The sight of the hulking Helicarriers was imprinted on Steve's eyelids. He and Natasha were half-collapsed against each other, alone in the world for now, because the world had just blown up around them in the very camp that had seen Steve struggle through basic training. Steve shifted his grip on Natasha, and she bit back a whimper at the shift of pain, their slow progress excruciating as they stumbled along, the fatigue growing heavier on them both with every shuffling step.
The sliding door opened before they even reached it, and Steve drank the sight in like it was iced tea on a summer's day. His features set, Sam Wilson ushered them in, eyes cutting up and down the block to make sure they weren't followed, for all the good it could do him. "Everyone we know is trying to kill us." Natasha managed, sounding groggy, and Steve wondered if he hadn't shielded her against the blast enough to stop a concussion.
"Not everyone. Get in here." Sam murmured, and as if they were both on strings, the second they stepped over the threshold, they both relaxed almost bonelessly, Steve barely sliding Natasha into a chair before he could lever himself into one at the cheery breakfast nook they'd intruded on. "Some guy named Jarvis told me to expect you."
"You have a Stark Phone." Natasha diagnosed, the smile twisted as she shook her head.
"Yeah..."
"JARVIS is Tony Stark's artificial intelligence. He really shouldn't be allowed to hack your phone!" Steve informed, though the last was a raised scolding of the phone.
"Forgive the impertinence, Captain Rogers, but first of all, I did not 'hack' anything. I telephoned. Secondly, I was under the impression that the continued safety of yourself and Agent Romanoff was paramount."
"JARVIS, don't listen to him, I like you." Sam told him, tone very nearly scolding as he scowled at Steve and cradled his phone protectively.
"I love you, too, JARVIS, don't disown me along with that guy." Natasha murmured, voice wry but strained as she leaned back in the chair gingerly, favouring her right side with a caution that spoke to Steve of broken bones and back alleys in days long, long gone. "What agency authorized the drone strike on the boot camp?"
"It was not done under the algorithm of an agency. The drone itself was Hammer Tech-"
"Well that explains why it failed to kill you." Sam commented tightly, shaking his head as he quietly moved to gather first aid supplies and run a towel under some cool water, flicking it at Steve's face so that it landed with a splat.
"Quite. The flash drive you procured by infiltrating SHEILD contained more than the coordinates of HYDRA's lair; I was able to mirror access to the computer into which you plugged it in and remotely download the information directly onto my servers. The drive you stole contained both the coding base of the new Helicarrier's selection process and...plans to use the Tessaract to bring back the villain known as Red Skull." JARVIS paused, knowing that it was necessary to let that sink in, and giving it it's due course as the harsh scrape of chair against floor signalled the collapse of Steve Rogers into the chair next to Natasha. "Sir anticipated the possibility of this when the Tessaract was first revealed during the New York episode. He calculated that the Tessaract likely deposited Johan Schmidt in a galaxy parallel to ours; and, according to Sir, the "likelihood of the fucker's survival is just our goddamned luck". The plans which HYRDRA has produced are likely to bear fruit."
A strong hand wrapped around the back of Steve's neck, and he didn't try to put up a fight against its force, bending double in his seat to put his head between his knees and force himself to breathe as his mind raced and rumbled with the all-consuming weight of all he gave last time to stop Red Skull; all he had to give now-all he wasn't sure he could give up. He was a man changed from the idealist watching the news reels, aching to join the fight in order to stop the suffering of all those innocents: He wanted his own suffering to stop now, too.
"So what do we do?" Sam asked, leaning against his kitchen counter with a glass of juice, looking for all the world like they weren't talking about the end of the free world as they knew it.
Natasha's blunt nails scratched gently at the back of his neck with just enough pressure to make him wish he weren't above curling into the gesture like a touch-starved cat. "We find a way, or we make one." Natasha's voice was low and fast, her gaze sharp and unrelenting as she stared down at Steve. "But are you sure you want this to be your fight, too?"
"You got out..." Steve spoke up, drawing himself upright to meet Sam's eyes, "this might be a suicide mission; there's no better reason to stay out."
