CHAPTER XII

Gunfire?!

Alvie jerked upright in bed. The cells were soundproof, supposedly, but the noise of the shots had permeated them. The door that separated her corridor from the others was open and in the dark, highlighted more than illuminated by eerie green backup lights, she could see figures moving.

This has got to be a dream, was her first thought, so it's okay if I don't have pants on. It appeared that the guards were firing, the tips of their machine guns flashes of firework light in the gloom.

Someone's brought the Fourth of July to the middle of the Atlantic, she thought, and smiled vaguely. Ha ha.

One by one, the sounds of gunfire stopped as something, some nightmarish thing, moved through the night like a shark slicing through black water. Mere seconds after the last round of bullet echoed into silence, the lights in the residents' rooms of the Raft flickered on.

Captain America stood in the center of the room, knuckles bruised, not a weapon on him. Sam said something to him that Alvie, in her soundproof cell, could not hear. She could read his lips, though: "you're late."

"Better that than never." Steve reached down, pulled a device out of a prone guard's pocket, and pressed buttons experimentally. Lights turned on and off, a fire alarm sounded in the distance, and the sprinklers started to sprinkle. Red button, Alvie thought, come on, it's obvious. It's always the red button. When is it ever not the red button?

With the hiss of pistons firing and a flourish of smoke pouring out of the mechanisms, the bars of the cells receded into the walls, the glass then sliding away like a lifted veil. Smells that weren't her or food flooded into Alvie's nostrils – the smells of sweat and cordite, the scent of freedom. Part of her wanted to run, right there and then, but it drowned as it struggled against the tide of her inertia. She just sat there, unmoving, listening to the commotion beyond and not reacting in the slightest.

"What was it?" Sam asked, stepping out of his cell.

"Red button," Steve replied, jogging up to Wanda and undoing the straps of her straitjacket. "Come on, Wanda. Up you get, good girl. We'll get that collar off. It's going to be alright."

Wanda laughed weakly. "You're a liar," she said, clutching his arms in white-spider fingers as he lifted her up.

"That's four," Steve said as Lang and Barton joined them in the center of the room. "I need Athena, too. We can't leave her behind. She's just a civilian, she should never have got involved in this…" Steve spun on his heel, looking for the final prisoner. "Where is she? I'd have thought that she would've come running out as soon as the cells opened."

"Your eight o'clock," Sam replied, nodding down the corridor.

Steve found Alvie sat on the edge of her bed, thin blanket draped over her and bare toes curling against the freezing metal floor. "Oh," she said numbly as the soldier entered, "it's the Fourth of July. Are you here to rescue me?"

"I've come to take you home," said Steve, kneeling down in front of her with a somewhat patronizing expression of fatherly concern. "Is that okay?"

She shook her head. "Home wants to kill me," she said. "I can't go home."

"You can stand trial," Steve told her, "they'll be kinder to you. Ross'll take the price off your head."

Something unfamiliar bubbled up inside of her, and escaped her lips as a humourless laugh. "Doesn't matter," Alvie replied. "HYDRA know who I am. Everyone knows who I am. I won't last five minutes. I can't go home, sir. I'm sorry."

Sam came over. "You can go into hiding," he said, "Europe, Asia. South America."

"They'll find me. I can't protect myself anymore. I don't have anonymity as my shield." The words came out monotone, like a machine. It was like the EMP that had broken Athena had broken her emotions as well. She didn't feel anything as she tried to explain to them that, logistically, she was a lost cause. "You'd be better off landing a bullet in my head. Less hassle for everyone."

Stood silently behind his friend, Sam looked at her the same way Father Wilson had; like he wanted, genuinely and without ulterior motive, to help her. Not like his newcome companion, who had rage in the depths of his eyes. A rage that triggered, deep in the calcified depths of Alvie's soul, the faintest yellow flicker of fear.

"No," said Steve, "I'm not gonna do that, Alvine."

"Alvie," she and Sam both said at once.

"Alvie," Steve corrected himself, and extended a hand to take her shoulder in a comforting way – she flinched away from him, giving the hand a horrified look. Steve got the message, withdrawing quickly, then stood up to talk to Sam. "There's one place she'll be safe," he said. "You don't get much better asylum than the most reclusive country in the world. And if it'll work for Bucky, then –"

Bucky! That name worked like a bucket of boiling water over her head, and the yellow flicker of fear spread through her like plague rats in a sprawling city. Bucky!

Alvie leapt to her feet and ran past the two Avengers, out into the hallway that was being drenched with sprinkler water. Her foot slipped in a puddle and she fell onto her ass, scrambling back up again and bolting past the bemused faces of the others. If she ran far enough, then maybe –

A hand of iron grabbed her arm. "Alvie!" Steve said, "what is it?"

