A/N: Sorry for all the caps later on below! I know it's obnoxious to read. There was really no other way to do it! Read on, my friends, and review! Also, the first two chapters for a story I've written about Steve Rogers called Odd Pieces is up, if you're into that sort of thing.
And who saw Agent Carter? It was wonderful! Peggy Carter is truly amazing, we got quite a few Easter Eggs for the MCU, and the show looks like it has so much potential.
After they watched Jurassic Park (which, Bucky had to admit, was very enjoyable, if a little strange—they hadn't known much of anything about dinosaurs in the 1940s), Ari put on another movie called Silver Linings Playbook which Bucky didn't enjoy as much because he thought the main character was incredibly whiny (and the main female character was just weird) but Ari shed a few tears, which Bucky tried his hardest not to make fun of. She fell asleep on the couch after the movie ended and he carried her to her bed, closing her door on his way out. He tried to go to sleep on her couch but found himself tossing and turning, as it wasn't really a comfortable couch to sleep on—too stiff—so eventually he wrote a note to Ari explaining that he had gone home to sleep and quietly left.
The streets were quiet and the sky was dark as he made his way home, which he liked. He always liked these moments—when time seemed to slow down, when people were asleep—best. The world always seemed so peaceful, as if nothing bad could happen.
Of course, bad things could happen at any time, any place, with anyone. He knew this. He was always aware of this. This was why, even during his rare moments of peace, he was always on the lookout for trouble. Whether to avoid or to cause it…sometimes he didn't really know.
He knew he'd need rest to deal with whatever came in the morning at 24 Pryde so he did something he'd never done before and he took some sleeping pills, which Steve had surreptitiously slipped him one day and Bucky had vowed never to take. He never wanted to rely on drugs for anything; he'd had more than enough of that nonsense during his time with HYDRA. However, it was needed tonight. He couldn't operate functionally tomorrow if he was recovering from heatstroke and sleep deprivation. He'd have to choose one or the other and unfortunately, fate had decided to already choose heatstroke for him.
He fell into a dead sleep for a few hours but his eyes automatically opened at five a.m., a natural effect after years of conditioning. He lay still for a few moments, alternately clenching different muscles to try and loosen up his sore body, and then he threw himself headfirst into the new day, showering and throwing on new fatigues (black, of course). He knocked back a large breakfast of eggs, toast, and juice and was just about to leave for 24 Pryde when he remembered something: the dagger he wanted to give Ari.
Now where had he put it…? He spent a few moments hunting around his apartment and found it laying on the ground near the door to his bedroom. He must have accidentally left it behind before they went to Texas. He picked it up and studied it. It was a slender dagger, very compact, and the blade folded onto a small slit hidden in the handle. A small pearl was inlaid near the top and if you pressed a small wooden groove near the "hilt" of the dagger, the blade sprung back out. It was perfect for Ari. Despite getting all of his memories back, there were still times when Bucky was fuzzy on his past—a natural consequence of having decades of muddled memories and a not-so-linear timeframe of existence—and he couldn't remember where he'd gotten this knife from or when he'd given it to Steve…but Steve clearly didn't need it anymore. He thought back to his fight with Steve on the bridge, the day when he'd fought to kill Steve (had it really been a little over a year ago? It seemed like centuries ago), remembering Steve's brute strength and skill. No, Steve most certainly did not need a little dagger anymore. However, a little dagger was good for a little thing like Ari.
He slipped it into his pocket and made sure he was armed to the teeth. Then he set out, putting on his helmet and taking off on his motorcycle. He knew he had a little time before meeting everyone so he did a round through the quietest streets in the city, smiling at the thought that peacefully sleeping people were cursing him in their beds. The cool morning air cleared his head and he felt more awake and refreshed when he arrive at 24 Pryde than he had felt in a few weeks. His body still felt sore (when didn't it?) but he felt energized, like he could do anything. Take on a new mission. Throttle Agent Bauer. Anything, really.
It was still early but a few people were lounging around, a mix of some agents, some scrappy young newcomers, and some secretary-office type people. He noticed some people giving him awed looks as he passed and he supposed the story of what had gone down in Texas had quickly made the rounds. Probably Agent Chang's large mouth.
"Sergeant Barnes!" He turned to see Fetch hurrying towards me, wearing a black pencil skirt and looking extremely tidy and chipper despite the early hour. "Good, you're here."
"Fetch," he said by way of greeting, still feeling a bit uncertain on whether her name was offensive to use or not. She didn't seem to take any offense, however…
"I was told to let you know to go to the upper level conference room as soon as you arrived," she said. "The rest of the team should be arriving shortly. Captain Rogers and Mr. Wilson are already there and…" She hesitated. "The new director."
Bucky's curiosity was immediately piqued. So he was finally going to meet the new proper SHIELD director; well, it was about damn time. The man had been giving vague instructions to the sad remnants of SHIELD from the shadows for the better part of a year now and Bucky was starting to wonder if something was wrong with the man that he didn't want to be seen; was he actually HYDRA? Was he grotesquely disfigured? "Thanks," he told Fetch and headed up to the upper level conference room.