"Captain America needs your help; there's no better reason to get back in." Sam grabbed a file folder from the counter, slapping it down in front of Steve and standing back as he flipped it open and did a double take at what was laid out before him.
"What's this?"
"Call it a resume."
"I thought you said you were a pilot?"
"I never said 'pilot'." With a slight grin, Sam offered a hand to Natasha, "Let's get you two patched up, then you two can explain to me why JARVIS thinks you can sneak into Fort Meade, get through three guarded gates and a twelve-inch steel wall, and steal 'em."
Steve glanced at Natasha, who shrugged fluidly, looking over Sam's version of credentials as she did. Turning back, Steve couldn't help the small smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth, "Shouldn't be a problem."
Once Natasha had showered away the smudges of ash, it was nearly impossible to ignore the weight of the air around her; the heaviness in her movements, and the sadness tingeing her steadiness.
Steve scrubbed at the dirt on his hands, building himself up to go out there. "You okay?"
He knew as soon as the words left his mouth that that wasn't the question that needed asking. She shrugged, still drying her hair piece by piece, and blinked up at him as he came in drying his hands, "Yeah."
Steve didn't have to have built the relationship with Natasha that allowed him to read through her mask to get to the cracks: these ones were written plainly on her features for him. But for as much as he knew she was letting him see them, he was sure that it was down to the trust between them; the relationship created from all the hours they spent together-not just since the Avengers splintered against this threat, but since he'd woken up. She had been the one to put down the foundations of his education in modern life. She had, he well knew, gathered intelligence on where he was in catching up so that Tony could appear at his apartment door with an offer to watch the very movie that Steve had come up with next on his ever-growing list. It was her brand of love, this indirect care. She did it with Clint, sending Coulson hounding for medical attention whenever she knew he was hurt; she was a force field for Bruce when the world and all the people in it became too much for him to deal with, including the lot of them; for Thor, she gathered intel on Jane's preferences so that she could nudge the demigod in the right direction.
The most interesting balance was that between Tony and Natasha, though. Steve had come to understand that Natasha had a strange soft spot for him, and had even seen it in action time and time again. But Tony resisted being taken care of, or taking care of himself, at every turn he could. But he loved to take care of other people, and therein laid the opening Natasha had so gracefully leapt into. They met, when Tony was having nights that even Steve couldn't help him with (they were few, and it was always hard for them both if either of them had a night bad enough that the other couldn't help them through), or when Natasha was feeling vulnerable for one reason or another. They would sit in silence for most of the night, a tea tray carefully prepared and painstakingly laid out in easy reach, and they would simply watch the city outside the window.
Pepper and Steve had taken to calling these nights the hard reset, and it was something that Steve felt like he needed to know more about, now.
He sat across from her with slightly less stiffness than he'd had when they'd arrived, meeting her eye and keeping her gaze, "What's going on?"
The question was quiet, easy in a way that allowed Natasha to shrug it off if she really wanted to, but he knew well enough to know she didn't. She looked blank, panicked-she looked hunted, and when she forced herself back to this quiet room in a suburb of Washington, DC, she had to look away from his gaze, "When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA." She sighed so quietly that if it weren't for the fact that he was listening for it, he may not have heard the stir of breath, "I thought I knew whose lies I was telling-"
It was the same phrase she'd said in the car, and Steve knew that it was kicking around in her head like a song that wouldn't go away. He didn't know how to stop it; couldn't when things like that drove Tony to the point of mania, or when the things he heard in his worst moments, in his nightmares, wouldn't leave him alone.
"I owe you." She breathed, eyes huge and vulnerable, but for all they may have been wet, he knew she wasn't about to cry.
"No, you don't." Steve told her evenly. He'd tucked her under his body and his shield and taken the brunt of the explosion as easily as breathing, because he couldn't have another friend be lost to him.
"If it was the other way around, and it was down to me to save your life-and you be honest with me-" she ducked her head, gaze unwavering now, "would you trust me to do it?"
