Hi everybody. Sorry again for the long wait between chapters. Updates are not going to be regular while real life still gets in the way, but I am so grateful for all of you that put up with my terrible schedule and continue to read, review, and make my day with every mailbox notification.

I never thought so many people would be around to witness the 20 chapter mark of this fic, let alone enough to fill 99 reviews ( thank you so much for this by the way!) so as this fic also breaches the 50,000 words mark I just want to repeat my gratitude to all of you loyal readers and reviewers, keeping my conscience in check between updates and making it all worthwhile.

Ok, sappiness over:

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters aside from my own OC. The rights of the other characters belong to Marvel and its affiliates.

Enjoy!

There was a moment of blessed calm as Cora's feet touched the metal. The wind seemed to have settled, the whir of the engines was muted in her ears; all she could feel was the cool metal underneath her toes, and the stares of the two men in front of her as she shrugged her shoulders in what was probably a comically large motion and listened as the wings retracted.

She didn't remember everything, and what she did was jumbled and fragmented, but she knew to listen for the clicks and grinds as each part of the mechanism folded into itself, back and back and back till all that was left were the two buttons on the shoulder blades under her shirt.

The buttons she had never noticed.

No, she chided herself as she took a tentative step forward. Don't think about that now. Now all you need to do is focus on making sure everyone is ok, starting with yourself.

With the final click under her shirt, the pain started.

Not the physical pain, though Cora could feel it welling up behind the numbness she was enforcing to keep a grasp of the small amount of sanity she had left. No, this pain was raw and deep and wrenching in her chest as she looked up at Captain Steve Rogers and didn't know quite who she saw.

It still looked like Steve. A pallid faced, glistening eyed, gaping Steve not too different from the man she had met in the meeting room just over a month ago.

But he might not be, her mind supplied. Because he might have known.

In all the noise and chaos of it all, the thought hadn't held its position at the forefront of her brain after she had rushed from the lab with it clouding her sight. But now, standing with the wind blowing her hair around her as her eyes met those of the super soldier, that same thought filled her stomach with lead.

She hadn't felt comfortable since that day in the museum, but she had felt safe with Steve. At least she had felt safe with the old Steve who had shared museum trip inside jokes and acted as a sole compatriot in petty acts of defiance against the eagle-badged organisation holding both their puppet strings.

This new Steve though, the man taking control and wearing his uniform with the assuredness of someone comfortable in his role, he did not look like a person still being having his strings jerked. This could mean he was just now opting out of the S.H.I.E.L.D issue narrative, just as Coraline was planning to do as long as she could be sure her legs would support her in doing so.

Or it could mean that he has known all along, about you and about what S.H.I.E.L.D did and what they are planning to do next.

And if he knew what they did, if he is just another part of the deception playing out in S.H.I.E.L.D's script, then they may be pulling the strings but he is retying the knots as they unravel at her wrists.

The ship groaned, and Cora wanted to groan with it, or sob or scream or scatter. So when the floor tilted under her again, Coraline followed its lead, forward and forwards as she contemplated letting the pain through the barriers in her brain if only to get those thoughts to stop and her position in S.H.I.E.L.D's web to seem a bit less tangled.

Cora was already bracing for impact as she was caught by the shoulders and pressed tightly to a smoke scented chest. She titled her head sideways, not to see who was holding her - because it was Steve, it was always Steve - but instead to look beyond him, to the man she had momentarily forgotten, crumpled on the walkway after she'd plucked him from the sky.

"Is he alright?"

The man on the walkway groaned in response

Coraline sagged in relief. Steve, misinterpreting the sudden relax of muscles, cradled the woman closer to his chest with a half cry, half gasp. That made the historian stiffen again.

Steve felt it, because he manoeuvred the smaller woman out to arms reach where he could scan over her with at least a little of the wartime calmness he'd had but was now clinging to.

"Cora," He managed at a whisper as he noticed the blood and the tense posture and the blaringly obvious realness of a woman he had watched fall out of his reach.

