A/N: I know I haven't responded to every review/comment the last couple of chapters or been posting on my usual schedule. What can I say other than "family drama"? Hoping that's wrapping up and I'll get my act together here, but just know that I treasure each and every review/comment!

Chapter 36 - Preparations

Steve's POV

Planning missions was always difficult. When it came down to it, I was in charge of field operations and got the final say in what strategies we used, when we went, and everything in between. But that didn't mean that there weren't more than a few heated discussions along the way.

This time around it was even trickier. With Lizard, we'd had to rush into a situation that was dangerous for civilians and would only to grow increasingly more so as time went on. Attacking a suspected HYDRA base was a different matter. We didn't know of an immediate threat, other than just their existence, so we had more time for planning. On the other hand, we were fairly certain that they'd feel compelled to move soon given that the Avenger's newest member came from the same city as their current base of operations.

Anyone who had as much training with and as high of clearance from SHIELD as Grant Ward had before it fell knew better than to assume something like that was a coincidence.

Grant Ward wouldn't be a fool or easily taken. He'd been a specialist not too long ago, and he wouldn't suffer from the same flaws that the usual managers- who had been out of the field for too long- did. That meant our plan had to be precise and executed with exacting care.

Above all else, we had to keep our emotions in check, and that was going to be tough. Though they had joined up with HYDRA initially willingly, both Wanda and Pietro felt betrayed because they had been lied to and given false hopes at such an early age and for so long. Not to mention their treatment after they'd agreed had been poor. HYDRA had kept them essentially prisoner in individual small, unbreakable glass cells for years.

Natasha and Clint came from similar places. When Clint was young, he'd taken a questionable path, falling in with a band of criminals and generally being not a good guy. But all that had changed when he'd met Coulson. Coulson had initially been meant to stop Clint, by detaining him or through more final means, but instead Coulson had chosen to bring Clint into the fold. Though suspicious, Clint had eventually signed on, and, against all odds, he'd become a good guy again.

As far as Natasha was concerned, well, it was definitely personal. Natasha either didn't know or wasn't telling at what age or how she'd come to be in the hands of the KGB's Red Room, though she'd made references in the past to having to do spy work, and even kill, as a small child. Hers was the story of a young girl who hadn't stood a chance in the world. Tortured, brainwashed, and made into a fierce seductress and assassin. The Black Widow program had created many graduates, but only one was so good, so legendary, that she became THE Black Widow.

When Clint had been sent to eliminate Natasha, she confessed that she'd been at the end of her rope. They'd fought, and Clint had her in his crosshairs, bow locked on her chest and only a few feet away. Hawkeye, as he was called even then, didn't miss, and he could have completed her mission and killed her in that moment. Instead, he'd offered her the same thing Coulson had offered him- a way out. She'd taken it, and it had taken months for her to work her way out of the KGB's programming and find herself as a person, something she'd never known in her entire life. Once she was stable and field ready, she'd taken to working for SHIELD with a resolve that, according to her file, no one had seen before. When I'd asked her about it, she simply said that she had a lot of red in her ledger that she wanted to wipe out.

But I suspected, especially in watching her relationship with Bucky unfold, that it was more than that. SHIELD had allowed her to create the only home she'd ever known. It was true that she hadn't trusted many people on a personal level, but she'd believed in SHIELD. When she'd discovered that HYDRA had infiltrated every level, it had broken her. In retaliation, she'd broken shield, then gone off to lick her wounds. Before long though, she'd come back with one mission: eliminate HYDRA. We thought we had done that, cut off all the heads, but with more having grown back, well, the Black Widow was thirsting for blood once more.

Bucky, of course, had arguably the worst history with the organization. He'd been held captive for DECADES, brainwashed, used as a weapon, and kept in a tube frozen anytime he wasn't of use. Each time he'd been brought out, his programming would break at least a little, causing them to need to reprogram him. That process was one Bucky still wouldn't talk about other than to say it had been extremely unpleasant.