She was a spy; someone who'd been taking marching orders for a long time from an agency they both now knew they couldn't trust. She'd been assigned to retrieve the very flash drive they'd broken back into SHIELD to steal, assigned this job while she was meant to be helping him with a hostage situation, and neither she nor SHIELD had divulged this side-job.
"I trust my family." Steve replied quietly, gaze just as steady as hers. "And I'm always honest."
Natasha couldn't help the smile pulling at her, "Especially when it'll get you your ass kicked." Her gaze flicked over him in a way that he'd seen her do just before she sicced Coulson on Clint, or pulled down the tea leaves Tony had hidden in the deepest reaches of their kitchen cabinets. "You seem pretty chipper for someone who just found out they died for nothing."
Steve took a deep breath, knowing that, at some point probably in the very near future, he was going to need to let himself fully face all that was weighing on him now. "I guess I just like to know who I'm fighting."
Sam leaned into the room, and with him came a waft of bacon and pancakes that made Steve nearly ache to be back home, "I made breakfast if you guys are into that kind of thing."
Natasha smiled her small, quiet smile and got up with surprising smoothness for someone whose ankle was more than likely sprained under a deluge of debris. "Thanks for this, Sam." Steve murmured, clapping him on the arm, "I can't tell you-"
"You don't need to." Sam cut him off, "I've been here in my own way; at some point, you wonder who it is you're fighting for. And sometimes you sure up that you're fighting for the right reasons...sometimes you find out you're fighting for a fascist sect that got started in Nazi Germany, walking around like it's the great protector of the free world." Steve snorted, and Sam grinned at him, cheeky.
"Are you sure you want to get into this with us?"
Sam's stance looked completely at ease, but there was an undercurrent; something that told Steve that while Sam was an easy-going guy, he was always just as ready for a fight as Steve was. "Man, I've been waiting to fight with you since my gramps showed me his comics collection. But excuse me if I step on your toes with all the heroing: I'm not a sidekick."
Natasha snorted, "Do not ask me to damsel. Fury knows only to ask me to damsel if he's willing to give me an extra three weeks' vacation and has enough beds in Medical for me to break anyone who's had to see me play damsel."
Sam glanced at Steve, who was nodding sagely despite never having been aware that damsel was really a card Fury had been willing to ask Natasha to play. "If I wanted a damsel, my best bet would be Tony with a cold so bad it requires bed rest."
"For a man who has literally had his chest ripped open without anaesthesia twice, he is a wimp in the face of the common cold." Natasha sighed as if she was direly disappointed.
Both Steve and Natasha knew that really, it was that very hole in his chest that caused all the grief when he got at all sick: diminished lung capacity combined with a cough meant that there were nights when Steve would wake to one of Tony's coughing fits and feel the ache of it in his own lungs just at the memory of what it was like not to be able to draw enough to breath to have a hope of surviving. In truth, Steve was fairly sure that Tony would keep going no matter how sick he got, especially since he'd already done it before-but now Natasha could tell with a glance that he'd been coughing so hard it hurt, and Steve could use every dirty trick in his repertoire to cancel whatever had Tony dragging himself out of bed. Being an American Icon had its few (and strange) perks.
"At least Tony eventually takes his medicine and rests, though. That's an improvement over his usual patterns of self-destruction and madness." Steve raised his glass of orange juice as if to toast Natasha's sentiment.
"JARVIS, is there anything you can tell us?" Steve asked once they'd settled into their food, Sam's phone conspicuously on the table.
"Sir is not injured; nor are Dr. Banner or Agent Barton. Structural damage to the Tower is limited to the workshop levels, I took the liberty of arranging to have a team insure that any hazards are rectified immediately and now the workshop waits for Sir to reconstruct as he will."
Steve's fists had clenched, but Natasha beat him to the punch, "Are they in the Raft?"
"No. They were put into a secure SHIELD facility with a collection of...those that SHIELD has deemed to be threats."
Natasha's gaze met Steve's, "The algorithm's early results?"
"Not as such. These were peoples determined to be what Sir would define as 'chaotic - neutral', or, better put, people who do not fall under SHIELD's limited definition of "good", with enough power and inclination that they could very well be made "bad"."