Cora shifted in his grip, and when that did nothing to move Steve's hands from her shoulders, she felt for the barely there memories hidden behind her eyes and twisted her body sideways, her arms coming up to clench around Steve's forearms as another twist placed the historian close against the soldier, his arms trapped against his chest.

Even with whatever range of movement the time she had forgotten had granted her, Cora knew it was Steve's shock mixed with her own element of surprise that made the manoeuvre work. Not that that mattered. As long as Steve could feel the power in her grip and see the seriousness of her expression, how they got to that position was inconsequential.

Cora was sure that for normal people she would be leaving bruises. Her arms were straining as she kept the Captain in her grasp, managing to keep him still despite confused struggling. It was only when she pressed harder still and felt her knuckles twinge that she watched Steve's mouth form a small 'oh' of pain and he really looked at her.

That look nearly killed her. It was a look of shock, and confusion and of the realisation that she wasn't who he had thought.

I'm not who I thought I was either, her mind was resentful.

"Did you know what they did to me?" She asked coolly.

"Cora – I –"

"Captain Rogers, please. Answer the question."

She flinched internally at that, but equally knowing that if reverting back to formalities again stung him as much as it hurt her to do, then he would answer her question.

"No, of course I didn't. Cora…Coraline I would never…"

It sounded like Steve. But God she wanted it to, and maybe that was clouding her judgement, swaying the sanity she was clinging to to accept some lower modicum of trust if only to feel safe again, to feel grounded amidst the chaos.

"Mr Stark," She spoke to the man getting clunkily to his feet without averting her gaze or releasing her hold of the super soldier. "Was there evidence on the files you hacked that Captain Rogers was aware of S.H.I.E.L.D's actions?"

Steve spluttered in indignation, but Stark's response was all that Cora was focussed on.

"Not that I saw."

"OK," She met Steve's gaze once again, forcing him to stop and breathe and really look at her.

He could see the tears threatening to spill in her eyes. With a start, he realised he could feel them in his own as he blinked away the engine smoke still trailing around them both.

"Tell me again you didn't know what they did to me," A pause, and then quietly, with a sob that had his heart twisting in ways he hadn't felt in a long time: "Please."

"Cora," He breathed out while fighting back his own feelings. Bloody and tearful and trembling as she stood there, he could think of a thousand words to say but none that could convince her he hadn't known. None that he hadn't already stuttered aghast at the idea. None that had worked yet to keep her trust.

"Oh Steve, I really, really want to believe you."

As she stepped back, Steve's hands followed, not ready to let her go yet; not when he had barely gotten to convince himself she wasn't still falling from the ship to where his hands couldn't catch her.

Cora flinched back from Steve's outstretched grasp, and this action snapped back into focus the feel of someone close to her; threatening, blocking, and then later spluttering, clutching, gagging.

She stumbled as the memory flashed across her eyes. Oh God. She had watched someone…but the noise…the ricochet...Oh God, had she..?

"Agh" She choked. The memories, the implications of the memories, and the feel of a stitch in her side threatened to bring her to her knees.

This was accompanied by a sound of rushing in her ears that swept her back to memories of swimming lessons when she was 7 and spent most of the class under the water listening to the muffled chatter above her and the bubbly whoosh of splashes and strokes around.

And all that combined had Coraline reach for the wall for support, and miss it because her vision had gone black.

Oh, am I- She thought, but then she was gone.

Steve hadn't been quick enough to catch her.

Again, his brain taunted as he rushed to her side.

Stark's eyes darted between the soldier and the civilian, trying and failing to come up with a decent idea, a plan, a fix. As the soldier fussed in front of him though, and the woman he'd barely met remained crumpled and limp, his brain provided nothing, still stuck on what he had just seen; on wings and women and the defiance of gravity.

It was JARVIS that prompted action. Its voice was slightly wobbly; clearly the processing had taken a hit when Stark had been through the metaphorical washer.

"Sir, Dr Quinn is currently symptomatic within the parameters of hypoglycaemic shock."

