My appreciation to all the readers who've put this story on their favorites and alerts list. I'd also like to thank the readers who posted reviews, including Lucy Park, Adamantium Rose, GhibliGirl91, Undapper Thoughts, Lime Toaster Cat, Guest, Primary Feather, Arrows the Wolf, Penny Tortoiseshell, and blown-transistor.

To Guest, who was the only one who got my joke about JARVIS pretending Bernice was referring to –him- as God instead of thanking god when he told her Steve was still alive. For some reason, the concept of a sentient AI intrigues me (as anyone who's read my Reality of Life with a Superhero fanfic knows).

Special thanks to Adamantium Rose, who pointed out some just plain bad writing in the last chapter. It's not easy describing alien technology. It's all-too-easy to fall back on the bad writing habit of using too many similes and metaphors. Now I have to go back and work on fixing it!

Thanks for reading!

X

Chapter 35

Steve grabbed the wall, the rocking of the ship throwing him off balance in his tenuous state. He'd been aware of weapons fire echoing through the ship for quite some time, but this was the first time the Triskelion had taken a direct hit. With alarms blaring and red lights flashing, it was hard to tell what was happening three decks above. The only reason the ship would be taking fire was if defenders were trying to get onboard. Either that, or the military had decided it was better to just blow it up rather than risk the aliens getting their hands on it. The former, he hoped. With the Triskelion anchored in New York harbor, the aliens had little hope of holding onto it.

Each step caused pain to shoot up his leg, making him dizzy and nauseous, but he pushed it back, forcing himself to keep moving. He'd suffered worse, including his last memory of being tossed against the ceiling of Red Skulls warplane as it had slammed into the ocean. He'd sunk beneath the icy waters, his mind clinging to the last image he had of Peggy as she'd released him from the kiss before he'd leaped onto the landing gear, welcoming the water into his lungs as he'd prayed for the end to come quick so he wouldn't suffer. There had been no white light. No angels. No Valhalla. All there had been was silence until he'd woken up in a hospital in New York, vintage tunes playing on a radio that had been a ruse to ease his rebirth into a different century.

He'd wanted to tell Peggy how much he'd loved her when she'd released him from the kiss. Tell her as he'd aimed the ship into the ocean and said yes, he would meet her for a dance. But he'd held back, always cautious when it came to matters of the heart. A lifetime of rejection had taught him the fairer sex could be cruel when you wore your heart upon your sleeve. Doctor Erskine had changed his body, but nothing would ever change his memory of how much it hurt when a woman rejected you.

The ship rocked again, the explosion audible even over the screeching of the sirens. Steve wished somebody would turn them off. Everybody who needed to know the ship was under attack already knew, or was dead. They made him feel disoriented, pain giving him the eerie sense of floating above his body as it moved itself down the hall of its own volition. Part of his consciousness was aware of his own pain, but the larger part ruminated about matters that had nothing to do with retrieving his armor so he wouldn't be so darned vulnerable.

Bernice. He wasn't certain when the thought had begun to intrude into his mind. A tender moment. A smile. Flitting around his subconscious like a butterfly, fragile wings touching upon his thoughts at odd moments, like the way she laughed whenever he nibbled down her neck, so much different than Peggy's laugh had been. That laugh belonged only to Bernice, and he found himself doing whatever he could to elicit it from her. It made him warm and fuzzy in a way even Peggy had never been able to make him feel. It made him warm and fuzzy now, blending in with the pain of his broken leg and giving the emotion a bittersweet edge, reminding him he had something else to lose besides a failed mission or his own life.

Why hadn't he told her when he'd rushed out of there tonight? He'd meant to tell her. Sometime this week, perhaps? If all went well at the family gathering she was dragging him to for Thanksgiving that had him tied up in a bundle of nerves. Peggy's family. But also Bernice's. Did any of them have any idea who he even was? He'd hinted at the words, casually dropping them into conversation for weeks now, carefully observing her to see if she found his affections amusing. The way she blushed and looked up at him through veiled lashes, as though wishing he'd say more, had made him bolder. Why hadn't he told her? If he died in battle tonight, would she even know? Or would she move on, as Peggy had done, so ready to love another because in her mind, because he had never said the words, it hadn't been real?

