As Steve reached the top of the stairs, he was encouraged to see Tony's arms moving, and then astonished to seem him actually getting up, at least as far as his hands and knees. Steve grabbed the boy's arm and dragged him behind the cover of the giant mushroom tree, then turned him around to feel his back. The bullet was there, but it was embedded in some kind of body armor, made of thin metal plates.

"Bullet-proof vest," said Steve, relieved.

"No, something better," Tony said proudly. He arched his back, and the bullet fell out and bounced away on the pavement.

"Better?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "I designed parts for the space shuttle, man! What did you think I was doing at SHIELD? Sitting on my ass all day?"

A man came charging around the tree towards them. Steve shoved Tony behind him and got ready to take the hit, but Janet materialized behind the attacker, took him by the collar, and dug some kind of electric shock weapon into his neck. He went down twitching.

"Man-bonding later!" she shouted, "save the world now!" Then she vanished again.

Steve glanced at Tony to make absolutely sure he was all right. Tony gave a nod, and the two of them rounded the tree to the broken castle doors.

"Connie!" Steve shouted ahead of them. She would probably immediately attack anyone who came inside. "Connie, it's us!" He got no reply, so he headed inside.

Immediately, he dropped to the ground and rolled back out again – there were another six or seven HYDRA operatives already inside, all of them armed. Bullets sprayed the doors and the tree trunk as Steve ran for cover. What had happened to Connie, he wondered, and then decided there was no time to worry about it right now. Connie was almost certainly dead. They could recover her body later.

But first he had to get himself and Tony inside. Steve looked around. One of the mushroom trees protruding from the wall had a thorny vine wrapped around it, which looked thick and strong enough to support a human being. Steve grabbed one of the dangling tendrils, ignoring the pain as the needles bit into his flesh, and began pulling himself up. High up in the wall there was a window. He ought to be able to get in there.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tony crouched at the base of the tree, unreeling some kind of tube from one of his pockets. What did he have in mind? Whatever it was, Steve hoped it worked as well as his armor.

Steve wiggled through the window, and eased his weight onto the metal scaffolding that was holding up most of the roof. There, he waited a half-second for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then surveyed the scene. There was no sign of Connie. In the middle of the room, a circle of men with assault rifles were guarding the tesseract, waiting for the equipment to safely remove it from the time machine. There was no scaffolding directly overtop them, but the largest of the original rafters was still intact there. Would it support Steve, or would the rotten wood break underneath him?

He slipped down from the scaffold onto the rafter, very carefully so as not to make a nose. It held. He lay on his stomach, and began shimmying out into the centre of the room.

Suddenly, the door was blasted off its hinges in a burst of blue light, taking half the mushroom tree's trunk with it. The startled guards dropped into defensive stances as they turned towards the source of the explosion. There was Tony, standing in the smoking hole. He had something strapped to his hand and arm, attached to a tube that ran down into the case he was carrying – it must be part of the device he'd used to siphon energy into the fake tesseract, except now he was pulling it out again, and letting it loose with enormous destructive power. As Steve watched, he gritted his teeth and flexed his fingers, and fired off a second bolt. This one blew away two of the men on the right, furthest from the tesseract itself.

Steve had seen that before – tesseract-based weapons that simply disintegrated their targets. Was that what Tony had been doing, in between inventing new and better body armor, re-creating old HYDRA technology to use against them? The idea made Steve feel a little sick. Nobody should have that kind of power, not even the people who were technically the 'good guys'.

He would be having a word with Peggy about that, later. She had no right to ask that of Tony. Tony was a kid. He didn't know what he was messing with.

The weapon Tony had built was much more powerful than any of the operatives' guns or explosives, and they knew that – but it also meant he could not fire directly at the tesseract and the machine it was powering. If he damaged one of those, he could cause some kind of cataclysm. The men knew that, too, and were already crowding closer to it, a circle of guns, pointing out.

They were so focused on the threat presented by Tony, however, that they left a gap in the line. Steve dropped from the rafter to land on his feet behind them, and punched the nearest one in the small of the back. The man dropped to the ground with a shriek of pain. A second one whirled around to face Steve, but Steve was faster. He kicked the gun out of the man's hand and took him down with a solid fist to the jaw.

The remaining two backed up, trying to get space to fire. Tony blew another one away, and Steve went at the last, knocking his legs out from under him, and then breaking his nose when he tried to get up.

He looked around, panting. Three mooks disintegrated, two unconscious, and one broken hip. They weren't going to be any more trouble.

"All right," he told Tony. "Get in here!"

"Oh, good, because I don't think this thing will fire again!" Smoke was rising from Tony's device as he pulled it off his arm and dropped it.