Stark looked again at the historian, who was now being cradled by Rogers as he shook her first gently and then with more force. In another situation, Stark would have rolled his eyes at the man's complete lack of first aid knowledge (He had served in a war for God's sake) but in this case:

"Is she diabetic?" Stark questioned JARVIS as he clunked his way towards the pair. His suit was dead, even if the operating system was clinging on, and it was making every step a struggle.

"Her records do not indicate so."

"Have they done something to her?"

"If you are referring to the biotechnical enhancements, they would not anatomically be responsible for a blood sugar decrease of this level. However the physical strain of sustained flight would account for the hypoglycaemic state, posturizing that Dr Quinn would not have known to eat according to her physical needs."

"Cora!" Steve's voice cut over JARVIS' analytics. "Cora, wake up!"

Tony looked up at the shout to see Steve skidding backwards, panic clear in his expression as the woman in front of him convulsed. The inventor swore under his breath before giving the orders.

"JARVIS, call a medic. Rogers, get her onto her side."

aAa

"Coraline, wake up poppet. Just open your eyes for me sweetie, I'm right here."

That was her Mum, which would have been weird even without the pet names and concerned tone, because it was a Tuesday morning and Coraline was meant to be in a science lesson.

The fourteen year old blinked in confusion and tried to sit up before she'd even really registered she had been lying down.

"Where am I?" She asked softly before coughing. God her throat was dry.

Her mother was perched on the edge of the bed, and took her hand as the teen shuffled upright.

"You're in the hospital, sweetie."

"What? How? Why?"

Her mother hushed her.

"You fainted in class, darling. Why didn't you tell me you felt ill in the morning? I would have kept you home if I'd known you were brewing such a fever."

Cora went back through her morning in her head. She hadn't felt ill. Tired, of course, and really not looking forward to fifth period maths, but not ill. She would definitely of milked it if she'd felt ill.

"I wasn't ill this morning, Mum. I felt fine, I still feel fine."

For the first time, Cora actually looked around. She had done her best to avoid hospitals since waking up in one after the explosion, and so the drab but clinically clean room was as familiar as distant memories tend to be. Wires snaked off the bed to various pieces of equipment though she must have been on some pretty strong drugs because she couldn't feel the pinch of the needle in her hand or the cold of the heart sensors on her chest. Nevertheless they were there, and when coupled with the wilting flowers on the side cabinet and the true, deep set concern on her mother's face, it made Cora's heart speed up and her mind begin to whizz.

"Woah there, who threw a rave in here and didn't invite me?"

A doctor rushed in at the sound of the monitors, though of course practice and many an emergency on the children's ward made his tone that of mock insult rather than any distinguishable sense of panic.

"Just lie back for me please Coraline," He pushed the teen back downwards as he glanced at the heart monitor. Cora struggled beneath him as her eyes roved.

Her mother was there again, on her other side to make room for the doctor to fiddle with cables and check the beeping screen.

"It's alright poppet, calm down. You're ok."

"What's happening, Mum?" Cora whimpered.

Cora always knew what was happening. Following the explosion, and the amount of time she had lost to operations and under anaesthesia for hospital stays, it had become her paranoid prerogative to always know what was happening and when. It was why history was so enticing, and why she was so utterly and completely freaked out by the dying flowers on the sideboard and the tiredness in her mother's eyes.

She had lost time again, and she didn't know why. Or how much.

"You've been very poorly, and it has taken some time for the hospital to make you better."

Her mother was talking to her like she was a child. And she was, and certainly felt like one right about now, but simplifying whatever experience it was that she couldn't remember wasn't helping Cora feel calm. Not in the slightest.

"Coraline, you have been in a medically induced coma for three weeks," The doctor was talking to her more like an adult, which made her stop and breath if only to listen to what he had to say. "Your temperature was at a dangerous level when you were admitted and to keep your organs functioning and your brain from frying we had to keep you still and cool till we could work out what was wrong."

"What…how…did you find out? Did you fix it?"

Her mother and the doctor shared a look. Cora didn't like the look. It reminded her of after the explosion, when she had asked where her legs had gone and her parents had shared a similar before explaining they were numb from the operation to pin one of them back into shape.

