Sam Wilson said. "It's our job to figure out how to carry it. Is it going to be in a big suitcase, or in a little man purse? It's up to you."
The meeting ended shortly after that, and Steve stayed out of the way as Sam said goodbye to the group members. Once he had, he turned and began to collect the pamphlets, "Look who it is – the running man."
Steve smirked, remembering their exchange on the National Mall. While running (near) full tilt past him hadn't been the smartest idea, Steve couldn't bring himself to regret it. He'd seen Sam Wilson, a former Pararescue officer in the Air Force, out running on other mornings and they'd become unintentional running partners. After this morning's run, Sam had been quick to put two and two together and add it up to Captain America. Rather than to deny it, Steve had shrugged – the military and S.H.I.E.L.D. had released redacted files from Project Rebirth, so it wasn't completely abnormal that someone figured out who he was when he wasn't being careful to hide his physical stamina.
"I caught the last few minutes," Steve said, leaning against the wall, "it was pretty intense."
"Yeah, brother," Sam replied. "We all got the same problems – guilt…regret."
"You lose someone?" he asked before realizing that Sam might not want to talk about it.
"My wingman – Riley – flying a night mission. Standard PJ rescue op, nothing we hadn't done a thousand times before, 'til a RPG knocked Riley's dumb ass out of the sky. Nothing I could do," Sam shook his head and looked away. "It's like I was up there just to watch."
"I'm sorry," Steve said. He remembered that feeling – like you were put there just to watch your best friend fall. Bucky wouldn't have been there if he didn't want to be, Peggy had told him, but that didn't stop him from feeling like he could have reached a bit further, could have gotten to him a second before, could have kept him from picking up the shield…
"After that," Sam continued, "I had a really hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?" Steve did know; he'd thrown himself into planning a mission to keep from having to think about losing Buck, one that ended with him crashing a plane into the ocean.
Rather than saying all of that, he looked down at the stacked pamphlets. "You happy now, back in the world?"
"Heh," Sam chuckled, looking around the room, "the number of people giving me orders is down to about zero, so hell yeah. Whatcha thinking about getting out?"
"No," Steve frowned and shook his head before shrugging, "I don't know. To be honest, I don't know what I'd do with myself if I did."
"Ultimate Fighting?" Sam teased, making him chuckle. "Just a great idea off the top of my head. But seriously, you could do whatever you wanted to do. What makes you happy?"
'My girl' was the first thing that sprang to mind, but Steve wasn't quite ready to let Sam in on that part of his life yet, and he knew that wasn't what he was asking. "I don't know," he replied with a sad smile.
"There's gotta be something," Sam pressed.
"I…I honestly don't know. Things today are…"
"Different?"
"That's one way of putting it," Steve nodded.
"Well, think about it," Sam suggested. "And hey, if you need anything," he spread his arms, "you know where to find me."
"Thanks," Steve gave him a crooked smile before holding out a hand. "I appreciate it."
"No problem, man," Sam said as he shook his hand. "It's what I'm here for."
As he got onto his motorcycle and pulled away from the curb, Steve thought about what he would do if he left S.H.I.E.L.D. Before joining up again after the Battle of Manhattan, he'd tried to think about what he could do and hadn't come up with anything. Em had suggested going back to school when, in a moment of frustration, he's ranted about wanting to quit, and told him that he could use the educational credits she had as part of her benefits package with ESU if they got married. He'd toyed with the idea as they went to bed but had forgotten about it when he was called out the next day on a mission.
Hell, even Bucky had made him think about what he would do after the war was over. They'd were in Belgium, bunked down in trenches after a particularly nasty fight, one where Dernier was grunting in pain from a bad burn on his hands, Morita had run out of morphine helping the other medics attend to the wounded, and the sounds of dying men was loud in the otherwise quiet night. In a moment of weakness, Steve had asked Buck what purpose Captain America had other that combat – if this was going to be what he had to look forward to for the rest of his life: mud in his boots, cold creeping in through his uniform, and another man's blood drying on his hands.
"No, ya punk," Bucky snapped as he throw off his blanket enough to punch Steve's should hard. His teeth were chattering as he readjusted the blanket, giving it a shake to dislodge some of the snow that had accumulated on it. "We're gonna go home, you'll go back to school and I'll get my job at the garage back, and you can take Agent Carter 'dancing'," he waggled his eyebrows, making his helmet fall a bit further down his forehead. "You could use some of your movie star connections to get me a date with Bette Davis."
Steve scoffed and rolled his eyes even as he smiled. "Why'd she want with a jerk like you?" Bucky shoved him before resettling again.