"Are these people a threat to Tony, Clint, and Bruce?"
"Sir has organized them."
"Jesus," Natasha laughed, shaking her head. "They took the bait." Steve shot her a look, and she quirked a smile, "We've been planting indicators in my reports that Tony can't actually handle leadership and organizational positions. Coulson being in charge of sweeping him up would have set things to rights should it have ever come to that; as it is, we gave Tony an opening to build a resistance."
Sam looked from Steve to Natasha, somewhere between impressed and horrified, "So what you're saying is that you've been feeding false intel to your organization, just in case."
"I always have an exit strategy." Natasha replied, and Steve could hear what she didn't say; that when it came to it, she'd built exit strategies for each of them. She'd do whatever it took to protect those she loved, and to be included in that list was an honour beyond words.
"Y'all take care of your own." Sam drawled, a smirk pulling at his mouth. "I can respect that. It seems damn risky, though."
"If Tony Stark tries to take over the world and the information is necessary, it'll be with Pepper Potts at his back, and no one in this world or any other could stand against the two of them, and I don't intend to." Natasha told him with an ease that very nearly made Steve giggle.
"So what's the plan to get my wings back?"
"That'll be you and Natasha. I need to try to get word to Fury. I want to see how far this goes, and if I can get help along the way, it'll come in handy."
Sam looked between them, surprised, "You two were too busy being chased through a mall and blown up to hear, then. Nick Fury was killed yesterday."
Natasha froze, and Steve felt himself deflate, just a little. If Nick Fury was dead, their chances of regaining normalcy when all was said and done had died with vacuum of power within SHIELD would have already been filled by a man named Alexander Pierce.
Steve had met him only once, during the memorial for the victims of the Chitauri attack; the man that ran the back office, day-to-day of SHIELD had been sombre and sincere in all of the right places, and it had sent up every red flag in Steve's mind. It was too close to the senators of his early career; too reminiscent of the men who would say whatever they had to-and would make him say whatever they had to-in the days when he was nothing more than a dancing monkey in a spangly costume. Natasha had known that, of course, and had, albeit a little grudgingly, pulled Steve out of the spotlight, and let the wheeling and dealing fall to Tony pretty much in its entirety.
"You still need to go. Fury's throne wasn't made only of lies." Natasha told him. "Sam and I will go to Fort Meade, you let JARVIS find a way to plant a seed in their heads, get them to think-get them to question."
"Some grand speech gonna make a difference?"
Steve and Natasha shared a look at that, "Depends on who it is delivering it."
"No one better than Captain America." Sam murmured, grinning, and Steve shook his head, smiling slightly.
Thor had said it best when he'd boredly walked away from all attempts to get him to be inspirational Agent Hill had been trying to coax him into for the media frenzy after Thor had returned from Asgard. He was supposed to be a warrior prince, Hill had reasoned, and should therefore be able to be an inspiration to all, a leader of men. Tony had laughed himself sick, said the ridiculousness of assuming that because a man of action was supposed to be a leader of the people that he would ever be less a man of action was the most amusing thing he'd heard in years. And Steve knew how right he was about that.
Steve didn't like to be the man making the speech, but if it would help him to stand for what he believed in; for what he needed to fight for. None of them liked to be the one to make the speech; Tony was usually the one who was most ready to dive onto that grenade, and Steve was the one most often thrown on it, but when they finally got together it threw into sharp relief that they wore masks more of the time than not; and neither of them counted the HUD or Steve's cowl in that list of masks they'd been wearing. There was a time when Steve hadn't realized that the masks Tony wore weren't as easy to take off as Steve's were. Seeing Tony wearing his masks with them, in those first months of team building and tentative friendship, was something that had made Steve sick and angry until he'd finally realized that the reason he wore them was because his parents hadn't been the kind of people who put their masks down willingly, and Tony himself hadn't been in such close proximity with someone-let alone a superpowered team of someones-for so long a time.