"Let go! Let go! It's all my fault!" she yelled. Why isn't he killing me already? Look at the trouble I brought to the door of his friend, his Bucky, my Bucky!

"I ruined everything!" she shouted, struggling to get away from him. "It's my fault! It's not okay, it's all my fault!"

"We need to sedate her," Sam said, "we won't make it out of here alive with her screaming the place down."

"Just let me talk to her – Alvie, come on, you helped us by finding Bucky just as much as you helped Ross, it's not your fault at all –"

"NO!" she wailed, "you don't understand! It was me who helped Zemo crack the Winter Soldier files!"

The air, thick with steam and gunsmoke, became so solid it could have been cut with a butterknife. "Say that again," said Sam, as Steve's arms wrapped tighter around her waist.

Alvie shook her head and screamed, drumming her heels against the captain's legs and squeezing her eyes tight shut so that she didn't have to see Wilson looking at her like that anymore. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Let me go!" she shrieked. "Let me die! I deserve it! Leave me here to die, I don't deserve to be saved! Bucky might be dead because of me! I am damned and dirty and you need to let me die!"

"Right," said Steve, "sedate her. I'll get her onto a quinjet, can you –"

"Look after myself? Sure. I managed pretty well before you came along. Meet me and the others back here in ten – here, this was in the drawer. Labelled anaesthetic."

"NO!" Alvie screeched, clawing at Steve's arms. "DON'T! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

They grabbed her right wrist and pinned her down, sliding a needle into her skin. The last thing she heard was Steve Rogers swearing under his breath, before everything went black and she sunk into a blissful oblivion.

%

Alvie woke up on metal floor that vibrated slightly beneath her, with something heavy and warm covering her – she stretched out her fingers and felt thick, slightly coarse fabric beneath them. Somebody had retrieved her camelhair coat and draped it over her like a duvet. She had a headache. No, that didn't seem a strong enough expression… she was a headache. Her entire being began and ended with this inescapable migraine.

Sitting up, she opened her eyes and saw that someone had folded her torn, bloody dress into a neat square and left it beside her, along with a bottle of water and two aspirins. Her baseball bat was nowhere to be seen. Her manacles were gone, too – she gave her fingers an experimental click, but apart from a brief flare there was nothing.

It'll start working again soon. The EMP will have had lasting effects, but Athena is self-maintaining. It will mend.

So now the important question – where the hell am I?

She stood up, wobbling a little, and realized she was in the passenger part of a quinjet. The next thing she became aware of was Steve Rogers, sat in one of the passenger seats as the jet piloted itself.

"Morning," he said with a small smile, and Alvie flinched. Clearly, this was some kind of ruse to gain her trust before he killed her, making it all the more painful when he did. "Sorry about the anaesthetic, we had to get you out without a fuss. But don't worry, you're safe. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"But…" it was difficult to think with the traces of sedative still suffusing her mind. She pressed her palms into her eyes until lights popped across her vision, and struggled to get her words out. "But Zemo… I helped Zemo. And Ross. This is all my fault."

"You're not thinking straight." Steve stood up and guided her into a chair herself. "You've got cabin fever and you're out of the loop. I can imagine that would be unsettling for a lady named after the goddess of knowledge." He popped the aspirin out of the packet and dropped them into the palm of her hand. "Come on, Miss Kennings. You're okay."

Just like Bucky says. Said. Like he'll never ever say it to me again. Alvie clenched her fist around the aspirin and squeezed until they cracked into a fine white powder, which sifted through her fingers and fell, like Siberian snow, to the floor. "No. No, I'm not. You should be tearing me limb from limb."

"There's already been quite enough of that," said Steve, "Alvie, please. Look at me." Reluctantly, she lifted her head, and fixed her gaze on his poster-boy blue eyes. "I swear on the life of Bucky Barnes that nobody's gonna hurt you anymore."

"Bucky?" Alvie whispered. "He's alive? I didn't kill him?"

"No, you did not. He's pretty indestructible, it seems."

Relief ran through her, a cool blue wave drowning out the yellow terror. He's alive. I didn't kill him. Oh, thank God. She started to cry, weeping into Steve's shoulder. "I never wanted to hurt anyone," she sobbed, "I just wanted to help, I just wanted to make things better. It never works. It never bloody works!"

"I know, sweetheart. I know."

Three hours later, when there were no tears left to shed, Athena started working again. Alvie was still sat in the passenger part of the shabby quinjet, keeping quiet and avoiding talking to her pilot. They were somewhere over the South Atlantic, about to breach the western coast of Africa, when an alert flashed up across her eyeballs.