Keeping silent was the right thing to do…

He was sick of always doing the right thing, dammit! Why hadn't he told her?

He realized he'd been standing outside the door of the armory for some time now, his own pain reminding him he even had a body. Pay attention! Ruminating about something he had no power to change would only get him killed.

"I have a date," he said aloud, forcing himself to hear his own words so the sound of his own voice would make his intent real. "And I'm going to keep it."

The door to the armory was open. He stuck his sidearm in first, cautiously pushing the door open and listening, what little he could hear above the sirens. Could somebody turn that darned thing off? How the hell was he supposed to take back a ship when he couldn't think? He burst in through the door and threw himself to the ground, rolling so he came up next to a narrow bench between the first row of lockers. Pain shot up his leg, reminding him he shouldn't be doing anything so stupid in his condition. Nothing. Not even bodies. Grunting in pain, he rose to his feet and verified the special operations locker room was empty. Hawkeyes locker was open, his bow and arrow gone. Had he come here first to retrieve it? His hope died as he got to his own locker and realized the lock had been smashed. His shield was missing, leaving only his helmet and suit.

The aliens had his weapon…

"Damn!" he hissed, rummaging through his locker to see if anything else had been taken. He stripped off the charred shirt and pulled on his red, white and blue armored jacket, wincing as he pulled it over the burn on his arm. The helmet and utility belts went on easy enough, but there was no way he was going to get his pants on over that splint. Boots? Or no boots? His shoes were sopping wet, announcing his presence with a 'thwup thwup thwup' as he walked. He pulled on one boot and stared at the second in dismay. He didn't have time to re-splint his leg, but the boot wouldn't fit over it. He buckled it up as far as he could, stealing laces out of Hawkeye's locker to tie the upper half around the outside of the splint so it wouldn't flap as he walked. If he'd been wearing them when he'd dove off the pulse cannon, his leg probably wouldn't be broken right now.

Most promotional art depicted his boots as being red, but they were natural leather, taken from the back of a Texas longhorn. People wanted to see red, so that is what they saw. It had been one of the first questions Bernice had asked him once they'd finally begun talking. Why did everyone always paint his boots as being red when they were clearly reddish brown? It was one of the things he loved about her. She saw him as he really was.

He should have told her, dammit! Why hadn't he?

Yanking on his leather gauntlets, the same reddish-brown leather as his boots, he limped to the place Maria Hill had ordered him to defend at all costs. The alien the other creatures were trying to bust out of here. The creature hadn't seemed like someone especially high ranking, passive almost to the point of being timid. Had it all been a ruse? No. Steve was many things, but he was a good judge of character, his years of being on the short end of the stick teaching him to be cautious about the failings of others without being paranoid about them. Maybe Maria was wrong?

The door to the detention center was ajar, the guards long past any help he could give them. Steve paused to close ones' eyes open in an expression not of fear, but horror. What had the man seen when he'd stared into the maw of eternity? Not the silence Steve had welcomed with open arms, its peaceful nothingness beckoning to him even now, now that he had something besides duty to live for. A low-pitched thrum was audible through the open door, similar to the thrum his alien friend used to communicate, but louder. It resonated more in his bones than in his ears. It was almost as though two creatures were communicating. An invader and the alien inside the cage? Steve pushed open the door just enough to see.

Natasha? The alien cowered in the far end of the cage. Natasha stood in a classic martial arts fighting stance as she spoke to an African-American man wearing a black S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform standing in front it. Some sixth sense warned Steve to wait, to make sure the guard wasn't one of the compromised PsiOps team Maria Hill had warned him about. The guard's skin was too dark, the blonde afro visible even in the emergency lighting. One of the missing Melanesian Islanders? Recognition niggled at Steve's subconscious. He'd seen this man someplace before, and not just in a missing person's report.

Natasha's stance was odd. Not her usual cat-like grace, but a stance that reminded him of Nick Fury when he was trying to rein in Tony Stark. Stark was too used to being in charge of his own empire. He didn't buckle easily to the control of another. Not even when he knew it was necessary. A deep-throated thrum resonated in Steve's bones, but as neither creature's mouth moved, it was impossible to tell who was doing the speaking. The imposter? Or the alien inside the cage?

