A/N: ...
"...Then did Mr. Great-heart, Mr. Holy-man, Mr. Dare-not-ly, and Mr. Penitent, with their weapons go forth to meet him..."
~John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress
Avery had been staring at the blinding static of the three massive flat screens for so long, she was beginning to see stars.
Her eyes darted to the bottom of the left screen, and she noted with dismay that the clock only read 5:02 A.M. The past two minutes had been a decade. With one hand, she maintained a white-knuckle grip on the countertop; with the other, she kept a firm pressure on the earpiece in her left ear. He shoulders were pinched in the tense silence. She wasn't sure how much longer she could wait, even with all the tools that the Avengers had left at her disposal to ease her anxiety.
It had been almost two hours since the men had suited up and boarded the quinjet to South Carolina.
They were due to arrive any minute.
Avery was glad Pepper was there with her. It was a comfort- though a small one- to have her waiting silently in the back of the room.
"Is it always this stressful for you?" Avery asked.
She heard rustling as Pepper fidgeted. "You know, I think waiting for the cameras is actually making it worse."
She suspected Steve was the culprit. Some time the night before, he must have gone and told Tony to set up the little private theater she now found herself in. Either Steve—or J.A.R.V.I.S., who may have spied on them as they sat gazing out the window.
"Here's the deal," Tony had said to her just before they left, tossing her the earpiece. "I wasn't able to crack their firewall from a distance, but the feed for their internal and external security cameras should go live the minute we touch down. That," he said, pointing to the device in her palm, "is one-way. It'll give you a pretty decent connection to our comms network. That way you'll have some idea of what's going on."
She stared at the little black object, torn between feeling grateful and feeling downright embarrassed. Part of the reason she hadn't been able to sleep was knowing that she would have to spend the whole day in ignorance of what was happening, but the last thing she wanted to do was be a burden.
She closed her fingers around the earpiece.
"...Thanks, Tony. Really."
His brown eyes softened. "Don't mention it, sweetheart." As he picked up a maroon and gold briefcase that she suspected was his compacted suit, he stage-whispered, "Although, if I were you, I'd go easy on the volume. The big guy gets kinda loud."
Over by the door, Bruce shrugged helplessly. Like Tony, he was wearing sweatpants. The two scientists could have been going for a morning run. Next to him, Steve was pulling on his blue gloves. Sam leaned against the wall, dressed in black combat gear from head to toe. He had a silvery, metallic pack slung over one shoulder, and red goggles were resting like a necklace on his collarbone.
Now fully suited in his trademark red, white and blue, Steve snatched up his shield and slipped his arm into the straps. "Are we ready?" he asked. Everyone in the room stood straighter.
Avery looked around, and remembered that she was among the defenders of Earth.
"Aye Aye, Captain," Tony responded, hitching his briefcase under his arm. The mood fizzled.
Pepper closed the space between her and Tony, clicking in her high heels, and pecked him on the cheek. "Don't be too reckless."
"Me? Never," he said, pulling her into a real kiss.
While they continued to banter, Avery met the eyes of Bruce, then Sam, then Steve. She took a few over-exaggerated steps toward them, and they looked at her in amusement. She could have said a million things- including the fact that she was now extremely worried not just for Bucky's wellbeing, but for theirs.
Not wanting to act like a wuss, though, she laughed awkwardly and settled on, "Good luck."
Tony and Pepper had already moved to the helipad outside, so the four started making their way to the door.
"Don't worry," Bruce said, reading her mind, "We're professionals. We'll be back in no time." He patted her on the shoulder, and she smiled at him as he left.
"You better not go poking around this place too much without me," Sam said to her on his way out the door, "I wanna be the first one to try out Iron Man's souped-up waffle maker."
From outside, Tony yelled, "It takes orders in sixteen languages!"
Steve scoffed. Avery said, "There's a pun about speaking Mandarin in there somewhere."
Grinning, Sam spoke, "See ya, Avery."
"See ya, Sam."
She and Steve held back a moment, regarding each other. Her smile faded.
She swallowed a few times. The humor in his eyes dimmed beneath his furrowed brow. It was clear that, despite his years of experience as a superhero, this mission had placed enough on the line to make even him anxious.
He neared her, resting a hand on her shoulder. It stayed there for a beat or two, his eyes flicking back and forth between hers, before he turned to go.
As he crossed the threshold, she stopped him. "Steve?"
He paused, turning noiselessly, his brow quirked.
"Give 'em hell for me."
His mouth twisted in a wry smile. He gave her a mock salute, and with a "Yes, ma'am," he strode out the door.
She was absorbed in the memory; when Pepper spoke, bringing her back to the present, she jolted.
"Avery, look."
The video feeds were live.
The screen furthest to her left- the one connected to the camera in Tony's suit- showed the control panel of the quinjet, tinged green with night vision. As she watched, it turned shakily, shifting to reveal the silhouettes of Steve, Sam, and Bruce- still human- standing at the back of the craft. The wide mouth of the canopy was hanging open. On the horizon, she could see the outline of the HYDRA building.
The men grew larger in Tony's field of vision as he approached them.
Without warning, the hearing device in Avery's ear crackled to life, as did the other two camera feeds.
"-sure all the guards are where we thought they'd be, Sam. Bruce, hold off until Tony and I get their attention. Got it?" she heard Steve giving out the orders in hushed tones.
The others indicated their assent. "Alright, Sam, we'll wait for your signal," he said.
