She comes to with a pounding headache. Like the one she gets when the streets are all yellow with pollen or she's just been drinking gin instead of water. It's right between her eyes.

Her mouth is all dry too and tasting like old blood.

She rolls up into a sitting position on the awful cot she's been left on. She's back in the room she'd been first stuck in with Maria. It hasn't changed at all. The other cot isn't even made up. Blanket's still neatly folded on top.

That's because Maria's squatting over by the toilet and looking at where it goes into the wall. She seems to pick up on having an audience because she glances over her shoulder and sags with relief seeing Angie.

"Was worried about you when they brought you back unconscious."

"What happened to me?"

"No idea, but you've got a helluva shiner."

Angie reaches up to touch one side of her face and winces when her fingertips graze a bit of her that's all bruised and swollen.

Then she notices her knuckles. They're all banged up like Peggy's are after "just a little work trip."

She balls one hand into a fist and hisses at the bright pain. "I don't remember a fight…"

"Here's hoping you gave as good as you got."

Judging by her knuckles she thinks that's a given.

Maria starts tugging on the toilet and nods at her to come over. "Gimme a hand will ya."

"You doin' some plumbing?"

Maria shoots her an annoyed look that Angie knows for a fact she saw Tony Stark shoot the other day. "I need to get to the flushing mechanism. Lot of good stuff there. Rod and springs and junk. Might be able to rig something to—"

"Break us out of our cell that's currently a thousand feet underwater?"

"Step by step Ms. Carter—" She stops tugging to lean on the toilet sink business. "Can I call you Angie? You held my hands while I whizzed in a field so I figure—"

"Angie's fine."

"So, Angie," she's flushing with amusement at her own lame joke, "we go step by step. Step one: get tools. Step two: use tools to get out of cell—"

"Step three?"

"You're the one flipped a HYDRA boy like a dance partner. Can't you just—" She mimics a few bad punches with her bony fists.

"I don't think that's how it works."

"It? What the heck does that mean?"

Angie shrugs.

Maria raises an eyebrow. "Aren't you some kind of super spy?"

"What makes you think—"

"The punches. Flying in jets on the regular. The super spy friends. Super spy girlfriend—sort of. And you being a big famous actress with a garage full of cars that'd make Howard Stark salivate."

"Stark doesn't touch my cars—and I'm not a spy. Until this whole abduction thing the only person I've ever punched I was related to or sleeping with."

"Ew—and didn't really look that way to me."

"It's the truth."

"So knocking guys' lights out is just a natural talent?"

Course it isn't.

"I didn't even know I could do it until the other night."

"Late bloomer."

Angie goes over to the door and listens. There's nothing but the sounds of what she presumes all weird underwater bases sound like. Pipes and canned air and an intermittent eerie silence that gives her the willies.

"You know I got taken before?" She says it real quiet.

Maria keeps on looking at her. Not even a hint of pity or concern. Makes it really easy to confess to her. "Sure," she says.

"They did something to me. Noticed it when I did this dancing movie. Could learn the steps quick as you please, but kept forgetting my lines."

Now Maria's frowning.

"I'm good at lines," Angie explains. "Used to I could remember a whole book of a musical years later. But now…I pick this stuff up and other stuff just—" She makes a whooshing noise.

"Wonder what you forgot to lay a punch like that."

Angie doesn't like to think about it. Ever. She shakes her head, "Hopefully nothing good."

####

It's a group of people that aren't going to show fear. Those nerves that build up in most people he's gone into combat with aren't there. Tony is examining the sub they're using and Nat is staring at the hatch with her hand on her gun and Peggy is—Peggy is looking at him in that officious way of hers.

"You know what this reminds me of?" Steve has got to break the silence taking up the little space they're in.

Peggy raises one eyebrow, "The first time you jumped out of a plane?"

He ducks his head.

"Hopefully there will be a significantly smaller HYDRA presence," she jokes.

"And with you here it's bound to be more efficient."

"Efficient?" She's raising her eyebrow again.

"It was a—"

"Bad joke," Natasha pipes in. She's giving him a pitying look. "You don't talk to women much do you?"

"No," Peggy says with a smile, "He doesn't."

Steve thinks about dance partners and missed dances and how very soon he'll go back to a world where Peggy often forgets he's alive.

She must see it on his face because her own smile falters and then she clears her throat and nods at the hatch. "So what's the plan here? Metal man goes in with palms blazing?"