My history with HYDRA was well documented. Destroying them was the primary reason for my creation, and during my first interaction with them, they'd killed Doctor Erskine, a man who in a very short time had become a second father to me. Then they'd taken away Bucky, who may as well have been my brother, and even if they hadn't actually killed him, the hurt was still there, not to mention what they'd done with him (or Steph). Finally, they'd taken away the life I'd dreamed of, and when I'd begun to start to make a life for myself again in present time, it had been at SHIELD- only to have HYDRA take that life away too.

Thor, Sam, Rhodey, and Vision were the least affected by HYDRA. Rhodey, as war machine, had been on HYDRA's hit list with Project Insight, so that was plenty of cannon fodder for him. Sam had interacted with them over the course of just the couple of days of shaking them out of SHIELD. But, over those days, they'd tried to kill him numerous times, not to mention those that came in the months to follow while trying to track down Bucky. To say Thor was displeased by HYDRA's use of and experimentation with Loki's scepter was a vast understatement. And Vision had access to all of SHIELD's data from HYDRA because of his initial intelligence upload from JARVIS, and he'd read all the files of information since that time, and as he proclaimed himself "on the side of life," he took HYDRA's several attempts at mass murder and extermination extremely personally.

Steph's association with HYDRA was only weeks old, and in that time they'd kidnapped her, shot her, tried to blow her up, and generally made a fast enemy of her. And then there were her own personal betrayals, similar to what Natasha, Clint, and I had gone through with SHIELD. When Steph had explained HYDRA's involvement in Trenton and in the events that had happened to her recently to her "Merry Men," well, let's just say they hadn't taken that well at all.

And Coulson's team had arrived an hour into our strategy session, summoned by Natasha, and boy was that another group with severe HYDRA problems. After Bucky, their feelings were probably the most intense as the leader of this faction had been a member of their team. One who thoroughly betrayed them, killed a member of their first post fall of SHIELD base's team, and had an incredibly unhealthy obsession with Skye. Coulson had brought additional team members this time around, including some sort of ex of Grant Ward's. Then there was the couple, Bobbi (short for Barbara) Morse and Lance Hunter, a couple who had been married, divorced, and were dating again. Morse was unable to go into the field yet as she was still undergoing rehab from Ward torturing her, so she would be helping run operations from our base and was none to happy to be benched.

Knowing all of this had helped me with my struggle not to lose my temper when those disagreements about how we would attack invariably occurred. And they'd started with which location was most likely to be the base, and thus we should launch our initial assault on. We all knew there was a possibility that we'd choose incorrectly, but we had to rank the list in order from most probable to least and start busting down doors in that order. Not knowing how many men we'd be taking on or if they had any enhanced, I'd refused to break down the team into smaller groups and attack multiple locations at once.

As the arguing about the data was going on, I couldn't stop watching Steph. She was flipping through information on her tablet, and largely ignoring everyone else with a look on her face that was all but screaming "spidey sense" to me. Just before I could ask her what was going on, she finally spoke.

"FRIDAY," Steph yelled to be heard over the din and caused everyone else to instantly quiet down. "You have a new location in your list today on Comstock Street, and your probabilities and information are clearly changing by the moment. Why is that?"

"I apologize for the uncertainty," FRIDAY began. "However, I only discovered the pattern a short time ago and I have been working on it as processes allow."

"Halt all other location searches and dedicate your resources to this location as your top priority," Steph instructed.

There was a pause followed by a deafening argument from the group. Holding my hand up to quiet them again, I focused on Steph and said, "this location isn't one of the one's we've observed and tracked before today. Why do you think it needs priority?"

"First of all, I think the fact that it isn't one of the locations we've been monitoring makes it more likely to be the primary base for them. Just think of it, one of the things that has been driving us nuts and is making this decision is so difficult is that we could never spot very many of our people of interest at once in any of these locations. That makes it more likely that they're used as minor safe houses, stash locations, coordination points, places that they take those they don't trust to know the location of their base, and so on, right?"

"Yes," Natasha said quietly, and I could see others nodding along. "What else, Steph?"

"If I'm reading this right, FRIDAY's seen vehicles, large vehicles that could hold multiple occupants, moving from most of the other locations to this new location today," Steph informed us.

"That is correct," FRIDAY chimed in.