"Hurry, hurry!" Steve remembered the traffic-choked streets at the outer edges of town. Anyone stuck in that would be able to see the anomaly coming, but in the crush of people and vehicles, they wouldn't be able to stay ahead of it. The longer they took at this, the more people were going to die.

Tony knelt down and opened the case with the tesseract boxes, but then he hesitated. "You said there was another time machine."

"Downstairs," Steve agreed. "We can grab it after we turn this off."

"Wait, was there power for it?" asked Tony. "Because if we can activate that one... we've got two tesseract boxes. If we can shut them both down at the same time, we might be able to fix this properly. Get rid of all the trees and bugs and stuff because the fields will cancel out."

Get rid of all the trees and bugs – and maybe restore the human beings who'd died? That was the kind of thinking that had gotten them all into this mess... and yet Tony's face was earnest. He really thought he could do it.

"Let me try!" he said.

Steve nodded. "All right – second door, it's in the narrow tower, the stairs are tight but you'll have an easier time with it than I did. You'll see the blue light. It's in the last cell in the row. Do you have a flashlight?"

"I'll manage," said Tony. He pushed the metal case with the tesseract boxes into Steve's hands, and ran out of the room.

That left Steve himself to guard the tesseract. He gathered up the guns and ammunition from the fallen soldiers and positioned himself between the table and the door. What had happened to Connie, he wondered again... he doubted she'd have let them take her prisoner. Was she still here somewhere, alive or dead?

"Connie?" he called out. "Connie! Are you here?" She probably thought she deserved to die defending the tesseract, he thought, since she was the one who'd put it there. Of all the people who felt like they deserved punishment, why was Steve never the one who actually got it?

Then he heard a sound. It was nothing more than a whisper, barely audible over the sounds of shouting and car horns and sirens from outside, but at the same time it echoed in the giant space of the castle hall. Steve moved towards it, stumbling over one of the fallen bodies.

"Connie?" he repeated.

There she was, lying in a corner and clutching a wad of cloth – her own blouse – to the right side of her chest. The fabric was soaked with blood. She'd been shot, he realized. It was on the wrong side for her heart, but had definitely punctured a lung.

"Connie." He took her pulse at the neck. It was faint, and fast, but it was there. Her eyes were half-open, so Steve waved a hand in front of them, trying to get her attention. "Connie," he repeated.

Very slowly, as if it required enormous effort on her part, her eyes opened. After a moment of staring at infinity, she found his face, but she did not speak. There was blood at the corners of her mouth.

"You're going to be all right," Steve told her. Her eyes started to drift shut, so he snapped his fingers to get her attention again. "Look at me, okay? You're gonna be all right. We'll get you to a hospital." He'd seen injuries like hers during the war, and as far as he could tell she was doing the right thing – applying pressure and not letting air get into the wound as she tried to breath. The sooner they got her into surgery, the better her chances of survival would be. "Just hang in there."

He hoped Tony hurried. They'd be able to tell if he succeeded in starting up the other time machine, Steve thought – the mushroom trees and other oddities would all disappear. How would they know if he'd failed?

The light in the room dipped, and Steve raised his head. There were a set of silhouettes now in the castle doorway: three men and two women, none of whom were Fury or Janet. Steve glanced down at Connie, and then at the tesseract. Connie couldn't speak, but Steve could guess what she would tell him to do if she could. Protect the tesseract, defeat HYDRA, and create a world where Natalia could grow up safely.

Steve could do that.

He picked up an assault rifle and went to stand directly behind the machine. The HYDRA people raised their weapons, but did not fire. They couldn't afford to hit the time machine or the tesseract itself, any more than Tony could have.

"You want it?" Steve asked. "Come here and get it!"

The men and one of the women rushed him. Steve scooped up the small television set off the table and threw it at them – it hit one of the men in the head, shattering the screen, and he felt. Steve vaulted over the table and picked up one of the huge boards that had gone flying when Tony blew the doors down. Using that he hit the woman in the back, then rammed the end of it into the nearest man's stomach. The last one hit Steve in the back of the head with the butt of his gun, and Steve fell to his knees as if dazed. Then, when the man raised the weapon again to deliver a second blow, Steve rolled backwards to knock him over, grabbed his weapon, and punched him in the face.

Four out of four in under twenty seconds. Bucky would have been proud of him.

Steve stood up again, the gun in his hands, and confronted the last of the group – a woman. He had a damned good idea who she might be.