"They're repulsers," Tony interjects, "and seeing as we'll be in a pressurized tube underwater I want to keep the projectiles to a minimum. Rescue's pretty worthless if you all drown."

Nat asks, "You're not drowning?"

His metal clad finger taps his metal-clad chest. "Water tight and carrying an oxygen supply in the case of underwater adventures or jaunts through wormholes."

"Worm—what?"

He does one of his dismissive hand waves and comes over to a second hatch. "I got a couple of ideas for dealing with the welcoming party, but I am gonna have to ask—how long can you all hold your breath?"

####

The last time Angie worked as smoothly with another person she was driving getaway. Between her and Maria they get the toilet pulled away from the wall—bulkhead Maria reminds her—in record time. Maria quickly dismantles all kind of stuff in the back and rigs up something like out of Frankenstein—including a whole lot of wires streaming out from the hole in the wall—bulkhead.

She's wrapping fabric she tore off the bottom of her pants around her hands when Angie gets up to nerve to ask, "What the heck is it?"

"Electromagnet. Hopefully I can use it to open the door from this side."

Their side of the door is all smooth—almost seamlessly integrated into the bulkhead.

She watches Maria pick up her fancy device and heft it a little.

"Magnet—like in microphones?"

Maria grins and shuffles over to the door. "Little bigger."

She manipulates the wires and the light over head dims as the thing in her hand hums. "You pray much Angie?"

"Only when I'm in church."

"How about you pretend this place is a cathedral then, and pray part of this door is ferromagnetic."

####

Steve catches Peggy's eye over the rising waterline. The submarine is dark with the exception of the glow of Tony's armor and it casts sporadic flares of light over them as he makes the hole in the sub bigger and bigger.

"I'll come in from the outside," he says, and his voice has the tinny quality it gets as it filters through the speaker in the helmet. "You three try not to die."

Nat is trying to be serene but the tips of her fingers are white from where they're bracing against the bulkhead. Peggy seems more calm. Eyes on the hatch and her entire body coiled up like a snake at the zoo.

"You ready," he asks.

There's a tiny frown there in the way her lips quirk.

The water is up to all their chins now and rises faster as Stark slips out of the hole he's made.

"Last one to the rescue loves them least," Nat calls just as the water goes over their heads and everything goes dark.

Then there's the eery silence. Not like being at a community pool. There the noise of dozens of other kids carries through the water. This is like the pool they had him sitting in for what felt like hours. They'd watch him sitting down there at the bottom and write little notes in their clipboards and he's stare up at them and never tell them how well he could see through 15 feet of chlorinated pool water.

There's ticks and rattles now as HYDRA soldiers on the other side prepare to open the door. They think they'll be facing off against a very dry invasion and even through the metal he can hear their urgent orders in German.

Can hear the rifles settling on soldiers' shoulders.

They've long since opened their side of the hatch, so when the other side gives way it brings a flood with it. The soldiers are too busy trying to stay upright in the deluge to shoot at the three of them pouring in.

Nat slides farthest on the wave and quickly twirls up like the dancer she claims she used to be. She's all grace now, pretty and efficient. But this young version of her lacks that little edge that thrums with bizarre joy at a fight.

That, Steve realizes, Nat gets from Peggy.

Peggy doesn't just inhabit a room. She uses it like a wrecking ball. The soldiers' guns, the bulkheads, and the men themselves are all part of her arsenal.

She doesn't smile while she fights. But she doesn't seem to care how she looks either. While Nat's face is carefully schooled to reveal nothing Peggy punches and kicks with snarls.

This fight? It's probably the first time Peggy's really let go since Angie was taken.

It'd be terrifying and awe inspiring if Steve wasn't busy using his shield and fists to beat through the crowd of soldiers the other two left him.

The woman and girl both wordlessly dart down separate corridors and he hears more gun shots and then screams.

Never mind. He's got a little time to be terrified.

####

They're creeping down the corridor like kids' snuck out of class and even though Maria's taller and lankier she's leaning down and clutching onto Angie like Angie's the World War Two hero with the big honkin' shield.

They haven't been caught so far, but they also haven't seen anyone. All the doors are closed and the lights are flickering and sometimes they hear a real distant scream.

It's down right spooky.

Then. Then they keep going and the screams get louder and sometimes there's gunfire.

"That can't be good," Maria says in a harsh whisper.

"Could be if it's the calvary making a helluva racket."