"Cause I'm a war hero now," he smirked. "And I learned some stuff from those French girls."
OOO
"JARVIS, override his phone and put it on speaker," Tony snarled as his call when to voicemail for the tenth time. As much as he wasn't looking forward to talking to Cap, his time had run out.
The sound of an engine running and wind filled the lab, and it became pretty clear that Steve wasn't answering his phone because he couldn't hear it. "J, monitor the line and put me back on as soon as he stops."
"Of course, sir."
Clenching his jaw, Tony spun and stalked towards the machine again. After yelling at him for a good twenty minutes on how he needed to respect people's property, Foster hadn't been much help. Other than telling him that she'd been working on recreating Thor's Rainbow Bridge and that Emily could have been anywhere, he'd gained little information. Thor, however, had gone off planet to talk to Heimdall to see if he could find her while Jane and Darcy waited for the jet to arrive and bring them to New York City.
"Sir?" JARVIS said.
"Patch him through."
"It's not the Captain, sir. The security team you sent to the Empire State University campus this morning has just returned and are requesting elevator access to the lab. Shall I allow it?"
"Not now. Have one of them call me in twenty minutes."
"Very good. The Captain is still driving at this time."
Three hours later, Tony had spoken to his head of the New York SI branch's security department and found that there was a credible threat against Emily. The NYPD hadn't found any fingerprints at the scene but they did find a disabled security camera in her office and were attempting to trace the feed back to the source. They had wanted to send an officer to speak to Em in person but he'd arranged for a phone interview as per Tony's instructions. The department chair had passed along the message that Emily was to stay at home for the rest of the week until they were able to improve security in the building.
Stark Industries was going to start compiling a threat analysis for her in hopes of fleshing out someone who would want to hurt her or – and Tony thought this was more likely – Steve. Meanwhile, he instructed JARVIS to find out who was bugging Em's office and wasn't surprised to find out it was S.H.I.E.L.D. After planting a line of code in the NYPD's computer system that would ensure that they didn't figure out where the bug came from – and thus preventing them from figuring out her connection to S.H.I.E.L.D. – Tony collapsed onto a stool with a glass of scotch.
"The jet has landed in London," JARVIS said after Tony had been sitting for half an hour with his head in his hand. "I estimate that it will take an hour to refuel and rotate the flight crew."
"Great. Steve still on his joy ride?"
"He will need to stop for fuel soon. I will patch you through the moment he…" JARVIS cut off before coming back through. "Captain Rogers is on the line, sir."
OOO
Steve pulled his bike to the curb and parked before scrubbing a hand down his face. The drive on I-495 had been nice but hadn't helped with figuring out what he would do if he left S.H.I.E.L.D.
As he walked towards his building, his phone started to ring. When he saw that it was Tony, Steve considered sending it to voicemail again but decided to see what he wanted, and why he'd chosen to contribute to Project Insight. "Hello?"
"First off, I need you to know I'm working on fixing this." Steve stopped dead in his tracks, the keys in his hand swaying slightly.
"What are you working on fixing?"
"There may have been a slight lab accident…and Em may have been involved." The plastic casing of the phone popped as Steve's grip tightened on it while clenching his jaw.
"How…is she…She's fine, right? What happened?" he demanded.
"As far as I know, she's okay…She's just not here."
"What do you mean she's not there?" Steve snapped. He was already making a list of the things he needed to grab before jumping back on the bike and speeding up to New York.
"She kind of disappeared?" Tony's voice rose at the end, as though questioning his own assessment. "I've already got Foster on her way in and Thor's off planet. Bruce is on his way back from Brazil, too, so you'll have all of us on this."
"Jane? It was JANE'S TECH THAT MADE HER DISAPPEAR?!" Steve bellowed, fisting his hair and spinning on the spot. He didn't exactly understand what she was working on, but he knew enough to understand the severity of the situation – the number of places that Emily had gone to had grown exponentially.
"Like I said," Tony sounded slightly anxious, "Thor's already gone to see if his people can find him, and Foster's on her way here. It shouldn't take too long to reverse – "
"How long?"
"I'm…uh …not entirely sure. This isn't exactly my area of expertise – "
"I'll be there in a few hours. You better have made some progress, Stark, or I swear to God…" Steve trailed off.
"Got it. No need to resort to threats, Cap." The call ended before he could retort.
Steve spun on one foot and fought the urge to fling his phone against the bricks. Instead he jogged up the steps and flung open the door before throwing himself up the stairs. His hands were shaking as he stood in front of his door; the key scraped against the lock a few times before he realized two things: it was the wrong key, and there was music playing in the apartment. Part of him wondered if Natasha was just fucking with him as payback from having her sleep on the couch, but regardless, someone had broken in.