"There's more," Bucky said, carefully watching her face.

Steph shifted nervously and said, "Believe me, I know this isn't about me, but…"

Immediately on alert, I prompted, "but what?"

"You told me once that Grant Ward had only been in the area for a short time, but that he'd managed to grow his numbers so rapidly, and Trenton's corruption had always been so severe, that you wondered if HYDRA had always been in Trenton," Steph explained.

I nodded and verbally agreed saying, "yes, we're fairly certain that Trenton has been on HYDRA's radar for several years now, if not the past couple decades."

"And we talked about how you thought one of the ways that HYDRA kept Trenton unstable was to support and feed the gang wars and the various mafia associations in the area, right?"

"Well, that makes sense," Ranger murmured. "Keeps attention off whatever HYDRA is doing, and those things tend to bring their own sources of corruption as well, making it easier for HYDRA to worm their way into pretty much anything they want to."

Taking a deep breath, Steph commanded, "FRIDAY, put the location on the primary screen for everyone to see."

As soon as the Merry Men took in the location each and every one of them tensed up and started swearing up a blue streak. Except for Hector who began muttering in Spanish and caressing his knives in a way I'd previously only seen Natasha do while using a similar tone with her Russian.

"What is this place, Joule?" Thor asked, having picked up on the vibe as well. "What does it mean to you and your comrades in arms?"

Steph started by relaying the story for those on Coulson's team, as well as Thor, who hadn't heard it before of her run in with one of Trenton's gangs, the Comstock Street Slayer. When she reached the end, she eyed me cautiously and proceeded to tell us exactly how it had ended, something she'd glossed over in the end. My jaw tightened so much I had to consciously ease up for fear of breaking a tooth before she ended the story with, "that's where they took me when they kidnapped me- to the playground right next to the apartment building that FRIDAY flagged today."

There were a few beats of silence as everyone processed that information, and then I said, "FRIDAY, everything you have."

"As Joule told you, I've been tracking the movement of various vehicles from many of the other locations of interest, all converging on this location. The first from each location all left within thirty minutes of each other early this morning. The location itself, I've used various Stark Industries satellites with different imaging capabilities, and the results are interesting. The most telling is perhaps that heat signatures picked up by the thermal images disappear once they reach a certain distance inside the building."

"I assume Stark's satellites are top of the line as far as such things are concerned," I slowly thought out loud. "How deep underground would they have to be to disappear?"

"Several stories," FRIDAY quickly replied. "Depending on how large each was, but I project that you will discover a significant underground base at this location."

"What happened after Steph's friend mowed down all those slayers?" Bucky asked the Trenton group.

Ranger rubbed the back of his head and sighed saying, "some of the Slayers stuck around, but they were much smaller in numbers and were very disorganized. The Junkman had been brought into kill Steph but also to be potential new leadership. He was dead and their highest ranking members were put in jail. That sight and a couple blocks around it were completely abandoned by the Slayers."

"There had to have been cops crawling all over that place," Natasha chewed on her thumb as she studied the maps. "Too many for them to stack the deck completely in their own favor. HYDRA would have been pissed and probably ran the gang out of the area to keep their lair from being discovered. Steph's right, this is it."

There was a round of agreement and from there we were able to begin the planning stages once more, this time with greater confidence that we'd be knocking on HYDRA's door the first attempt. When we eventually got to the point where we broke into the smaller teams that were going to be working together inside the base to talk strategy, Natasha pulled me aside.

"When we're done here, you're going to instruct everyone to suit up and be ready to go in an hour. The excuse is that everyone needs to gear up and eat a decent meal before we go, but you and Steph need some time together, I think. Don't try to argue with my Rogers, I can feel the tension between you both. I'll handle food for you and set it outside your room, and knock once. Eat it while you talk."

"Half an hour," I countered, and the smug look on Natasha's face told me that she hadn't expected me to take a full hour anyway.

All she said was, "make sure she understands that you're okay, otherwise she's going to be distracted thinking you're still suffering ill effects from last night's snake venom."

"I'm fine," I argued.

"I know that," she retorted. "Make sure Joule knows that as well. If you're not sure what to do, there are a few techniques I could recommend."