Inside he found Steve and Sam lounging on some chairs. "Hey, Barnes!" Sam said, getting up and clapping Bucky on the back. "We heard about y'all did in Texas!" Steve grinned to show he was in on the joke. He was probably thankful that the joke wasn't at his expense for once.
"Oh shut up," Bucky grumbled. "Where's Agent Bauer? I want to give her a piece of my mind."
"Why?" Sam drawled, continuing his horrific impersonation of a Texan accent. Bucky shot him the finger and Sam and Steve both laughed.
"So I can ask her how she became a high-ranking agent without learning to check the accuracy of the intel she receives," Bucky snapped, dropping down into a chair so heavily the chair groaned in protest. "We walked right into the stupidest trap. It was my fault too, I wasn't thinking, but two minutes of research on her part could have saved us a lot of trouble. She almost got us all killed."
"Ah, but you're alright," Steve said. "So just let it blow over, right?" Steve was always reminding Bucky not to lose his temper over small things, probably because Bucky was so prone to losing his temper. So that made two people now, Ari and Steve, who thought Bucky was a little too hot-tempered for his—or other people's—safety. The thought sobered him up quickly and cooled him down.
"I guess you're right," he finally said after a pause. But he knew deep down that he was only being so forgiving right now because no one on his team had died. Bucky was accustomed to death but when he took charge of peoples' lives, he took it seriously. Every mission he led felt like penance, like he was apologizing for his crimes and simultaneously proving his worth. If anyone died under his watch, such as Agent Lewinski had, he felt responsible. Agent Lewinski had featured in some of his most recent nightmares, pointing to him while riddled with bullet holes, her eyes blank bullet holes as well, as if she were accusing Bucky for her death.
It was a tough problem, trying to balance him knowing that agents signed up for dangerous missions and always had the risk of dying—and knowing that he took it more personally than most people when people died under his watch these days. His people, anyway.
"Fetch told me the new director was here," Bucky said, looking around as if the director might be hiding under the large oak desk and jump out saying, "Ta da!" "Where are they?"
"She did?" Steve looked surprised. "That's the first I've heard. Whoever they are, they haven't come in yet."
"Who's Fetch?" Sam asked.
"Secretary," Bucky said absentmindedly, wondering who else was going to show.
"Her name is Fetch?" Sam asked. He sounded a bit concerned.
"Has anyone alerted Gretchen Weiners?" Steve asked seriously. Bucky and Sam stared at him, Bucky perplexed and Sam astonished. Then Sam suddenly burst out into laughter, slapping his knee and saying, "Man! You always know how to surprise me, Rogers! You watched Mean Girls? Dude, that movie is for teenage girls."
"Ari told me it was a classic," Steve said defensively. "And it was on Netflix—"
"You have Netflix?" Sam asked at the same time Bucky asked, "When did Ari tell you this?"
"I do know how to use technology, Sam," Steve said patiently and then to Bucky: "I don't remember, we text sometimes." He shrugged. Bucky felt a strange twinge of annoyance he couldn't understand. Ari didn't really text him—so why was she texting Steve? Granted, he saw Ari in person way more than Steve did, but still…something about the thought of Ari and Steve texting annoyed him. Perhaps it had been her blush when Steve had hugged her the other night. Did Ari like Steve?
Before Bucky could turn these thoughts over in his head any longer, the door opened and Natasha walked in. "Natasha!" Steve said in surprise, springing to his feet automatically. He noticed that Sam and Bucky hadn't stood and looked embarrassed for a moment and then sat down. Natasha pretended not to notice but Bucky noticed her smile. "Hey."
"Hi," he said, looking her over. He hadn't seen Natasha since she had taken his stolen HYDRA files to Dr. Simmons and that had been quite a while ago. She hadn't showed up at 24 Pryde since then (or if she had, he hadn't ever seen her) and he had no idea what she had been up to. Since neither Steve nor Sam nor Ari had ever mentioned speaking to her he had assumed that she was off the grid again. To say that the Widow worked best in the shadows was an understatement.
She looked different as she did every time Bucky saw her. Her red hair was darker and pin-straight but it was much longer, hanging almost to her elbows. It was also held back in a loose braid which made her look very different; Bucky didn't think he'd ever seen her with her hair tied back. She looked tanned and healthy, somehow. Her face seemed to have lost the haunted look it had had for a little while after the fall of SHIELD. He could only suppose that she had been on personal missions of her own while also recuperating from having her entire cover blown wide open. He had operated in deadly silence for decades so he knew what it had done to her, to have her secrets laid out bare for the world to read. The SHIELD files had quickly been pulled from the Internet by the government but the damage was done: more than enough clever, whip-fast hackers had downloaded the entire docket.