Dressed in a short green jacket over black fatigues, Viper stepped forward and drew a sword. It was a narrow, flexible blade like a fencing foil, but the light glinted black on metal that should have been silver. Poison, Steve thought. After he'd survived her last attempt, she wouldn't try anything as basic as rattlesnake venom.

"You brought a sword to a gunfight?" Steve asked.

"You brought a gun to a swordfight," Viper replied. "You have to hit me, Captain. All I have to do is touch you." She held up a gloved hand. It, too, was gleaming black. Tony might have invented his own form of bullet-proof vest, but Viper was wearing traditional body armor. Bullets would probably sting, but they wouldn't kill her.

"You can still drop the gun and get your friend back, Captain," she said. "In fact, I've been thinking we ought to pull him out, ourselves. We've been trying to buy him from the Russians for years but they wouldn't sell such a valuable asset. This might be our chance."

Steve's teeth clenched, and his hands on the gun began to shake with rage – but there was enough reason left in him to realize what she was trying to do. Viper wanted him to get angry and charge her, so she could stab him with her poisoned sword. He'd caused all this by behaving exactly the way this woman wanted him to. He wasn't going to make that mistake again.

"You want the tesseract?" he repeated. "Come here and get it."

Viper did not move. "Are you afraid of me, Captain?" she asked. "Or are you just too much of a gentleman to hit a woman who hasn't hit you first?"

Steve stood his ground.

She tried another tactic. "How do you know that standing there guarding the tesseract for me isn't what I want you to do?" she asked.

That hadn't occurred to him... but if it had been true, he thought, she wouldn't have said it. She just would have kept talking about other things. Steve was done being manipulated by Viper. He'd made a decision and he was going to stick to it.

"I've got another fifty troops on the way," Viper went on. "Do you think a swarm of insects is going to stop them? Ants don't last long against flamethrowers, no matter how big they are."

Steve wasn't even going to talk to her, he decided. She wasn't worth answering.

So far Viper had been looking Steve in the eye. Now her gaze drifted, and fell on Connie in the corner. Steve stiffened, and Viper noticed it.

"Really?" she asked. "She caused all this, and you still have feelings for her? You stopped loving Carter for less."

Steve kept his mouth shut. Rage was bubbling inside him, like the cauldron of a volcano, ready to explode out at any moment. He had to keep a lid on it. He could not leave the tesseract unprotected, no matter what she said or did.

Still watching Steve, Viper walked towards Connie's fallen body and prodded it with one toe. Connie twitched, and Viper raised her foil to hold the point over Connie's chest. Steve swallowed. Connie was already dying. She was in no position to survive a shot of poison. Steve himself had barely struggled through the venom Viper had given him last time, and whatever she had now was probably specifically designed for him. Connie wouldn't stand a chance.

Viper began to smile. She thought she had him.

Steve thought fast. He had to keep a handle on himself. If he couldn't outfight her without falling into her trap, he was going to have to out-think her.

He dropped his rifle and grabbed the time machine and its support structure, tesseract and all, off the table to hold it above his head, as if he were going to throw it on the floor and smash it.

"You wouldn't," said Viper. "You have no idea what would happen if you did."

Steve remained silent, his eyes locked to hers. She would know perfectly well that he'd been prepared to die fighting Schmidt. He was prepared to die fighting her, too.

She raised the foil a little, muscles tensed to stab.

Steve swung the machine towards the floor.

"Don't!" Viper shrieked, and ran to grab the machine before it could hit the stone. At the last moment, Steve swung it aside and kicked her in the mouth, sending her over backwards. She rolled and staggered to her feet, her mouth bleeding and her eyes burning with rage. He'd tricked her before she could trick him, and she was furious.

Steve ran at her, swinging the machine again. She brought up her arm to block him from hitting her with it, and managed to catch it below where the tesseract sat, pushing the blow away to the side. Steve backed off again, and the two of them circled each other. A few more steps, and Steve would be solidly between Viper and the foil she'd dropped next to Connie. He could see the moment she realized this – her eyes went to it, lying on the floor, and her lips curled back in a snarl. She hated being outsmarted. He could use that.

A flash of orange outside caught Steve's eye. The men with flamethrowers had arrived to take on Janet's ants.

Steve was breathing heavily. He had to stay in control of himself, even if that took every ounce of energy in him. If he attacked Viper blindly, he might break the time machine or dislodge the tesseract, and either would be disastrous. If she attacked him, the same might happen. He feinted with it, and she flinched, backing away but also moving to the left. She was trying to pull the same trick he had a moment earlier, and circle Steve to get back to her poisoned foil. Steve stepped into her path and kicked the table over, blocking the way. Viper darted in the other direction, but that way was blocked by the giant trunk of a mushroom tree. She leaned against it, and her gloved hand sank in slightly as the tissue that came in contact with the poison died.