From Tony's point of view, she saw Sam make a punching motion outwards, initiating his flight gear. Noiselessly, the wings unfurled, glinting in the early-morning darkness. As he ran forward, his jetpack propelled him off the ground so quietly that Avery momentarily thought she lost the sound connection. He slipped into the black sky, and was instantly invisible.
Her attention shifted to the other two screens. One was panning slowly back and forth- a security camera looking out from the front entrance. From what she could see, only a few guards were walking the perimeter of a large dirt courtyard. Two guard towers loomed on either side of the building. Despite their paucity, each guard had a massive automatic rifle slung over his shoulder- and she was sure more would come pouring out the doors like ants the minute the attack began. Her heart rate went up.
To anyone else watching the video, the brief flash of a metallic wing swooping in the upper corner of the screen would have seemed like a trick of the eyes.
Avery's eyes darted to the last camera.
It was trained on an enormous metal door. Looking from it to the second screen, she realized that it was the inside of the front door. The corridor was at least twenty feet high.
Her heart sunk a little. She'd been hoping that she would be able to catch a glimpse of the Soldier in one of the cameras. She would have to wait for the others to reach him.
"There it is," Tony said. His camera was tilted upwards, catching Sam flying in a circle right above them.
"Go," Steve said. Like bullets from the barrel of a gun, Tony and Steve rocketed forward; Steve, sprinting at super-soldier speed; Tony kicking off the ground as his repulsers squealed. Avery didn't see Bruce, and she guessed he was waiting until the fight heated up to get angry.
The guards never saw it coming. Avery saw everything from a bird's eye view.
Steve's shield was impossibly fast- three guards were on the ground before the echoing sound of metal on bone even reverberated. As he kicked and swung, a chill went up Avery's spine. His raw destructive power was all too familiar. Far above, Tony sniped guards two at a time with fatally accurate laser blasts. Men started yelling, and flashes of gunfire appeared from the guard towers.
Someone threw a switch. The entire facility was illuminated in a blinding glare. A high-pitched siren began to wail.
Before Steve and Tony could even turn, a rumbling scream of rage shook the ground. Avery winced and adjusted the earpiece. Tony hadn't been kidding. On the second camera, an enormous green mass hurtled toward the towers at juggernaut speed. Within seconds, the towers were collapsing in on themselves in screeching, dusty explosions.
Avery balked, still not quite believing that the three calm, kind men she'd just met were such terrifyingly efficient killers.
Five more guards had surrounded Steve. With his hands full, he didn't notice the machine gun-equipped ATV's speeding toward him from the front gate. Avery gasped, and Pepper leapt closer to the screen.
The vehicles didn't get far- an enormous black and silver bird plunged toward the drivers, backhanding them off the vehicles in quick succession. Operator-less, the automobiles slid forward a few feet, then halted. The two audience members huffed.
Steve took a running leap onto one of the vehicles. As he jerked it around and zoomed through the front door, Tony swooped down and covered him, firing at stragglers. Sam followed suit, unloading two machine pistols as he flew after Steve into the entrance. The Hulk came thundering like a gorilla, still roaring, and catapulted himself onto the roof, where a few gunners remained.
The second camera cut off after that.
Inside, something exploded, and the thick black smoke that filled the air obscured both the security camera and Tony's. Glued to the screen, the women waited for it to dissipate, Avery pressing the earpiece harder. She heard a few more scattered screams, saw the flash of a blue elbow, the swipe of a black boot, heard a muffled crunch- and then nothing.
"Come on, guys…" she whispered.
The smoke began to sink to the floor. The security camera showed Steve and Tony standing on either end of the corridor; Sam was on one knee further back. The heavy breathing of all three rasped loudly in Avery's ear, while the Hulk continued to bellow outside.
On any other mission, Avery was certain she would have been catching the Avengers' sarcastic banter over the earpiece. With all that was at stake, humor had flown out the window.
"Don't slow down," Steve said, righting his helmet and charging further in.
Once they were out of the corridor, the third camera was essentially useless. Avery and Pepper shifted their focus to Tony's point of view.
It seemed like the fighting went on for hours. Every time they turned a corner, there were more guards waiting- and with only Tony's camera to see what was happening, it was hard to keep track of the action. Avery lost count of the number of times she stopped breathing because Steve got conked on the head or someone aimed a rifle right at Sam. She was actually getting sore from how often she was tensing.
The three heroes moved like they were one person. Tony went high, Steve went low; Sam tripped two and Tony threw them down; Steve forced one to the left and Sam met him from the right. It was a deadly dance- one that none of the guards could hope to back out of.
Finally, they made it to the basement. A frosted glass panel spanned the height and width of a barn door. Light seeped through, betraying some kind of whitewashed facility inside. A sensory panel, not unlike the one at the entrance to Stark Tower, was situated next to it in the wall.
"Did that seem a little too easy to anyone else?" Sam asked, wiping blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.
Avery sputtered. Easy?!
Steve stepped forward and punched clean through the control panel. He had a few rips in his uniform, and a nasty bruise on his upper lip.
"It's not over yet," Tony answered.
The doors slid open.
A man in a white lab coat came at them feebly, but Tony dispatched him quick enough. A few more men fled out the back exit, shoving each other to get away.
The three entered the room.
The air whooshed out of Avery's lungs. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she bit down on a sob, slapping a hand over her mouth. Pepper came up beside her and slipped an arm around her shoulders.
Pale as death, unconscious, and spread-eagle, the Soldier lay strapped to an operating table in the center of the room.