"What are you doing here, girl?" Sam asked, grinning appreciatively at her. He couldn't help flirting with Natasha when he saw her. Bucky could see why; despite her closed-off air, she exuded some type of mystery that drew men in like she was a siren singing on the rocks. He didn't feel the pull himself but he could detect it. She used it as a weapon when she needed to.
"The new director wanted me here with him when you met him," she explained. "To vouch for him."
Bucky didn't want to be the first to admit that this made no sense to him so he raised his eyebrows at Steve, who raised them back at Bucky. It made Bucky remember times in high school and grade school when they had made the same faces at each other across from the classrooms whenever the teachers said something they didn't understand.
"Uh, what?" Sam asked, not afraid to admit that he had no idea what she meant. "Is that SHIELD lingo that I haven't caught up on?"
"No because I don't get it either," Steve said bluntly. "Why would he—or she—need you to vouch for them? Are they an enemy? Who are they, Natasha?"
She smiled and said, "Patience, Steve. All will be revealed soon." She pulled a small compact laptop from her handbag and opened it up on the desk, flipping it open so they couldn't see the screen. She spent several moments clicking and typing and doing the sorts of technological mumbo-jumbo Bucky would never be able to understand and then she stood up straight and dusted some imaginary dust off of her shirt. "Okay. Who are we waiting for?" No one had any clue. "Alright, well, we'll wait five more minutes and then—"
The door opened just then and Ari and Agent Kaplan stepped inside. Ari let out an unprofessional squeak when she saw Natasha and Sam (who wasn't an agent of SHIELD but had assisted on a few of Steve's missions; Ari hadn't been on a mission with him since they tracked down Hoffman) and Agent Kaplan nodded. Ari looked like she wanted to say something but seeing the detached smile on Natasha's face, seemed to think better of it and sat down in a chair next to Bucky. Agent Kaplan leaned against the wall next to Sam, face impassive. It was always hard to tell what he was thinking. Bucky appreciated that in an agent.
"I'm Agent Natasha Romanoff, for those who may not have met me before," Natasha said for Agent Kaplan's sake. "The new director of SHIELD has hand-picked all of you to complete a mission of a more discrete matter. I'll let him do the rest of the talking." She picked up a remote and turned on the TV that hung on the wall behind her. All it showed was a pure white screen. She pressed a button on the laptop and then said, "Ready."
Words began to appear on the TV screen as if someone on a different end was typing them.
HELLO, CAPTAIN ROGERS, SERGEANT BARNES, AND AGENTS MADDEN, KAPLAN, AND WILSON. MAY I CALL YOU "AGENT", SAM WILSON?
Sam wordlessly pointed at himself and then said, "Who, me? I—yeah, he can, but how do I tell him—?"
Natasha smiled. "Don't worry. He heard you. He can hear all of us."
THANK YOU, AGENT WILSON. NOW, I APOLOGIZE FOR MEETING YOU IN SUCH AN UNCONVENTIONAL MANNER. I'M SURE SOME OF YOU ARE VERY CURIOUS AS TO WHO I AM. UNFORTUNATELY, THE TIME IS NOT RIGHT FOR ME TO REVEAL MYSELF. AGENT ROMANOFF CAN VOUCH FOR ME AND LET YOU KNOW THAT I AM WHO I SAY I AM AND I AM ALSO A TRUSTWORTHY MEMBER OF SHIELD.
"All true," Natasha said.
WE WILL MEET IN DUE TIME. HOWEVER, I HAVE A MISSION FOR YOU ALL RIGHT NOW. I AM TITLING YOU TEAM ZODIAC TO MAKE THINGS LESS COMPLICATED. I AM ENTRUSTING YOU WITH THIS MISSION BECAUSE OF A VARIETY OF REASONS: IT IS CONFUSING, IT MAY BE DANGEROUS, AND I'M AFRAID IT MAY HAVE DANGEROUS IMPLICATIONS. BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER, I WANT VERBAL CONFIRMATION FROM ALL OF YOU THAT YOU AGREE TO GO ON THIS MISSION. IF YOU DO NOT CONFIRM, FEEL FREE TO LEAVE—BUT DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT WHAT HAS BEEN SAID SO FAR.
Everyone exchanged somewhat awkward glances and then murmured their confirmation that they were agreeing to partake in the mission. It felt very odd to be speaking to a computer. Unnatural.
GOOD. I KNEW I COULD COUNT ON YOU ALL. THIS IS WHY I PICKED THIS TEAM SPECIFICALLY: IT'S A MIX OF HIGH-RANKED AGENTS WITH EXPERIENCE AND AGENTS WHO TRUST EACH OTHER AND WORK WELL TOGETHER. EVERYTHING A GOOD TEAM NEEDS.