Now what? Steve had her cornered, but he had no weapon except for one he dared not use. The gun he'd dropped was too far away. So was Viper's foil, and the tesseract weapon Tony had build, which was still lying discarded by the door. More men were on their way in. As soon as they'd finished incinerating the ants, Steve would be stuck between them and Viper.

Suddenly, the air shimmered, and the mushroom tree vanished. Viper, unprepared, lost her balance and staggered sideways, and there were cries of surprise from outside. Steve's heart gave a hopeful leap. That had to mean that Tony had re-activated the second time machine, and its field digging into the past was canceling out the one that had brought all these things from the distant future. That was good, but now they had a limited time. The machine downstairs would only run for a few minutes before it was out of power, and who knew what would happen when that collapsing distortion met this one, still stable with the unending power source of the tesseract itself.

Having gotten her balance again, Viper ran for her foil. Steve swung the machine as if to bring it down on her head, and she had to drop to her knees and grab one of the struts that held the tesseract in so that he could not smash it into the floor. She had a good grip, but Steve's was stronger. He easily tore it out of her hands again, but she used that leverage to pull herself to her feet and swing under his arm. Once again, she was after her sword.

Steve ran after her, but this time he was too late. She scooped the weapon up and swung at him, and for lack of anything else Steve had to use the time machine to block. Viper thrust again, and this time he wasn't so lucky – the sword sliced through his sleeve, leaving a piece of it dangling free. The skin underneath burned. Steve hoped he hadn't gotten too high a dose.

Viper had the upper hand now, and she knew it. She struck again and again, and he had to block again and again. Footsteps and motion told him that more operatives had rushed through the open doors of the castle. They had flamethrowers and could have used them, but they hung back, not wanting to set Viper on fire and not sure what to do about the fact that Steve had the tesseract. They were waiting for orders.

Whatever else happened, Steve thought grimly, he was not letting go of this machine.

Viper's repeated blows drove him back towards the doorway. The men there got out of his way, afraid of the tesseract, but Viper ran after him. He saw something move over by where Connie was lying, and realized it was Janet, returning from miniature to normal size. She would look after Connie.

On the floor by the door was Tony's discarded weapon... and the box that had held the fake tesseract. It was lying there, unfolded into two cubes, dark and empty. Steve looked up again, and saw Tony himself appear in the doorway on the far side of the room. He waved his arms urgently, telling Steve they had to hurry.

Steve got an idea. Tony had built several things for this trip and they'd all worked – they could continue to work. Tony didn't need Steve's protection. Tony was more than capable of protecting himself.

"Tony!" he shouted. "Come here and help!"

Tony didn't question it. He ran towards Steve. Several of the soldiers fired at him, but the bullets, while they clearly stung, bounced off his legs and chest without penetrating the armor under his clothes. He stumbled, staggered, and kept coming. Viper whirled around to run him through, but the plating that stopped the bullets was more than proof against a relatively slow and flexible sword thrust. The blade stopped dead in the middle of his chest.

That was the opportunity Steve needed. With the tesseract and machine still in his other hand, he swept Viper's legs out from under her, threw her to the ground, and straddled her chest. Tony stepped on her right wrist, pinning her sword arm to the floor. She reached up to grab Steve's face with her poison-gloved left hand, but he put the tesseract in between himself and her, forcing her to grab the machine instead.

"Get rid of the sword," he ordered Tony through clenched teeth. "But don't touch it!"

Tony stamped on her hand with his other foot and then kicked the weapon away. It skittered across the floor to a stop.

Steve looked up at the men surrounding them. Viper had promised fifty, but there were only eight. "Get out or she dies," he said.

"Let him kill me," Viper ordered. "Just get the tesseract!"

The men began to move forward.

Tony reached and scooped up the weapon he'd made. One end of the hose was stuck to the box of the fake tesseract – he ripped that off and put it on a corner of the real one. The other end was in the hand piece, which Tony didn't have time to put on properly. Instead he just pulled on a part of it, and a burst of energy blew the eight operatives away all at once. Suddenly the room was empty. It was just Steve, Tony, Viper... and Connie and Janet, crouched by the far wall.

Tony threw away his weapon, which was now actually on fire and quite thoroughly useless, and waved to Janet.

"You help hold her down," he ordered as she came to join them. "Set your watch for... make it ninety seconds, then put the time machine in the box. If I do the same thing downstairs at the same time, both fields should collapse harmlessly at once!"

"Do we have ninety seconds?" asked Steve.