The dark-skinned stranger gestured at Natasha with defiance, stepping forward as though he were busting her down in rank. Natasha did not strike the way she normally would cut down an assailant who moved towards her, unless she was deliberately assuming passive body language to interrogate a prisoner, but stood firm. As though she wished to communicate she wasn't going to put up with any crap. The sound filled the room once more, almost as though it were two creatures arguing, but the door to the cell was closed. His alien friend suffered from severed vocal chords, so perhaps it was only one. The stranger gestured at Natasha as though he expected she should bow before it and Natasha laughed, drawing herself up to stand at her maximum height.

It was the Danziger Totenkopf on the man's black beret, the death insignia, which finally jogged Steve's memory. The enemy who had been in command of the village that first mission they'd lost the helicarrier. The mission which had injured Natasha. One of the alien commanders. Memories of the last time he had fought one of the Schutzstaffel, the one's that didn't just fall down when you had to fight them, intruded into his mind. He needed his…

"Shoot," he hissed, finally realizing what Natasha held in her hands. Hawkeye's bow and quiver were strapped across her back. In her hand sat his shield.

The alien commander gestured at Natasha as though he were angry, the low-pitched noise getting louder. It stepped forward, gloves in it's hands as though he were about to strike her on both cheeks, a gesture Steve had witnessed many times when one Nazi commander disagreed with another. Dummkopf! Stupid. The intruder expected Natasha to capitulate, and she did. Her entire body relaxed as she glanced in Steve's direction and gave him that pleased little smirk she always got right before she moved in for the kill. Damn! She had seen him! Her body language changed, subtly pointing in Steve's direction. Her shield-arm came up, lining up for the throw.

Natasha was going to kill him. And she intended to do it with his own shield!

"You're not in charge of this world," Natasha said to the intruder. She turned and looked straight at Steve, the shield aimed straight at his chest. "Isn't that true, man out of time?"

Steve dove out of harm's way, his gimpy leg slowing him down. The shield flew at him, not in the way he expected, but as gently as a parent would pitch a wiffle ball to a toddler. So slowly and easily did the shield glide straight into his hand that he had time to recover, momentarily dumbstruck, until years of training kicked in and forced him to move. Natasha gave him a victorious grin as she erupted into a whirlwind of action, landing a roundhouse kick right on the side of the imposter's head.

"Kill it!" Natasha shrieked, pulling guns out of her utility belt with both hands and letting the stranger have it with both barrels. Whatever this thing was, Natasha wasn't taking any chances.

The intruder flinched as Natasha emptied both chambers into his chest, momentarily thrown back against the walls of the observation chamber, but he did not fall to the ground. Kevlar? Blood stains darkened the intruder's uniform where he'd been hit, indicating her shots had met the mark. The man howled, a low-pitched primal scream not of fear, but rage, and hurled himself at Natasha as though she were a cockroach to be stepped on and squashed. Natasha danced artfully to one side, taunting the intruder as she moved him into position for Steve to take his shot.

"What are you waiting for?" Natasha shouted, giving him a disgusted look as though he were a simpleton. "I said kill it!"

That jolted Steve out of his inaction, the behavior of the Black Widow now being everything he expected it to be. The huntress moving in for the kill, stepping aside so her cubs could feed upon the weakened prey. He drew back his shield-arm and lined it up, the razor-sharp edge of the virbanium so hard it could penetrate even steel. The intruder turned to shoot at him, giving him a perfect shot at its head. A 9 mm slug slammed into Steve's chest, causing him to grunt in pain, but it the caliber wasn't high enough to pierce his armor. His vision blurred, but he picked the one standing in the middle of the five or six that danced before his addled brain and let fly the shield, the intruder unable to get out of the way in time to avoid having the shield cleave its head clean off. Steve sighed with relief, waiting for the body to fall.

It didn't.

"What the…" he said. The headless intruder finished its lunge towards Natasha and grabbed her neck. Natasha flailed, breaking free with a roundhouse block and kicking it, yanking two of the many small knives she kept tucked into her weapons belt and stabbing the creature repeatedly.

"A little help here?" Natasha shouted at Steve as he gaped like an idiot at the headless man she was fighting. Was he hallucinating?