NOW, REGARDING THE MISSION: A MILLIONAIRE IN NEW YORK CITY HAS BEEN MURDERED IN A VERY STRANGE MANNER (I'LL LEAVE YOU TO SEE FOR YOURSELVES). FIVE BLACK MARKINGS WERE ALSO LEFT ON THE DOOR OF THE ROOM HE WAS MURDERED IN. THIS MIRRORS SEVERAL OTHER KILLINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED AROUND THE WORLD. NONE OF THE VICTIMS SHARE MUCH IN COMMON: A PRIEST FROM THE VATICAN, AN OLD WOMAN IN BRAZIL, AND SOME OTHER RANDOM VICTIMS. POLICE BELIEVE IT'S A SIGN OF A NEW GANG. I BELIEVE IT IS THE WORK OF SOMEONE WHO CAN ONLY BE STOPPED BY SHIELD. WE SPECIALIZE IN DEALING WITH THE UNORDINARY. I BELIEVE WE ARE DEALING WITH THE SAME HERE.
"So what exactly is it that you want us to do?" Steve asked.
I WANT YOU TO FIND OUT THE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE VICTIMS. FIND OUT WHO'S RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS. AND STOP THEM BEFORE THEY CHOOSE THEIR NEXT VICTIM.
"Who takes lead?" Steve asked.
I DON'T CARE. YOU CAN CHOOSE AMONGST YOURSELVES OR HAVE NO LEADER AT ALL. ALL THAT MATTERS IS THAT YOU WORK EFFICIENTLY. AND A WARNING: THIS MISSION MAY BE DANGEROUS. WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE DEALING WITH. I'M SORRY ABOUT THE NEGLIGENCY OF AGENT BAUER REGARDING THE TEXAS CASE—BUT I CAN'T PROMISE ANYONE'S SAFETY IN THIS CASE. IS THIS UNDERSTOOD?
"Yes," said Steve who seemed to have become their spokesperson.
GOOD. THAT'S ALL I'LL BE SAYING TODAY. I'M A VERY BUSY PERSON BUT IF YOU NEED TO CONTACT ME, PLEASE CONTACT ME THROUGH AGENT ROMANOFF. GOODBYE.
"He's gone," Natasha said, closing the laptop lid and shutting the TV off. "Congratulations—you guys are some of the first SHIELD agents to meet the new director."
Steve gave Natasha a suspicious look. "But you've met him in person."
"Not exactly," she said. "I met him…a long time ago. But I didn't know him well and ever since he became director, I've only been in contact with him through electronics." Her tone seemed honest but if there was one thing Bucky knew about Natasha, it was that she was always hiding something. Secrecy seemed to be her first nature, though he had to admit she'd been making an effort to be more and more open every time he met her.
"Natasha, are you coming with?" Ari asked.
"Sorry, Ari, not this time," Natasha said. "I have…other business to attend to." Ari looked disappointed and Natasha looked slightly surprised as if she couldn't comprehend someone missing her, and then she looked pleased. "Well…I think I can spare time to swing by after you guys complete this mission." She winked at Ari. Ari looked dazed. Bucky understood why; Natasha was something like a hero to Ari.
"When do we want to leave?" asked Kaplan quietly, slipping his hands into his pockets.
Bucky stood up and straightened his back, cracking his knuckles. "I don't know about you guys," he said, "but I'm wide awake. Let's get moving."
Bucky was ready to throw himself into action and would have gone dashing off to New York City the very next second but as Ari gently reminded him, the rest of them needed to suit up properly, arm themselves, and develop a game plan. He was loathe to waste any more time when there could be a cult of freakish killers out there but hey, he had wasted decades being the puppet of HYDRA…what was another half hour here at SHIELD?
Fetch was waiting for them when they stepped out into the hall, ready with a smile and ear pieces and tracking bracelets. "After what happened in Texas, it's been decided that all teams that go out on missions should wear tracking bracelets in case something goes wrong and we need to send in an extraction team. I've calibrated all of these bracelets so that they're in sync; no one back here at 24 Pryde will be alerted unless one of you strays too far from the rest of the team members. There's quite a large radius of safe movable room so don't worry about walking down the street and having an extraction team descend on you. If someone goes too far out of range, the first thing we'll do is contact the rest of the team members to ask if it's a part of the mission. We don't have the resources to be sending in backup unless we absolutely need to. Of course…the function of these bracelets only work if you wear them and keep them turned on. So their success depends on your commitment to the team safety. Sound good?" She beamed after this speech and everyone stared at her. "What?" she asked somewhat nervously.
"How old are you?" Sam asked, looking astonished.
Bucky had guessed perfectly. She was nineteen-years-old. "Amazing," Steve said. "You're a genius, Miss…?"
"Oh, you can call me Fetch," she said.
"So this is the infamous Fetch!" Sam said. "Tell her what you said earlier, Steve." He elbowed Steve.
Fetch smiled apologetically. "If it's a Mean Girls joke, trust me, I've heard them all. I know—I'm never going to happen." Ari giggled and Steve and Sam grinned. Kaplan and Bucky stared at them, Kaplan with an Am I really working with these people? expression and Bucky purely bewildered. Clearly he was missing out on something.
Fetch led them to the armory where Sam, Ari, and Kaplan suited up and armed themselves. Steve was already in his stealth suit, the dark blue one with the silver star and stripes on the front, his shield firmly locked onto his back.