"I hope so," Tony replied. "That's as fast as I think I can get back down there."

Janet took over kneeling on Viper's sword arm, and she and Tony both set their watches. Tony took the second tesseract box and ran out of the room.

Viper herself seemed to have given up struggle. Maybe she knew when she was beaten, and wasn't going to fight any more for the time being. Or maybe she was merely aware that if the wormhole collapsed while she, too, was still in the middle of the affected area, she was likely to die along with the rest of them.

"How do I open this thing?" Janet asked, fumbling with the tesseract box.

"I don't know, Tony always just opened it. I think you just pull the sides," said Steve.

"Aha! I got it!" Janet unfolded it into two boxes, and held it above the time machine, her hands shaking. "I hope I can close it again! Can you see my watch?" She moved her arm, twisting into a slightly awkward position so that he'd have a view of he wrist.

"Eighteen seconds," Steve read off the digital face.

"Count down for me," she told him.

Steve hoped her watch was in good sync with Tony's. "Ten... nine... eight... seven..."

She moved the box to just above the time machine, licking her lips.

"Six... five... four..."

Even Viper was holding her breath now.

"Three... two... one... close!" shouted Steve.

Janet slammed the box down on top of the time machine and pushed the two cubes back together. The edges of them seemed to slice easily through the struts the machine was mounted in. There was high-pitched sound and a crackle of blue energy, and then silence except for the sound of heavy breathing. Steve's ears rang for a moment, and then that faded away, leaving only the distant sounds of the city outside.

"Oh, my god." Janet was so relieved she giggled. "We did it!"

Steve went limp – and Viper chose that moment to act. She ripped her hand out from underneath Janet's knee and grabbed Steve's face. He howled as whatever she had on her glove ate into his skin. Janet shrank abruptly to avoid being the next target. In a red haze of pain, Steve saw Viper scoop up the fallen tesseract...

Then there was a bang of gunfire, and Viper fell limp on top of Steve.

Fighting the urge to scrub at his eyes, Steve squinted across the room and just managed to make out Connie, sitting up and holding the gun he'd dropped at the beginning of the fight. They made eye contact for a moment, and then she, too, slumped back to the ground.

Tony came hurrying back into the room, clutching the second tesseract box against his chest, and stopped short, staring, when he saw Steve sitting there with his face burned and Viper bleeding on top of him. "Shit," he said. "What happened?"

"Get a radio and call Fury," said Steve. "Or get a phone and call 911. Connie needs a hospital."

Janet reappeared and touched down next to him. "So do you," she said. "Leave it to me."


A few minutes later, medical personnel were carrying Connie on a stretcher down the stairs of the castle, while Steve sat on the bottom step and let a pair of EMTs douse his face and arm with distilled water to wash away the rest of the toxin. The affected muscles kept twitching, and Steve hoped he wouldn't have a permanent tic. It wasn't that he was vain, it was just that a lot of people had put a lot of work into enhancing his body and they'd all seemed so proud of the result. Scarring it would be like throwing acid on somebody's sculpture.

In the square at the bottom of the steps, people and vehicles were back to where they'd been before the time machine had tried to re-write the landscape, but something was wrong. Medics and police were talking to people who looked lost and confused. One of them, Steve saw, was the priest he'd spoken to in the cathedral.

"Mon Père!" Steve called out. "Are you all right?"

"Père?" the man looked at Steve in startlement. "Are you my son?"

Steve shook his head. "No," he said. "I'm... you're a priest. Aren't you?"

The old man looked down at his clothing, and then held his head in both hands as the police woman who'd been escorting him patted his back. "I don't know," he said. "I remember nothing."

Steve looked around, and saw half a dozen similar conversations happening. Nobody who'd been in the affected area seemed to have any idea what was going on.

A medic came to put a blood pressure cuff on Steve. "What's wrong with these people?" Steve asked her.

"We not sure," she replied, in broken English. "The people who were in the ground. They do not remember."

The people who'd been in the ground... a shiver went down Steve's spine. All those people had died when they were trapped in the transported material, and had then been freed when the second time machine turned on. The fact that they'd come back alive instead of dead suggested that they'd been reconstructed by the machine, just as Tony's pet dinosaur had. Had their memories not come with them? Maybe that was why Crusoe was so tame – because she had no life experience to tell her what was and was not a threat.

That meant, Steve realized, that he couldn't have gotten Bucky back anyway. What came back wouldn't have remembered being Bucky. Had Viper known that?

She was lying on another stretcher, being put into another ambulance. She, too, was still alive, and since help had found her faster, Viper was probably more likely to survive than Connie was. When she came to, he decided, he would have to ask her.