"You are no longer in any danger," The doctor replied, as her mother chimed in, "Everything is fine now, sweetie."

Cora wasn't convinced, and clearly didn't look it because her mother continued.

"They don't know exactly what caused it, darling, but it might have been something from The Operation, so they've called the special doctors that did it to come and run some scans, just to make sure."

The operation from when she was eight? How could anything only just have come up from that now, six years along the line?

"When can I go home?" Cora asked instead.

"Soon, poppet," Her mother stroked her hair as she made the empty promise. "Soon."

aAa

Cora awoke again, not in a hospital and no longer 14 .

Not that she knew where she was, or what she was, or even who, because her eyes opened to the sight of someone in blue above her amidst a haze of darkened smoke.

She flinched before she had even properly gained feeling in her limbs. The person above her flinched too, and their movement revealed a light strip on the ceiling and the grey walls of a part of the ship that certainly wasn't the engine.

Cora sat up, her breathing quickening.

She wasn't at the engine any more. She was somewhere else.

Again, supplied the voice in her head.

Cora paused in her eye roving, her breath shuddering, her hand shaking.

Again? What did her mind mean again?

Slowly, Coraline looked around again. The walls were still grey, the ceiling light still bearing down on her. The window looking out into the corridor still devoid of friendly faces. The person now on the other side of the room still blurry and blue toned.

The pressure of something getting smushed behind her shoulder blades though, that was new.

Her range of motion wasn't great, but she craned her head enough to see the wings, in all their metal feathered glory.

And just like that she remembered why the situation was so familiar.

There had been a room, a lot like this in its uniformity and greyscale aesthetics. There had been a bed and a doctor and a nurse who looked both cautious and curious at once. There had been the disorientation and the fear and the longing for a familiar face, of one familiar face in particular with blue eyes and a kind smile. And there had been the wings, and the instructions on how to use them, and then at the end of the week, an injection given without warning that had made the time malleable beneath someone else's palm.

Coraline took another shuddering breath in.

Her vision had cleared to the point where she could see it was Steve across the room, but the expression on his face made her question whether her vision really was back to normal.

Captain Rogers looked scared. He looked scared of her.

Cora's heartbeat started to flutter as her mind tried and failed to piece together her situation and the resulting expression on his face.

Cannot find link. Does not compute.

In one motion, Coraline shifted to the edge of the bed and brushed her toes against the floor.

Another glance at Steve. The same expression in return.

Cora bit her lip and stood.

The first step was shaky, her legs panging with a residual cramp. But she was standing, more or less without any swaying, and Steve's expression had changed ever so slightly, from fear to worry.

Another step.

Then the acknowledgment that she felt for want of a better word, gunky. Cora hadn't pulled many all-nighters at university, but of the few she had this felt like the worst of the mornings after. Her brain was tired, her body ached, her stomach flip-flopped as she tiptoed further forwards.

And her back twinged specifically as she reached the limit of her wingspan and they caught on the frame of the door leading to what she presumed was a bathroom.

The resulting tangle as she tried and failed to force the unruly appendages back through the door forced Cora to look at her wings. Actually look at them.

First things first, they didn't look real. That was obvious, and even more so for the historian who was running on rationality and logic to keep her mind sound. Denial had coped fine with a super-secret government agency, had gotten over the hurdle of a flying spaceship, was still processing being in a firefight but was nearing 100% completion. All could be happily explained away under a net of complete deniability.

But wings.

Something told her that wasn't going to happen.

Every action felt foreign. More foreign then crutches. More foreign then having to learn to walk again on limbs that had forgotten how to be legs. More foreign than flying, because at least with that it had been muscle memory and actions she half remembered learning not three weeks previously.

Having them attached to her back though, that was the feeling of a coat pocket caught on a door handle, of headphones catching in fleece zippers, of something half you and half foreign not responding to your movements and yanking muscle as it did so.