After they were done suiting up, Fetch passed out their ear pieces. Then she told them she had already arranged transport for them. "The jet just got back from a mission in China and it got a little damaged," she told them apologetically as she led them to a black SHIELD Hummer that was no longer allowed to have the SHIELD logo painted on it. The government allowed a little bit of funding towards SHIELD but no longer allowed them to display their logo in public. Bucky wasn't even sure if the government publicly recognized SHIELD; it was why they tried to stay on the good side of the law now (and usually spectacularly failed). "We don't have any diplomatic immunity there ever since SHIELD's fall and so—well, the team had a little bit of trouble getting out of the country."
"By trouble, do you mean their plane was shot at as they tried to take off?" Bucky asked mildly. Fetch bit her lip and nodded. Bucky tried hard not to shake his head. He hated to think it, since he had escaped from them—which was undeniably a victory—but he couldn't help but sometimes feel like HYDRA had won. They had reduced SHIELD to only a meager fraction of what it used to be. They were still an official organization but just barely. Sharing jets that were damaged because of gunfire, working out of small office lots in residential areas, not being able to display the SHIELD logo as a way of having some sway in the world…it was pathetic.
Fetch showed them how to put on their tracking bracelets which, in reality, were more like pieces of tracking tape. She had a pad with long snippets of what looked like black electrical tape except a tiny little rectangle was implanted into each strip. "These will hold tight to your skin and won't fall off if you sweat or get wet," she explained. "Well—they'll fall off eventually or with extreme wear and tear…but I don't think your mission should take that long. I suggest wrapping them somewhere where they won't be visible, such as your waists or…or thighs," she added, looking dubiously at the men, none of them who had waists small enough for the tracking tape pieces to properly go around. Ari lifted her shirt to reveal her tiny waist and told Bucky, "Soldier, put the tracker on me."
Bucky made sure to keep his face extremely impassive (because Steve was watching him closely, a glint in his eyes) as he taped the tracker in a loop around the narrowest part of her waist. It just barely made a full circle so he knew it most certainly wouldn't fit on any of the men. He and the guys had to roll their pant cuffs up their thighs, which felt awkward as Ari watched with a grin and wrap the pieces around their upper thighs. The tape came together and overlapped a little more this time. When he pulled his pant leg down he shook his leg a bit, trying to see if he could feel it, and it was noticeable—but just barely.
"Not too tight, right?" Fetch asked. "We don't want it to cut off your circulation." Everyone assured her they were fine and she said, "Alright. We're still short some drivers—we have a team negotiating in Chicago—so I'll be driving you again." She slipped into the driver's seat and Bucky marveled that the pixie blonde was so composed and professional at such a young age. Only nineteen-years-old? She must not have even gone to college. He couldn't help but wonder why. What would such a young girl be doing here, if she wasn't being recruited to train as an agent?
Ari must have been thinking along the same lines because she leaned forward in the Hummer and said, "You're so put-together, Fetch. I envy you. How do you do it?"
Fetch smiled but didn't say anything. She drove them to where the jet was waiting and true to form, it looked to be in pretty bad shape. "Are you sure this didn't just come out of World War II?" Sam asked dubiously, staring at the jet through the windshield. "It looks…old. And it's covered with bullet holes."
"It still works fine," Fetch assured him. Bucky expected her to unlock the doors and let them out but she twisted around in the driver's seat to face them all (Sam was sitting in the passenger seat) and there was a serious expression on her face. "I've made sure there are bags with all the necessary supplies in the plane this time. No repeats of what happened in Texas. Also, no one ordered me to do this"—she took a deep breath, as if she was about to break a big rule—"but I went ahead and…borrowed some satellite phones from the inventory. I know we're only supposed to give these to agents going overseas but I feel somewhat responsible for what happened in Texas. I don't think I stocked the right materials in the plane for you guys."
"That wasn't your fault!" Ari said in a shocked voice. "How could we blame you for that? That was no one's fault, really."
"Still," Fetch said. "I'm responsible for making sure 24 Pryde and all its missions run smoothly. So I'm taking precautions this time, especially because—" She hesitated again, looking nervous. "Especially because…because Sergeant Barnes is on the team." Her voice had dropped an octave and she couldn't meet Bucky's eyes. He stiffened. Everyone fell silent, assuming she meant that he had been the Winter Soldier and was dangerous and could turn on them any moment…until she spoke again: "And…and I think we all know that HYDRA is really keen on targeting him. So I think whatever team he's on is in bigger danger. So I want you to take these satellite phones. I've programmed any number you might need into the phone. They're small enough to keep in your pockets without looking bulky. An apprentice of Mr. Stark invented them."
"These are Stark satellite phones?" Steve asked, looking surprised.
"Yes. They were originally to be used in the military…but then Mr. Stark had his…um, change of heart and they were set aside until SHIELD acquired them. When you land, call me and I'll tell you where to go next. I've arranged for private transport into the city as well."