With a sigh I said, "Natasha, we're not doing that right before a mission."

"Hey, it'll relieve some of that tension she's carrying around right now."

Noticing that Natasha was right, Steph did seem tense, I moved over to where Steph and Bucky were planning out how our small strike team was going to accomplish the initial breach of HYDRA's security. I started rubbing her shoulders, effectively ending my side conversation with Natasha, and noticed a twinkle in Bucky's eyes that told me he'd heard every word. We finished before the other teams, so I announced wheels up in 45 minutes, ignored Natasha's snort of laughter and Bucky's chuckle, and encouraged everyone to use that time to eat in addition to finishing planning.

Then I whisked Steph away to our rooms and spend the first 25 minutes using a joint shower to show Steph that I was feeling very good. As we dried off, Steph eyed me with a wry smile and asked, "what about that whole 'take some time to eat and finish planning. Get your game faces on' thing? Does that not apply to us?"

In response, I simply wrapped the towel around my waist and walked over to the bedroom door. I pulled it open, reached down, and grabbed two trays of food before shutting the door with my foot and setting them on the bed.

"Natasha thought we might need some alone time to reassure you that I was back at full strength, and I figured it couldn't hurt to make sure that wasn't distracting you during the mission. She procured some food for us, eat quickly," I told her. "We've got twenty minutes to eat, get dressed, and gear up."

When Steph moved to get dressed first, I decided to eat quickly so that we wouldn't be tripping over each other in the closet and as we prepared. While I was eating, Steph looked at me with feigned casualness and said, "I stopped by your property when I was running the perimeter this morning."

Because I was trying to figure out why that appeared to embarrass her, I smiled and said, "oh yeah, why's that?"

"I don't know," she said, not a hint of a lie in her expression. "I just felt drawn to it, and when I was there, it just felt… peaceful. Right somehow."

I studied her quietly, and thought about how easily she'd fit into my life so far. When I thought about that piece of land, I thought of building a house there for Steph and maybe even starting a family there with her sometime down the road. Continuing to study her, I said, "well then, maybe we should get married. That'll make it half yours too."

Her jaw went slack and she stared at me in what I was relieved to note was surprise and not panic. Finally she said, "we've only known each other for something like a month, Steve. Don't you think that's too soon?"

Shrugging I said, "clearly you do, so it must be. But I love you, and I'm sick of waiting to have the life I always wanted. Whenever you're ready, just tell me."

Steph watched me for a few more minutes before nodding her head and finishing what she was doing. When she walked back over to the bed, she pressed a kiss on my cheek and whispered, "well, I have to say I'm pretty sick of trying to live life by everyone else's rules, and I love you too. So hell, why not?"

I barked out a laugh and said, "you know, that's not exactly the enthusiasm I always imagined getting when I asked that question."

"Technically, you didn't ask," Steph told me. But she gave me a big kiss and teased, "that make it up to you?"

"For now," I laughed out. Steph was done dressing, so she sat down on the bed to start eating. Finishing off my food, I cleared my trash then moved to the dresser to grab one of Steph's hair ties. When I settled down behind her, I pressed a few nibbling kisses along her neck and murmured, "sorry I didn't really ask."

Steph just shrugged and said, "well, I've done the whole fancy proposal and wedding thing before back when I was focused on trying to please… Helen, and look where that got me. Can this one just be about us?"

Truthfully, I wasn't thrilled with the idea of turning our relationship, engagement, and wedding into a big spectacle, so I happily agreed while I set about quickly braiding Steph's hair. By the time I finished with her hair and getting dressed, we had ten minutes left to wheels up, so I grabbed the trays and we jogged out of the room together. The trays I left on the counter, which I would rather deal with myself, but time was of the essence.

As Steph and I stood side by side, grabbing remaining gear from our lockers than going through the arsenal for supplies we wanted to take with us, I couldn't stop myself from continually looking sideways at her and smiling. Finally, with two minutes to spare, Bucky clapped us both on the shoulder and said, "come on, lovebirds. Let's go show HYDRA who's boss, then you can both tell us what has you so happy as we revel in our victory."