Cora growled in frustration as she remained stuck, her extra body parts ( if she could stomach thinking of them as that) stubbornly remaining hitched to the door frame while the rest of her remained rigid in the middle of the room.

A hand on her elbow made her whirl as much as her position allowed her, her fist already swinging.

Steve caught it with ease, elbow raised as she looked up at him.

"You've already gotten me once today, twice would just be mean."

Steve was being…funny?

Cora blinked once. Twice. Considered the terrible attempt at humour of the man holding her wrist still in its swinging position. Blinked again.

And then half laughed half sobbed as she folded into him.

Steve did catch her this time, not that she had far to fall.

"I've got you," He whispered above her head.

The moment lasted a minute at the most, because after that Cora shuffled in his arms and the reminder of how she'd gotten there became even clearer.

"Ow," She said quietly as she twisted again to try and dislodge the wings.

"Do you," Steve faulted as his mind tried and failed again to connect the woman he knew and the metal protruding from her shoulders which he certainly didn't. "Do you want some help?"

Cora flushed as she nodded. It felt strange to be embarrassed about this, but she felt it all the same. Someone seeing her so vulnerable made he want to curl into herself and fade away. The feeling doubled when that person was Steve.

With one more failed shove, Cora acquiesced with a sigh.

"Please."

"Right," Steve dropped her wrist as he walked around her. His fingers lightly brushed the wing joint at its arc. Cora couldn't feel it so she craned her neck to watch his ministrations as he felt along the top ridge of the wing.

With another inward sigh Cora added learning the basics of avian biology to her list of things to do.

"Can you…um…can you move them outwards?"

Steve's voice jolted her back to the present. In a motion that felt practically comedic, she brought her shoulder up and rolled it.

Nothing happened.

Cora bit her lip in frustration.

"I don't know how," And then, muttered, "They only taught the bit that was useful to them."

Steve appeared back in her line of vision, his eyes wide.

"You remember?"

Cora nodded before running a hand through her hair, crusty as it still was with dried blood.

"Bits. Everything is foggy, but I remembered some when I…jumped. And a bit more when I woke up."

Steve processed this for a minute, but on seeing the underlying fear on Coraline's stressed features, he dropped any further questions.

Moving back to the arc of the wing most wedged into the doorframe, he felt along the top of what he presumed would be a bone in birds till he felt a small button.

"Ready?" He held the downward curve of the wing in one hand as the other prepared to press down.

"Uh…Yeah...I mean.."

Steve hit the switch, and the wing creased at a right angle. It didn't look natural any more. At the engine's edge it had seemed real: the feathers glistening but still realistic in their intricacy, the motions of landing and folding inwards definitely not far removed from the birds he had watched from his window all those years ago. Now though, as he moved to deconstruct the other wing in a similar manner, they looked more like costume pieces, wired together by a complex system of pulleys and levers yes, but a costume all the same.

Cora shifted on her feet as she felt the weight redistribute. Shad had given up craning her neck once Steve had moved on to the second wing, but having him behind her, fixing something about her she couldn't find a solution for, still felt intimate even without being able to watch.

"Almost got it," Steve muttered, before there was another clunk and Cora pitched forward as the weight centred on her shoulder blades.

Her leg jarred as she stepped forward as a counterweight, but that small pain was inconsequential compared to what she had felt, both at the engine and in the weeks she had forgotten. So instead of flinching, Cora shrugged her shoulders, focussed on her breathing, and let the wings retract.

Steve watched as they did, eyes wide.

He had seen a lot of things that had shocked him in the past 72 hours – far more than his ten dollar wager had accounted for.

The emotion he was feeling wasn't quite shock. Even if he would never tell Cora, he couldn't deny that a small part of it was revulsion. Not at her, God, never at her, but at what they had done to her, what they had made her be.

The feathers appeared to be attached to a central wire, with each one rolling into the central tube before that pushed back into the main 'bone' of the wing. Once each feathered tendril had done that, the wing bone itself retracted inwards till it disappeared under the tatters of Coraline's shirt.

