"Demonic Instinct"
I called Fury at dawn and told him I was in. He said that he was sending a car to pick me up to take me to a jet that would get me to the location of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s moving base of operations. I was introduced to Agent Coulson when I arrived at the Jet, and he gave me an electronic device with a transparent screen that projects images like a television. He showed me how to use it and went to sit on another bench facing the wall that was across from me where there was a panel with coordinates that he was examining.
Doctor's Banner transformation caught my attention. "So, this Doctor Banner was trying to replicate the serum that was used on me?" I asked him.
"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner though that gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."
"Didn't really go his way, did it?"
"Not so much. When he is not that thing though, the guy is like a Steven Hawkins."
I stared at Coulson when he mentioned man's name because I don't know who he is. "He is like a smart person." He said. He paused for a moment and continued talking, "I got to say. It's an honor to meet you. Officially. I sort of knew you. I watched you while you were sleeping. I mean, I was present while you were unconscious on the ice. You know it's just …. It's just a really huge honor to have you onboard." He said awkwardly to me.
"I hope that I'm the man for the job."
"You are. Absolutely! We made some modifications to the uniform. I have a little… design input."
"Aren't the stars and stripes a little old fashion?" I would have thought they would have changed my Captain America uniform now.
"With everything that is happening, the things that are about to come to light, People might just... need a little old fashion." He said and when back to sit down by the panel.
"Director Fury is going to be waiting for you," Coulson said to me when we were exiting the jet once we arrived at an aircraft carrier.
A stunning, short woman with short, wavy red hair; and a curvy, hourglass figure approached us. "Agent Romanoff. Captain Rogers." Agent Coulson said introducing the newcomer and me. For a few seconds, I was looking at her, and a mental image of another woman came to my mind. A warrior demon slayer in black skin thigh leather suit; with the fierceness, beauty, and grace of a Bengal tiger; and a personality made of fire, and steel. At that moment, I knew that though Agent Romanoff may look deceptively harmless, she would be just as dangerous, and deathly like the warrior woman from my dreams. The realization should have put me on guard and made me wary. This woman in front of me is really dangerous. Instead, I was feeling calm and relaxed, content.
I was feeling a sense of closeness and familiarity that comes from knowing someone for years. Similar to the warm and content feeling I feel around the girl from my dreams, but less intense than the one I felt with her. I remember feeling like this when I met Bucky as well, except that the feeling with Bucky was stronger, still not as strong as with the Girl, but stronger than what I was feeling at the moment. That's the reason why Bucky and I were so close from the beginning. The feeling that both of us got during our first meeting as if we have known each other our whole life, only grew as time when by. By the time we both reached our twenties, that sense of connection was so strong that it felt as it was a gravitational pull. It felt as if my world revolved around him much like with the girl from my dreams. I started to feel sexually attracted to him when I hit my teens. That's when I discovered that I was harboring a lot more than just platonic friendship related feelings towards my best friend. I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I started to fall in love with him. I only know that by the time I discovered it, it had already happened.
The confusing part was that I was attracted to women, but he is the only man I have ever felt attracted to. I never acted on those feelings. If Bucky felt the same way, he never showed it. There were a few times when he was looking at me, and for the briefest of a moment, I could almost swear I saw a heated look on his face. A longing in his eyes, that didn't belong to just friends, but the moment would pass too quickly. His face would morph back to displaying that all too familiar friendly grin, and I would be left thinking that I must have imagined it. He never made any indication that he might feel something more towards me other than a close friendship, so I stayed silent and tried with all my will to bury my feelings. I wasn't just afraid of being rejected by him. I was scared that he would discover my feelings for him, and he might be disgusted, and not want to be around me anymore. Just thinking about the possibility of losing our friendship made me panic. If he were to have shown an indication that he felt something similar for me, I would have taken the chance and pursue a relationship with him without any care about how illicit it was at the time.
My feelings and the sense of connection only intensified when I was injected with the serum. After that, I also started to have those strange dreams. I also felt something more when I was around Bucky. Something primal that said pack, family, mine. As if the person that I was in my dreams had somehow transferred that demonic, darker side of his personality on to me. That possessive and overprotective demonic instinct that drove me to protect my pack with vicious ferocity and at all cost. My feelings towards Bucky and the crushing anguish and despair I felt with Bucky's fall was the main reason why I chose to go down with the Valkyrie instead of aiming it towards the ground and jumping out of the plane using one of the parachutes which were in it. After Bucky's fall, my anger towards Hydra for being responsible for his death was the only reason why I kept fighting. I needed to crush the organization, avenge his death, and make sure that what happened to him never happened again to anyone else. Once I accomplished it, there was no more motivation for me to continue on. I wanted to die. I was supposed to die.
In addition to the sensation of connection, closeness, and familiarity; that primal possessive and protective response that I used to feel with Bucky and in my dreams with the Girl and the rest of my pack is what I was feeling as Agent Romanoff approached me. My instincts are saying pack, family, comfort, contentment, mine.
"Hi," she said casually to me. To Agent Coulson, she said, "We need you on the bridge, they are starting phase three."
"See you there," Coulson said and walked away.
When I was left alone with Agent Romanoff, we started walking away from the Jet. She said to me, "there was quite the buzz around here, finding you on the ice. I thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he asked you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?"
"Trading cards?" I asked her just as casually. I wasn't feeling awkward or nervous as I normally would be when I meet a gorgeous dame because the pull of the connection l felt with her is making me feel as if I have known her my whole life.
"They are vintage. He is very proud." She replied.