Scaling the fire escape was easier than it should have been, and Steve pushed the kitchen window up as quietly as he could before ducking in. The lights were still off, so he crept inside and grabbed his shield from where it was propped against the wall. His eyes darted around, looking for anything out of place as he moved towards the living room. Cautiously, he peeked around the corner, ready to spring back at the slightest movement.
And then he saw Nick Fury sitting in one of his chairs, one of the records Emily had given him playing on the turntable.
Anger boiled in his stomach as he slouched against the door. "I don't remember giving you a key."
There was a soft grunt of pain as Fury sat up. "You really think I'd need one?"
"Now's not really a good time," Steve said.
"Sorry, Cap," he said, tucking one arm around himself as he straightened. "My wife kicked me out."
"Didn't know you were married."
A slight smirk played on Fury's face, "There's a lot of things you don't know about me." Steve pushed off the wall and stepped into the living room, his mind on the go-bag he kept ready in his closet.
"I know, Nick, that's the problem." He flicked on a light and turned back to face Fury; Steve frowned at the scrapes and cuts on his face, and the ginger way in which he was moving as he held up a hand before pulling the chain on the light to turn it off. After typing something on his phone, Fury turned it towards him.
EARS EVERYWHERE
Steve's mouth opened slightly and he felt somewhat stupid for not thinking that S.H.I.E.L.D. would have bugged his apartment. He looked around, trying to figure out where they would have placed them, and how he would tear them out as soon as he got back. "I'm sorry to have to do this but I had no place else to crash." Fury turned the phone back to him.
SHIELD COMPROMISED
His eyes flicked from the phone to Fury, wondering how this night could have gotten worse. "Who else knows about your wife?" he asked. With a grunt, Fury stood and showed the phone again while clutching his ribs.
YOU AND ME
"Just," he sighed, "my friends." He took a step towards him.
"Is that what we are?" Steve demanded.
"That's up to you," Fury replied. They stared each other down for a moment, and Steve's mind was racing. He needed to get home, to try and get Emily back, but here was Fury saying that the world's intelligence apparatus was compromised – the organization Peggy and Howard had devoted their lives to building.
Before he could think of something to say, there was a loud blast and Fury yelled. The air was thick with plaster dust as two more shots rang out, and Nick fell to the floor, groaning in pain. Steve grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the line of fire and into the hallway. When he moved to step around and see where the shooter had gone, Fury grabbed his arm and offered him the drive Natasha had collected off of the Lemurian Star a few days before.
"Don't," Fury panted. "Trust. Anyone."
There was a pounding at the door and Steve lifted the shield as he moved towards it. "Steve?" Sharon called out. He looked around the corner again to see her approaching with her gun raised.
"Here," he said. She quickly swept the area before hurrying towards him.
"Fury?" she breathed before falling to her knees next to him. Her fingers went to his throat as she probed for a pulse. Sharon pulled a walkie-talkie from the clip of her belt and started to call in the shooting. "Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive. I need EMTs."
"Do we have a 20 on the shooter?" dispatch asked. Movement caught the corner of Steve's eye and he turned in time to see a man on the roof next door.
"Tell 'em I'm in pursuit," Steve said before taking a running jump out of his living room window.
OOO
"Turn it off," Emily mumbled into her pillow as Steve's alarm continued to ring. When it didn't cut off immediately, she reached over to nudge him while burying her head under the pillow. "Steve."
Her foot met no resistance, and she felt a draft her foot hung off the edge of the bed. Grumbling under her breath about Steve's insistence for an annoying bell alarm, she blindly reached for the bedside table and nearly tumbled out of bed when she didn't find it. "Baise!" she snapped while dropping a hand to the floor to keep from falling on her face. Em flung the pillow off of her head and heard it thump to the floor as she opened her bleary eyes. Her hand landed on the metal alarm clock and she sank back into the bed.
A second later she bolted upright, grabbed the burnished gold clock, and looked at it. The bells on the top rattled as she shook it enough to move the hammer inside; that definitely wasn't something she or Steve had. Slowly, she raised her eyes to look around the rest of the room.
Em was sitting on one of two twin beds in a smaller, cluttered room that she had never seen before. Cautiously, she stood up and received her second surprise of the morning when she saw herself in a peach colored shift that she had no memory of even owning. Quickly, she grabbed the robe draped over the bedpost and pulled it on before moving across the room to the vanity. Make up brushes and tubes of lipstick were scattered across it but what drew her attention was the open magazine.