Both occupants of the room heard the click as the wings retreated into the button fused to her shoulder blades. Both of them flinched, one in a niggling pain, one in a wave of sympathy.

"Okay," Coraline turned stiffly, her eyes apprehensive. "Please tell me that didn't look as weird as it felt."

Steve gaped.

"Oh God it did, didn't it," Cora covered her eyes with her hands with another laughter-sob.

Steve didn't go to her this time. He just waited as the historian shook for a few moments, before she straightened again, her gaze steely.

"How long have I been here?"

Good, Steve thought, these are questions I can answer. These are mission briefs and tactical inquiries and battle plans being put into motion.

" About three hours. You were brought here just after Stark repaired the engine."

Cora didn't remember that. Steve did, but didn't want to relive it. Carrying someone he thought had lost in his arms, apparently close to losing her again, and then having no choice but to hand her over to medics probably not dissimilar to the ones that had done what they had to her – that was not a set of emotions he was ready to re-experience.

"They gave me something," she stated. She didn't really need the confirmation. She could feel the needle mark through the too big track pants she was still wearing.

"Yes, they said you could die without it. Something with sugar." Steve reached for the table in the far corner of the room. "I wrote it down…"

Cora waved him off.

"It was probably glucagon. I had a diabetic roommate for a while, I can't imagine I suddenly stopped regulating insulin so if it was sugar related it was probably that. And if it wasn't, well I'd rather just live in denial that it was."

She managed a small smile at that, though the twitch at the edges betrayed how close to breaking she really was.

"What about everyone else? Did everyone…make it."

Steve noticed the voice crack, and even though he hadn't been briefed on every aspect of the attack yet, from the blood still dried to her clothes and what he had caught of her mumbles before she had collapsed he could tell there was more to Cora's question than a general enquiry.

"There have been casualties." He watched her sag at that. " Romanoff got beaten up pretty good, but held her own against Barton so they're both walking that off now. Thor's gone, the cage activated with him in after Loki escaped. Banner fell –"

He stopped at Cora's gasp.

"Dr Banner fell off the carrier?" She all but squeaked. "Oh God, I could have, I should have…"

"You couldn't have saved him Cora," Steve interjected as he watched the tears spill over onto her cheeks.

"I could have," Her voice was high and filled with anger. "They made me to help, and he needed it and I didn't help him."

"You didn't know, and besides, Banner wasn't himself when he fell. It would have been more dangerous for everyone if he had stayed on board."

Coraline looked at him, aghast.

"How could you say that? He was a good man, honest and kind and you just want him to die, falling to his death with no one there to catch him?"

Cora's word's felt like a slap in the face.

She seemed to realise it too, because she was just reaching out, her eyes alarmed and expression so far beyond apologetic, when someone else interrupted the both of them.

"Captain Rogers is right in his assessment of Dr Banner, Miss Quinn. Of all the losses in the attack, his was the most fortunate."

Cora didn't have time to gape this time, because she was already moving, her mind clear in its ice-white rage, till her hand was around Director Fury's throat and she was lifting, lifting far more than she should have been able to if she was normal, if they hadn't made her abnormal, as she pressed him up against the wall.

Her hand around his throat tightened as she felt the wings shoot outwards again, rising up around her. Her eyes burnt with the anger she could feel in every fibre, every bit of bone and metal and skin that made up her being. Her mouth tasted of the rage as she hissed:

"Start talking."

I know not everything got answered in this chapter, and honestly at first I wanted it all to be clarified here, but it was getting long and I didn't want to lose the impact of any of the scenes in this part ( especially between Cora and Steve) so I will make the tentative promise that more will be revealed next time. At least Fury certainly will have to start spilling, if he values his vocal chords.

Thank you again for sticking around, and for reviewing, liking, favouriting etc.

In response to the guest review:

I've assumed you've stopped reading because of my version of the characterisation, which is completely fine, I know it's not for everyone. But if you are still reading I just wanted to say thanks for reviewing anyway, and if you ever do want to have a long conversation about my writing decisions, my PM is always open if you create an account/ come off anon. Thanks for reading!