I saw a middle-aged man with glasses wearing a business suit about twenty feet from where we were standing. He was looking lost and out of place among all the military people walking around completing their assigned tasks. I recognized him as Doctor Banner.
"Doctor Banner," I called him, trying to get his attention while I was walking towards him.
He walked in my direction, and I extended my hand to him to greet him." "Ooh yeah. Captain Rogers. They told me you were coming." He said to me while we were shaking hands.
"Word is that you can find the Cube," I said to him.
"Is that… the only word on me?" He asked me while he moved his head from one side to the other looking unease as if he was checking the people around us and expecting someone to jump him any second.
"That's the only word I care about," I told him.
"Must be …. strange for you. All of this." He said while checking our surroundings again.
"Well.. this is actually kind of familiar," I replied to him as we started walking again in the same direction as before.
Agent Romanoff approached us. "Gentlemen you need to step inside. It's going to become a little hard to breathe." She said first looking at Banner and next to me.
At that moment, we heard someone speaking over a speaker, "all personnel in position," and the sound of machinery moving.
Banner and I started looking around. "Is this a submarine?" I asked.
Banner and I approached the edge of the carrier while he asked with a little sarcastic smirk., "really. They want me in a submerged, pressurized metal container?"
We looked down, and I realized that what was coming from the water was actually an airplane turbine, and the carrier is starting to lift up. "Ooh no. This is much worse." He said with the same little smirk he used with his previous statement.
After that, we walked to the inside of the carrier. Agent Romanoff took both of us to the main control room where Director Fury was waiting for us. I walked on the bridge looking around in wonderment. The Director approached me. I took a ten dollars bill out of my pocket, gave it to him, and continued walking forward in the main bridge while Director Fury approached and greeted Doctor Banner.
I heard Doctor Banner ask the Director for how long is he staying onboard.
"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you are in the wind."
"Where are you with that?" Doctor Banner asked, and the director pointed at Coulson. "We are sweeping every available wireless camera on the planet, cell phones, laptops…. If it is connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us." Coulson replied.
Agent Romanoff, who had been squatting on the floor by the edge of the bridge's platform and looking at the picture of a man in a computer monitor said, "that is still not gonna find them in time."
"You have to narrow your field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Doctor Banner asked the Director.
"How many are there?" The Director replied.
"Call every lab you know. Tell them to put their spectrometers in the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?" Doctor Banner said while he was taking out his jacket, folding it over one arm, and rolling up his shirt sleeve.
"Agent Romanoff, show Doctor Banner to his laboratory, please." The Director said to her.
She approached Banner, "right this way. Doctor." She said to him gesturing with her hand and starting walking towards one of the corridors exiting the bridge.
I had been aboard the Helicarrier for a little over an hour when the Agents located Loki. The "Helicarrier" is what Director Fury called the flying aircraft carrier that we were onboard of. Agent Coulson was asking me to sign his trading cards when one of the Agents announced he found the Alien. "If is not too much trouble," He said.
"No is not," I replied to him.
"Is a vintage set. It took me a couple of years to collect them all. Near mint. Slight fussing around the edges, but otherwise in really good condition." He was saying to me when one of the Agents announced that they had found him.
"I got a hit. 67% match, wait.. cross match, 79%." The Agent said.
"Where?" Director Fury asked.
"He is in Germany, 26th Hains. He is not exactly hiding." The agent replied.
"Captain. You are up," The Director said to me.
Author's Notes:
I finally got time to finish this chapter. So, Bucky and Steve, and that connection/sense of closeness he felt when they met each other, and now he meets Natasha, and it's the same thing. I did say the relationships in this story are on the side of complicated. I'm posting the next chapter sometime during the rest of this week to make up for not posting anything last week.
Now we know Bucky is another member of the group. We learned that there is a weird type of connection/pull that at least some of the members of the group feel whenever they meet another member of the group and that this connection gets stronger with time, which now explains Tony's growing obsession with "Mystic." We previously found out that the connection affects each of them slightly differently and that it varies in intensity with each member. We also got to see here how is it that the people from the group who have their memories can recognize who is the reincarnation of who, and that as previously seen not all of them have access to their memories.
I'm going to go ahead and give you a little spoil and tell you that this connection/pull is attached to the souls of each member of the group. So, the "connection" between the members of the group doesn't follow any of the normal or traditional rules that apply to relationships. For those of you thinking, Bucky and Steve? What the heck? I did warn you about polyamory themes on this story way back before the subject of reincarnations and God were introduced in the story. Also, now it has been revealed that the serum gave Steve his previous memories, but it also gave him his previous incarnation's demonic instincts. What is going on with that?
Also, in the case of Steve and Bucky. Steve stated that Bucky is the only man that he has ever felt attracted to, so we can deduct that this is something that carries with the individual carriying the soul and not with his or hers gender. What would that make his orientation be? Bisexual? Demisexual? Pansexual? I would say that he is demisexual, but he said that he is attracted to women so he can't be only demisexual. I think he is heterosexual and demisexual. Is that possible? Ooh well. I did say that the relationships between the characters in this story are complicated and don't follow conventional rules.
Also, don't expect this "connection" to be all fluffy and about rainbows and all things nice. For most of the people from the group, this has been a source of a lot of anguish, sorrow, and pain. We have seen some glimpses of that when Bucky fell from the train, how Steve felt his loss, and how he feels now being alive in the present. There is a good reason why "Mystic" has said to Tony that there could never be anything more than a close friendship between them. They are not going to go and have an orgy, start a polyamorous relationship with everyone, and live happily ever after.