She passed the phones out, which were small compact black squares that flipped open and had small antennas. They all slipped them into their pockets and then Fetch unlocked the doors, letting them go. The pilot didn't speak to them this time; Bucky could see that he was ready to go. They clambered up the stairs and strapped themselves into their seats. The pilot shut the door, gave them a thumbs up sign to let them know he was ready to go, and then they took off, rumbling down the grassy abandoned field and then bursting into the air.
"She's really prepared, that little girl!" Sam shouted over the noise. Apparently the jet was an older model as well because it didn't have much in the way of soundproofing. It felt like they were in an enclosed helicopter.
The flight didn't take long, only an hour, and they were touching down in an abandoned field soon. They grabbed their bags and descended from the plane. The pilot nodded at them before taking off again. And then they were standing in an empty field, bags in their hands, looking around. Steve pulled out his phone and called Fetch. He listened to her for a minute and then they hung up. "Someone's coming," he said.
Sure enough, ten minutes later a dinged-up SUV emerged through a clearing in the trees and trundled across the grassy grounds towards them. Everyone's hands instinctively flew to their weapons and Bucky and Kaplan pointed their pistols at the SUV, which had tinted windows. The door opened and a female voice called, "Guns down, Team Zodiac, I'm SHIELD!" A woman strolled around the open SUV door to face them, hands held up in the air to show she was unarmed. Kaplan immediately lowered his gun, looking puzzled. "Agent Dogar?"
She smiled. "In the flesh." She had the brown skin of a South Asian woman, shiny straight black hair that was cropped in a long bob that skimmed her jaw, and hooded eyes that had a sleepy, knowing look to them, as did her smile. Something about her reminded Bucky of Natasha. The mysterious air that said I know something you don't, I've seen things you haven't, I've been places you've never gone to.
"But I thought you were out of the game," Kaplan said, walking forward to quickly hug Agent Dogar, patting her on the back, which surprised Bucky. He hadn't taken the silent, serious man for the hugging type. "This is Agent Fatima Dogar," Kaplan explained, turning back to face the team. "She was in my pool of recruits at the Academy, she was on my original team for years…she's one of the best." He sounded kind of proud.
"You flatter me, Kaplan," Agent Dogar said.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "You quit SHIELD two years ago."
"Yep, I did." She stuck her hands in her pockets. "But then…then the whole fiasco happened with HYDRA and I contacted Hill directly and told her that if she ever needed my help in anything, I would always be available to indirectly help out any remaining agents. This life…I'm done with it. But I can still assist those who still fight the good fight." She smiled but it was a tired smile. She looked relatively young, maybe mid-thirties, and Bucky couldn't help wonder what horrors she had seen to make her retire from SHIELD so early on. "So here I am. The new director and Bauer know I'm at your disposal."
"We won't drag you into anything," Kaplan said quietly, reading some concern on Agent Dogar's face that the rest of them couldn't quite understand, not knowing her. She nodded and then said, "Alright, get in. I'm not taking you the drop site until night because—well, you can't just burst guns a-blazing into a wealthy penthouse in your suits in the light of day. So sorry, folks, but we're going to kill some time at my place."
"Are you okay with that?" Kaplan asked.
She shrugged. "It's what needs to be done," is all she said and then she got into the driver's seat. They all clambered into the back, allowing Kaplan to take the passenger seat so he could catch up with Agent Dogar. It was apparent that he hadn't seen her since she quit SHIELD and that they were close friends, the type of friendship that came only with training since a young age together. Bucky didn't mean to listen in on her conversation but he couldn't help it; he learned that Agent Dogar (they were all still going to call her "Agent" as a term of respect, since Ms. Dogar didn't sound right and Fatima was way too informal) was a teacher's assistant and working towards a degree in elementary education ("So it's the quiet life for you now?" Kaplan asked and Agent Dogar chuckled darkly) and had gotten married in the past few years ("My parents set it up," she said. Kaplan shot her a look that meant something and she said, "I know, I know—I always said I wouldn't let them do that to me. But you know what, Brett? I was tired and I wanted a family. I wanted to move on. So I let them and he's…he's a really nice guy. He's a good guy." Kaplan looked satisfied then, once he heard that Agent Dogar was settled properly).
She drove them through the New York state countryside, passing mountains and empty fields, and Bucky caught his first glimpse of the New York City skyline an hour later. Traffic going to the city delayed them for three hours which they spent in silence. Well, Bucky and Steve spent it in silence, both of them staring at the city and lost in their own thoughts. Ari and Sam, for that matter, were engaged in a silent but furious card game in the very last row of seats. They'd apparently found a deck back there. Bucky spotted a water bottle and a receipt laying crumpled on the ground and it occurred to him that this was no SHIELD vehicle—it was Agent Dogar's personal SUV. She had to know that she was a target as long as her car held Team Zodiac. Bucky felt a rush of gratitude towards the woman, for risking everything when she wasn't even really a part of SHIELD anymore.
"You're cheating!" Ari hissed in the back. "You just—no—you're looking in the window! Sam, you piece of—!"