A gun goes off again. This time so close the noise rings in their ears. Then there's screaming. A guy moaning in pain.

The gun goes off again.

Angie glances at Maria who's pale like the paint on the bulkheads. Only one way of figuring out if the shooting is because of help.

She takes a breath and rounds the corner.

It takes her breath away.

A soaked through Peggy, wet hair pulled back, make up all washed away.

Takes Angie's breath clear away.

Then she's flinching at bullets. They whiz right by Angie's ear. Hotter then Hell itself. She ducks and spins, which, if she's gonna be honest, is not her first choice for a reaction. Her first choice is to do what Maria does which is dive through the door and away from the gunman.

Angie, for a reason she cannot fathom, runs towards the gunman.

Okay, technically gunwoman.

It's the green-haired bitch who got Angie stuck a few hundred feet below water in the first place and she owes her a good talking to involving her fist, her foot, and maybe a little forehead action right to the nose.

Angie makes to tussle but green-haired bitch has got plans of her own and she yanks the door between Angie and Peggy shut just as Peggy's reached it.

Then she grins at Angie through a curtain of hair as green as seaweed and yanks a lever that sets to flooding both sides immediately.

"No Iron Man if his mother's drowned before he's bo—"

Angie lands the punch on the lady's jaw just like Peggy would. Kind that turns a person into a sack of potatoes. She drops her in the water that's already licking at her toes and tries to get the door open.

But it isn't budging.

Peggy and Maria are scrambling on the other side, but even with the porthole letting her see 'em she's having a heckuva time understanding them.

Whatever's being said is urgent and sharp and leaves Peggy looking 'bout gutted.

Which tells Angie all she needs to know.

Door ain't opening any time soon.

They look at each other and they can't say much. Nothing that'll be heard anyways.

All they can do is try to communicate with the eyes. And the face. Like one of those exercises her acting coach would make her do.

Other girls would get the giggles, but Angie could commit.

"I'll be okay," she mouths.

And Peggy shakes her head. Flecks of water scatter. She comes closer. Her jaw is all set like she's about to get angry and do something stupid.

"Go," Angie insists.

Peggy's not budging.

Angie's eyes flicker to Maria. Who's shivering behind Peggy and looking 'bout like a drowned rat.

Peggy follows her gaze and then turns back around.

'She does't matter,' is what Peggy's saying.

'But she's gotta, English.'

'Not as much as you.'

It's such a damn nice sentiment Peggy relays with her eyes that Angie's got to put her hand up to the glass of the porthole. Peggy does the same.

It's romantic hooey they don't have time for.

When they pull their hands away Peggy's eyes are rimmed with red and the back of Angie's throat is burning and Angie's gotta turn and grab the green-haired bitch by the collar and drag her along in water that's now up to her knees.

####

The deluge tapers off the further from that door they get. It gets so dry Angie's gotta drag the lady over dry floors. She's a lot heavier when she's not floating and Angie's plum warn out in no time at all.

She hears more fellas coming after what seems like eons of nothing and braces herself to fight even though the conscious part of her is saying run like hell. It's like when she learns a dance routine so well it becomes reflex. Only she doesn't remember anyone teaching her these steps.

She lashes out with a foot to the first one's shin and is letting loose with a fist directed towards the second one's jaw when the first one grabs her and pulls her back.

Then her brain is going pretty clear and she realizes it's Steve Rogers holding her to his big manly chest and little Natalie staring at her in shock.

####

Bugger it to hell.

She can't be sure who deserves the buggering. Maybe fate. Maybe Madame Hydra the elder. Or the younger.

Never mind. Both Madame Hydras deserve a good buggering straight to hell.

"What's wrong," Maria Carbonell asks. The poor girl is breathless from all the running and clearly not used to or equipped for the amount of action she's been dealing with.

Peggy sighs and nods towards the brightly lit map she's just found in the maintenance room for this ghastly outpost.

The girl comes closer and peers at it. Then, "Shit."

Peggy closes her eyes. Yes "shit" is apt. Also "fuck" and "god damn it."

Maria points one long finger at a spot on the map. "That's where they have the escape submarines."

"It would appear that way."

"And this is where we are?"

"Yes."

"So—"

"So, Ms. Carbonell, our only access was sealed off." she sucks in a big breath. That's what one always does when delivering ghastly news. Gives the recipient and deliverer both time to prepare. "We're trapped."

The poor girl's shoulders sag.

Bugger just everything.