Tony's masks were in place most of the time when they'd all first moved into the Tower. Of course, if you weren't looking for them, you couldn't tell he had any masks-but Steve had been trying to puzzle Tony Stark out for months by then, and saw them for what everyone would have seen them as; a gambit to keep everyone else at bay. It was much later, when Tony was comfortable enough to pad out of their bedroom and fall limp onto his side like a marionette with the strings cut, that Steve realized just what it was, really. It was a way to keep himself from doing or saying the wrong thing without armour against the consequences. Hidden in his mask, if he misbehaved without meaning to (he usually meant to, but Steve had been learning the difference of when he didn't) he was protected against the fallout on a personal level: he was just Tony Stark, the playboy billionaire philanthropist not Tony Stark, the man who had gotten to witness his father fall into alcoholism, and alternate between neglect and-Steve hated this more than anything in all his years asleep-abuse. Tony had a mask so that no one could see the cracks when he misstepped and the "illusion" of his goodness was called into question. He had a mask so that he could play off the accusations and the rumours that haunted him despite every act of heroism he'd ever performed, and every act of heroism he'd yet to perform.
Steve had learned the true value of the persona they'd built for him during the war when Tony had been attacked throughout the media for not doing enough during a Doombot attack when he was lauded for his contribution. Tony had been the one to figure out how to stop the damn things; Steve had barely been able to make a nick in their paint jobs. Tony had laughed it off, and Steve had told Hill that if she expected him to sit down with the reporter who had just that morning accused Tony of inciting the attack, he would not be responsible for his actions. Hill was going to argue with him, until Phil walked in and told her that if she wanted to be transferred to their PR department, she'd have to fill out the paperwork and file it with HR before they could officially instate her to the position. Tony hardly needed Steve to defend him; he'd mastered the art of wrangling the media by the time he'd turned ten, after all; Steve had been learning from him more than he'd ever managed to glean on his own, and he'd simply accepted that and reminded himself to pay closer attention the next time the press gathered around him so that he, too, could bait Fox News and the Daily Bugle into a frantic back-paddling in one fell swoop, just as Tony'd taught him.
"When we get home, I'm taking Pepper to a spa and if anyone calls us, I'll kill them." Natasha groaned, leaning back in her chair and letting her head fall back in exhaustion.
"Tony and I will be in the lab. I feel like I might need to blow something up after this." Steve agreed. Sam was shaking his head, arms folded on the table in front of him.
"I didn't take you for the kinda guy to blow shit up for fun."
"You've clearly never seen someone as into science as Tony is when they're promised they can blow shit up as much as they want with their favourite person in the world." Natasha's voice was dripping with laughter, "I was lucky enough to get invited to the last round of implosive testing after Bruce got labelled a terrorist by Breitbart and Tony was called before that senate hearing. It's entertaining beyond words."
"Where was I for that one?"
"You were with Clint and Coulson." Natasha told him dismissively, and Steve repressed a look of incredulity, because of course Natasha would know where he'd been when he was meant to be on an entirely off-the-books op to go meet Coulson's family. He wouldn't have been invited to that session; that was before he and Tony had found some peace with each other, and he wasn't welcome in Tony's space, JARVIS had made that clear when he'd knocked and JARVIS had sent a short through the holographic interface the glass had, buzzing a lovely shock up though his knuckles that had left his whole arm tingling. Tony had torn JARVIS a new one the second he'd found out, and Steve had felt his heart twinge in response to the care with which Tony had examined his hand. In his cheesier moments, Steve wondered if it wasn't down to Tony's work-worn fingers on his skin that had caused the majority of the tingling. "Your scrambled eggs skills would be much in demand at Avengers Tower, Sam. You're being adopted. You have no choice in the matter."
Sam laughed, shrugging his acceptance happily and reaching for an unmarked jar of chilli sauce that Steve knew he needed to get the recipe for, because Clint would love it. "Please don't make Tony remodel so your eggs can be fluffy." Steve put up the token protest, since he had been labelled the responsible one.
"Pfft. He can have Rhodey's room. Rhodey swore he'd never sleep in the tower again after that fiasco with the Warriors Three and tequila."