Steve pulled his second sidearm and emptied all nine shots into the … whatever the hell it was! It was obviously no man! Bluish-grey blood spurted out of the severed neck, but his shots only slowed it down. Steve retrieved his shield and rushed forward, slamming down a blow to cleave off one of the creatures arms. The intruder howled despite its lack of a head, its voice so low it made Steve's skin crawl. He glanced into the cage, expecting his alien friend to act horrified at seeing its comrade killed right in front of it, but the Chitauri sat upon its bed in a fetal position, hands over its head as though it expected to be beaten.

The headless imposter grabbed Steve with its remaining arm. He yelped in horror, staring down into the vacant neck as it picked him up and threw him across the room. Steve's head smashed against the steel wall, only his helmet sparing him from having his head explode like a watermelon. It added to his already surreal grip on reality as two, no three, aliens danced in front of his eyes, arms flailing as though it still had two of them instead of the one he was curtain he'd left it with after he'd cut the other one off. He stumbled, retrieved his shield, and threw it at the creature a third time, aiming for the midsection to cut the thing in half and be done with it. To end this weird nightmare he was having about a man with no head attacking them.

The intruder still stood, as though the shield had not gone through it the way Steve had thought he'd just watched it cut the creature in half. Steve rubbed his eyes, certain he was hallucinating, the trauma of his earlier injuries and a bang to the head causing him to see things that couldn't possibly be there. The imposter stepped forward and grabbed Natasha by the throat.

Steve reached into his tool belt, fumbling for something, anything, to finish off the unbelievable creature of nightmare and came up empty-handed. With nothing left to throw at the intruder, Steve threw himself at it instead, grabbing it by the back of its shoulders just beneath the bloody spot where its head had once been and yanking back. Wait a minute! It did have two arms! Hadn't he just…?

The creature reached back, a double-jointed move no human could have made, and scratched at Steve's face not with human fingers, but the clawed grasp of an insect. Two small antennae protruded from the place the creatures head had once been, eye stalks staring at him as it turned its attention from Natasha to the bigger threat. Him.

Weight pulled him forward and he realized it was no longer a whole creature clutched onto his body, but half of one. The upper half, to be precise. Natasha still battled with the lower half, two claw-like arms having sprouted out of the severed torso. Steve retched, the stench of the creature filling his nostrils with blood and some other odor he couldn't place, but seemed familiar. His training fought with his addled mind, forcing him to continue fighting even as his mind wanted to shout 'this isn't real!'

Natasha grabbed an arrow out of Hawkeye's quiver, a grenade-pointed arrowhead already mounted on it, and jabbed it into her half of the intruder. She leaped in Steve's direction just as he threw the creature off of his body, jumping back as it used its arms like legs to chase him as he stepped backwards to avoid it. Natasha buried a second arrow right into the intruders back.

"Fire in the hole!" Natasha shouted, not even bothering to see if Steve reacted the way he should react. She dove into the trench that lay in a circle between the observation chamber and the rest of the fortress, a stopgap measure to slow down any escape attempt from a prisoner held within.

The first thing any soldier learns in boot camp upon hearing those words is to dive for cover, no matter what his mind might happen to tell him about the situation at hand. There was no beautiful brunette to rescue by throwing his body upon the two grenades beeping higher and higher as they counted out the detonation sequence. He leaped, the first explosion casting him down into the trench, splashing gore all over his armor as the second arrowhead detonated a few seconds after it, destroying the creature completely. He lay there, stunned, until Natasha's laugh shamed him into getting off the flat of his back and give her a hand to climb out of the hole.

"What the hell is wrong with you today?" Natasha said, giving him a high five. "Damn! I don't think I've ever seen you fumble that shield of yours!"

Steve crawled out behind her, the stench of burnt flesh assailing his nostrils. There was precious little remaining of whatever the hell they had just prevented from doing … whatever the hell it had been doing in here. By the way his grey alien friend sat trembling in the corner, too terrified to even move, it hadn't been too pleased to see his rescuer arrive. An assassination attempt, perhaps?

"Sorry," Steve apologized, suppressing his instinct to recoil when Natasha gave him a hand up and stepped up to his side, wedging her shoulder under his armpit to provide a crutch as they both limped down the hall to alert the other Avengers the observation chamber was now secure. "It's been a long day."

X

Steve waved away the medic, sick of being prodded.

"I told you," Steve said. "I cut that damned thing in half and it just kept coming at me!"