Online. 463 unread messages.

Yay. But first things first… find one of Mouse's dummy corporations and transfer $500,000 into it. I owe her for when she saved my life in Harlem.

Searching… transaction complete. Will be marked as anonymous.

Doesn't matter. She'll know it was me. What else… text Eva:

"I have to go away. I don't think I'll be back for a while, but I'll call you when I can. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Athena. It wasn't that I didn't trust you, it's just… you were the one part of my life that was normal. Thank you for that. Steve Rogers is taking me somewhere safe, since I can't really go back to the US now. I'm transferring the deeds of my house to you – you don't have to move in if you don't want to, but it's so nobody else can take it. My car, too. I know you hate cars, but keep an eye on her for me. Thank you for putting up with me."

Message sent.

Deeds transferred. All possessions now legal property of Evaline Chloe Kresk.

(1) New message from: Eva

1 question- is ur boyfriend bucky barnes? Bc he fits the bill u know

Alvie burst out laughing, a horrible nervous laughter that was so hysterical it was only a hair's breadth from crying.

"Everything okay back there?" Steve asked from the cockpit.

"Oh – um, yes. Sorry."

Liar. Of course it's not okay.

Everything that's happened is because I trusted a man called Zemo months ago, and didn't think to check who he was, or what it was he wanted me to uncover. Everything that's happened is because I let Ross get to me. This is all my fault. He only knows the half of it.

"Captain," she said quietly, "please… let me apologize. When Zemo asked me to crack those HYDRA files, I didn't think anything of it. I just trusted him. I didn't realize what it even was until Tony came to the Raft…"

"The Winter Soldier program?" Steve asked her. He switched on autopilot and came to sit opposite her. "You've never been in a war, have you, Alvie?"

"No, sir. Civilian to the bone, sir."

"Please don't call me sir."

"Whatever you say, ma'am."

Steve ignored the bad joke. "Nobody comes out of a war with clean hands," he explained, "I almost killed one of my friends to save another, and I didn't even realize until the last minute that that might be wrong. I had to walk away from all of it before I… anyway. You shouldn't blame yourself for all of this. There are far more guilty parties than you."

"Your friend," she said, unable to keep the tremble out of her voice. "Bucky. Bucky Barnes. You said he's alive. But is he… okay?"

Steve tilted his head as he thought. "He's been worse," he said with a wry little smile, and Alvie exhaled. "That's why you were so scared of me, right? You thought that I would hate you because of what's happened to Bucky?"

"Something like that," she said, and unfolded her legs to pick at one of the scabs on her knees. So he's alright, and Rogers has forgiven me. But Bucky… I don't think I can ever expect the same from him. I was supposed to protect him, and instead I… she bit down on her knuckles to make her brain switch to focusing on the pain instead of doing something dangerous like carry on thinking. "Where are we going?" she asked, when she had regained control.

"A sanctuary in Wakanda. It's a safe place. The country's reclusive to say the least, and their king owes me."

"T'Challa? Yeah, I know him," she said, wiping her eyes. Steve gave her a confused look. "The country's massively advanced when it comes to technology. There was a conference, I was there, so were he and one of his sisters, she was cute… you probably don't wanna know the rest. But Wakanda… their tech doesn't even operate on a binary system. It's supposed to be impossible to hack from any computer outside the country."

"Supposedly?" Steve asked.

"I mean… it took me a while and I had to build a separate server to do it, but I had a look round their government records. Nothing particularly interesting."

"They have a national superhero," Steve said.

"That's not what I think's interesting. We have one too, don't we?"

"Not anymore."

Oh, yeah. And that's my fault, too. Alvie looked down. "Thank you for this."

"You helped us out by making Bucky's location public instead of giving it to Ross," Steve said, "we owe you one. Actually, I was wondering why you did that. It's not like you had any reason to help us."

"Trust me, captain," she said, "ya wouldn't believe me if I told the truth. But what about you? What're you gonna do now?"

Steve leant forward, his elbows on his knees. "Help my friends when they need me," he said, "and when they don't… I've forgotten how to be a civilian. It'd be nice to remember."

"It's nicer than this," Alvie mumbled, and Steve laughed. "When we get to Wakanda… I want to help. I wanna do something good for a change. I want to atone. D'you think – d'you think T'Challa'll let me? After everything I've done?"

Steve drummed his fingers on his knee. "You know," he said, "I think he'll have just the job for you."

A/N remember when this fic was predominantly humour? Ah, what fun times they were.