Sam snickered. Bucky wished he remembered how to play cards. That was one skill he'd lost, having not done it in ages. He'd forgotten the rules to all the games.
And then they were in the city, driving bumper-to-bumper in the horning, honking, screeching traffic that was so typical of New York City. Normally noisy places put Bucky on edge because noisy meant that the sounds of an enemy could be concealed, but he found himself relaxing back into his seat as he watched the sky scrapers pass him through his window. Something about New York City's noise felt different…it felt familiar, even when it wasn't really. It was probably a psychological thing—something in him whispering, No matter where you live, this city is your home. These streets may be changed but they are yours.
Bucky vowed to one day move back to this city. Washington D.C. was nice but it really had nothing on the city that never slept.
Ari had abandoned the card game and had her face pressed up against her window, mouth open, eyes wide. Bucky craned his neck to look at her. Her delight delighted him. "You've never been to New York City?" he asked, feeling surprised and she shook her head. Then he wondered why he felt surprised—Ari had never indicated that she'd traveled anywhere much. She'd told him once that she wanted to travel…but that she'd never really gotten the chance, thanks to her depression over Dani and then her parents and then Alex ruining her life.
It occurred to Bucky that Ari, despite being young and smart and capable, had never really gotten to live an enjoyable life—the life she deserved to live. So on top of his vow to move here, he made a silent promise to himself that when this was all said and done, he would take Ari on a trip. She could pick the place, wherever she wanted, or she could pick more than one place. It didn't matter to him—all that mattered was that she got the chance to see the world out of her SHIELD uniform.
"It's amazing," she said, sitting back in her seat with a whump. "I mean, I always saw pictures, but I never…it's like being in a metal forest."
"Interesting way of putting it," said Bucky. He liked it—it reminded him of where his journey to become himself had started: wandering through the forests of North Carolina.
Agent Dogar lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment in what could be classified as a middle-class section of town. She parked her SUV in the attached parking unit and then led them up the fire escape in the alley next to her apartment building. Ari had trouble reaching the first platform so Bucky had to toss her up. "Maybe you'll grow taller," he suggested with a slight smirk.
"Maybe you'll shut up," she retorted, sticking her tongue out at him. Bucky grinned but his smile fell away when he saw Kaplan looking at Ari with a mystified expression. Agent Dogar looked amused by this exchange and she apologized for leading them up the fire escape. "I don't think anyone's ever actually used it," she said, leading them to the fifth floor. "But I figured it would be best if no one saw you in these outfits."
"We need to start going out in civilian clothes," remarked Steve as they clambered into the fifth floor hallway. Agent Dogar hustled them into her apartment and quadruple-locked it behind her. Kaplan raised an eyebrow at the mass of locks on the door and she gave a sheepish smile and shrug. "Old habits die hard."
The apartment wasn't enormous but it felt spacious, light, and cheerful. She drew the blinds and curtains shut—"In case anyone is looking in with a sniper," she explained, which gave Bucky a whole new set of worries—but turned on all the lights so the place didn't seem dark and gloomy. The sofas and walls and carpets were all white but they were accented with bright blue accents and vases of bright yellow daisies and sunflowers on the tables. The effect was very nice.
"Well…make yourselves at home," said Agent Dogar, clasping her hands and looking slightly uncomfortable. Bucky could guess that she had never tainted this space with SHIELD before. "You can leave when it gets dark. I'll give you a key to the local morgue where the victim's body is so you can examine it after."
"How did you get a key?" Kaplan asked.
"I still have my contacts," she said, smiling slightly, and then she disappeared into the kitchen. Everyone awkwardly sat down on the sofas and looked at the ground, at the walls, at each other. No one was sure what to do now. It wasn't like they could just kick back and relax but they had to spend the time doing something. Steve took charge and began to quietly outline their plan: they would first go to the millionaire's penthouse to sniff around there and then they would break into the morgue to take a look at his body. From there…well, it depended on what they found.
While the rest of them planned and strategized Bucky got up and strolled into the kitchen, where Agent Dogar was leaning against her fridge and staring blankly at the stove across from her, arms folded. She looked entirely lost in thought but her head snapped up when Bucky stepped into the kitchen, alert. "Did you need something?"
"No, I just—" He hesitated. "I just wanted to…say thank you."
"What for?" She looked surprised. Bucky was a little surprised himself; he didn't typically initiate conversation with people he didn't know and especially not for the purposes of politeness and niceties. But something about Agent Dogar helping them out made him feel intensely guilty; perhaps it was the fact that she seemed like she had gotten her second chance, her fresh start…and here they were, messing that up. Bucky knew very well what it was like to get a second chance at life and he also knew what it meant for that second chance to be threatened or disrupted—the panic and despair that followed were overwhelming. And sure, he figured she and him had different ideas about what a second chance at life entailed…but still.
"For helping us," he said. "I know you wanted to…escape this life. And now, because of us, you're back in the game—even if you're not suiting up."