"What the hell?" Emily gasped, grabbing the magazine and scattering the makeup across the vanity. She squinted to read the article, trying to make sure that she was actually seeing 'Our Boys in England' with a full black and white picture of a man in a World War II service uniform. She flipped to the front page and collapsed into the vanity bench when she saw that the cover had a black and white photo of a soldier wearing a Medal of Honor. The caption read 'Captain Foss, U.S.M.C.' with 'America's No.1 Ace' beneath it. While she recognized the picture and name – Emily had mentioned him in her dissertation for his war bond tour after becoming the US's first 'ace-of-aces' during the War – it was the date that threw her. There, in the bottom right corner of the Life magazine read June 7, 1943 with a cover price of ten cents.
The magazine fell from her hands. This had to be an elaborate ruse, she thought. Tony was playing a joke on her – it had to be! But when her eyes rose to look at herself in the mirror, her attention was pulled to the pictures propped against the glass. She snatched them up and felt her jaw drop. One was of her family – and herself – in front of the cabin in Maine; Tuck and her dad were in service uniforms while she and her mother were in knee length vintage dresses. The second photo was of …Emily pulled the photo closer to make sure she was actually seeing what she thought she was. Garrett was dressed in a World War II Royal Air Force officer's service dress while standing in front of a propeller plane and she could see pilot's wings on his jacket. Her eyes widened when she saw the Eagle Squadron badge – a bald eagle with ES next to it. In loopy handwriting on the corner of the picture was 'With love from the ES 121, Garrett, RAF North Weald, England '42'.
Emily suddenly felt very hot and as though she couldn't breathe. She set the photos back onto the vanity and leaned forward to wrap her arms tightly around herself as she rocked back and forth. This was a dream. It wasn't real.
But even as she told herself that, her brain pulled up images of Garrett lying on the dock in Maine with her and explaining that he had to go to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force because he couldn't sit by and watch what was going on in Europe anymore without doing something. She could remember sitting with his mother and picking out a sewing pattern for her wedding dress when a black car pulled up and the priest came with a telegram in hand to say that his plane had been shot down over the English Channel. She could still hear her sobbing as Mr. O'Connell took down the blue star flag from the window and replaced it with a gold star.
Em pressed the back of her hand to her nose as it started to bleed and used her free hand to wipe away tears. It wasn't real…none of this was real. It couldn't be! She had been born in the 1986, not 1918! She had lived through the Y2K scare and felt more at home with a cell phone than a rotary phone.
"The bathroom's open if you hurry," a woman said as she opened the door. "But you'll want to hurry – I saw Betty going that…Oh Emmie, what's wrong?"
"I wish I'd lived back then," Emily sighed. When Steve spoke, she could hear the smile in his voice.
"I don't think you would have enjoyed it."
"Oh?" she said, "and why's that?" Steve looked down to meet her gaze and shrugged.
"You're very modern. And it was different for women… it seems like it's easier for them now."
Change is Everything, chapter twenty-eight
Author's Note: So there we go. That last bit is what made me decide on doing a sequel when I absolutely hadn't planned on it.
Please note in the very beginning that the person destroying Emily's office had access to it for a week...which means that one of the two agents sent to protect her isn't who he says he is. You'll recognize some of the dialogue in Steve's scenes from the movie. I fudged some of it to make it applicable to this, but for the most part those scenes are intact. While I didn't outright introduce Sam in the last chapter, I liked the idea of him figuring out who Steve is during their morning runs and keeping that secret to himself. I hope Tony was in character; I really hate writing him and actively avoid it because of the level of difficulty.
A few notes about the history stuff: the Eagle Squadrons where volunteer pilots from the US fighting with the Royal Air Force prior to the US entering WWII. As their minimum qualifications were much lower than the US, many men crossed the boarder to Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force so they would be sent over to Europe later on. During that time, they never renounced their American citizenship but held RAF rank titles and wore RAF uniforms with a special Eagle Squadron badge – a white bald eagle flanked by the letters 'ES'. Thousands volunteered but only 244 Americans served in the 3 squadrons. A small note on the flags mentioned at the end: the Blue Star Flag was a way for families to show their pride in their sons and daughters military service. The tradition started in WWI but continued during WWII. If their service member were killed in action, the family would sew a gold star over the blue star.
I hope you enjoyed this (and aren't too upset with me not writing the first confrontation with the Winter Soldier). Please let me know what you think of with regards to Em being sent to the 40s. And, as always, thank you for reading!