"Natasha?" Nick Fury asked.

"He hit it good, Sir," Natasha said. "Damned thing should have been cut in half. But whatever it was, it was just a man. An alien man, for sure. The damned thing was strong as hell and it had blue blood. But it was still just a man."

"That's not what I saw," Steve retorted. "First I took the damned things head off. And then I cut it in half."

"Steve," Natasha said, her blue eyes softening. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

Steve groaned. "Stop moving your hand."

"You sustained serious head injuries," the medic said. "We need to move you to the VA Hospital for a CAT scan and observation."

"I have a date," Steve said.

"You're not going anywhere, soldier," Nick Fury ordered. "You're headed to one place. The hospital. Where you're going to rest at least six whole days until that souped-up immune system of yours can knit those bones back together and start putting some sense back into that addled skull."

"I know what I saw," Steve said.

He glared at Natasha. Natasha gave him a sympathetic look. The kind of look he'd seen Bernice give the old ladies in the nursing home back when he'd gone to visit Peggy. The ones on the Alzheimers ward who would stop her and ask if she was some movie star from whatever soap opera the old geezers liked to watch about the time he usually arrived.

"How's Maria Hill," Steve asked, realizing insisting he'd battled a headless, half of an alien would only get him a Section 8 and an all expenses paid vacation on the psych ward.

"She's in critical condition," Fury told him. "But the surgeons got the bullet out and pumped her full of antibiotics. The rest is up to her."

"She's one tough lady," Hawkeye interrupted, hovering around Natasha as though he were a mother hen trying to herd a clutch of chicks away from a fox. "I think she's too stubborn to die."

Natasha leaned back into Hawkeye's chest, closing her eyes and sighing as he ran his hand up the side of her arm. Now this was the Natasha he remembered from before. The one who acted … normal. Sometimes. Natasha had always been a cold bitch. But at least she'd warmed up around Hawkeye or, even more rarely, whenever she interacted with Pepper Potts. If only he could get the image out of his mind of how she'd stood her ground before the alien intruder, not as the huntress moving in for the kill, but as a usurper throwing down the gauntlet.

Bruce Banner lay on an adjacent guerney, sleeping off his recent activity as his unjolly green friend. From what the others had related during their portion of the debriefing, the Hulk had saved an entire battalion. Bruce, himself, never remembered what his alter-ego did. But somehow Steve thought his mild-mannered doctor friend would be glad to hear his alter ego was slowly learning to differentiate between friend and foe on a larger scale beyond the close interpersonal relationships he forged with his fellow Avengers. Tony Stark had blasted off as soon as they'd secured the facility, ignoring Fury's demands he stay and be debriefed, while Thor had made lame excuses about being stationed to guard the gateway to the Bifrost in New Mexico, near Jane, and promised to allow himself to be debriefed later. Much later, Steve suspected.

"If you'll just lay down so we can strap you in," the medic said. "We'll transport you to the VA to get those X-rays and a CAT scan."

"Like hell," Steve said, lurching to his feet and swaying as tweetie birds circled around his head, singing looney tunes and making his head buzz. Pain shot up his leg, the brace the medic had strapped around it more comfortable than the field splint Clint had given him. He forced oxygen into his lungs until his head began to clear. "Clint … will you give me a hand with that other boot?"

"Where do you think you're going, soldier?" Nick Fury asked.

"I told you," Steve retorted. "I have a date."

"Bullshit," Nick Fury said. "Get your ass back in that gurney, now! Before I have you court-marshalled."

You're not in charge, man out of time…

Steve looked at Fury, his need to be the good soldier warring with the insistent clamoring in his heart. Duty. And what he needed to do.

"I have a date," Steve said. Turning his back to all of them, he limped out of the Triskelion, past the enlisted men who stepped respectfully to one side and cheered as he moved past them, and commandeered a vehicle from an all-too-willing National Guardsman.

"Sir…" the medic protested.

"Let him go," Nick Fury said.

X

Note: So all's good… Right?

[hah!]

Be sure to leave your comments in the little blue box below. Reviews make my entire day! And motivate me to keep those chapters coming!

And for those of you who wondered, the votes ran around 8:10 in favor of keeping Maria Hill alive although, curiously, quite a few of those people said they never really liked her.