"I'm helping of my own free will, agent," Agent Dogar reminded him. "I chose to do this."
"I know, but it's still brave," he said. "Especially you letting us into your home when—when your husband doesn't know about this, does he?" he asked. He didn't know how he knew; he had just sensed it from her expressions and wary nature and talk about starting fresh.
Agent Dogar looked startled, her heavy-lidded sleepy-looking eyes flying wide open, and she stared at Bucky cautiously for a moment, as if he had gone snooping through her personal drawers or something. Then she visibly relaxed and sighed. "No, he doesn't. He doesn't know anything about my time with SHIELD."
"How did you hide such a huge chunk of your life from him?" Bucky asked, fascinated.
"I didn't hide it," she snapped. She paused and then said, "Well—yeah, I did, sort of. But it was more to keep him safe. And also because…I don't know how he'd react. Would he feel safe around me? Would he want to know about my missions? Those are still classified, even if I'm not an agent anymore. I'm afraid he'd grow resentful of the mysteries I'd never be able to explain to him and you know when resentment grows, that's the death of any relationship." Bucky's heart jolted slightly when he recalled Ari's furious face when he had shot McGuire in the head and her slightly bitter tone when she later fought with him over his secrets. Was she secretly resentful of his actions?
"So I just told him I worked for the government, a boring office job that had nothing memorable to it. I told him I was unhappy and bored there so I don't like to talk about it. He accepted it because I guess the unhappiness on my face was real. I wasn't exactly happy at SHIELD my last few years. So I'm hoping it'll stay buried and never resurface."
"And if he should come home now…?"
"He shouldn't. He'll be at work until six and then he has to take a client out to dinner," she said. "So if everything goes accordingly, he's never going to know you guys were here."
"It's still a big risk," said Bucky quietly. If her husband came home now and saw several people wearing all-black combat-ready outfits and armed to the teeth, he would never believe his wife had worked simply just a boring government desk job. She would be caught in her lies and Bucky knew that lies as big as this one really could make a relationship crumble.
She bit her lip. "I know. I don't want to lose him. But…I still feel a duty to help SHIELD agents if they need it. I may not be at SHIELD anymore, I may have been unhappy there for a while, but I'm still loyal to SHIELD."
"Even after you figured out that it had been infiltrated by HYDRA?" Bucky asked. His throat felt a little tight when he thought back to that time: it was one of the darkest times in his life, the days when he had been the empty Winter Soldier but fuzzy memories of a blond man he knew had tormented him and gnawed at his mind. At least, they had until Pierce had had his mind wiped again, which was a whole different kind of torture. Bucky was sometimes surprised his body and mind were as whole as they were, considering what he had been through.
"Even after that," she said firmly. "I believe in SHIELD. I knew not everyone at SHIELD could have been bad—and I was right. I contacted Hill soon after its fall, which was when I realized that a small fraction of agents still remained. That's when I offered her my help if it was ever needed."
"And you wonder why I'm saying thank you, despite your sacrifices," Bucky said mildly, raising his eyebrows. "Well…that's all I wanted to say." He already felt awkward enough being so diplomatic but figured now had been as good time as any to start being polite again. He had to fully enter civilization sometime, right? The thought made his chest feel tight and hot with panic and he immediately heard Ari's voice in his head, as clear as day: "Baby steps, Soldier. Baby steps. Don't rush it. No one expects you to." He wasn't sure if Ari had actually said something like this or if he just knew exactly what she would say by this point.
"What were you doing?" Ari asked when he sat down on the sofa next to her. Sam was listening to an iPod (where the hell had that come from?), Kaplan was staring off into space, and Steve was quietly looking at Agent Dogar's bookcase, hands clasped behind his back.
"The decent thing," he said a little cryptically, not sure how to explain his urge to thank Agent Dogar. Ari's eyebrows knitted together as if she wanted to ask him what he meant but after looking at him for a minute, she leaned back and simply said, "I guess we're all entitled to our secrets, right?"
"Right," he said gratefully, glad she wasn't pressing the matter. She could have if she really wanted to and she could be extremely stubborn when she wanted to be (rather like a donkey or a goat, he had told her once, which had made her glare at him so furiously that he couldn't help but chuckle whenever he remembered it). He leaned forward and looked around at all the members of Team Zodiac, clearing his throat to get their attention. "Are we ready?" he asked. "Is the plan set?"
"As much as we can set it," replied Steve. "Are you ready to break into a millionaire's penthouse and then a morgue?"
Bucky leaned back on the sofa and crossed his arms. "I was born ready." And truer words had never been spoken; no matter what had been done to him, no matter who he had been turned into, no matter how many times he would be reborn…since day one of his original life, he'd been born ready to throw himself into the fray and fight until his last breath. It was in his nature. HYDRA had utilized that and heightened it but it was the one thing they'd never been able to take away from him: his willingness to go to the lengths that other people weren't willing to go, whether as the human Bucky Barnes or the robotic Winder Soldier. Because he was always ready.
