Author's Note: Well, I tried to update quickly this time, but inspiration has been sinking to an all new low. I'm trying to remedy that by exposing myself to everything Winter Soldier related on the internet, since I am literally so beyond excited for that to come out. It's going to be beyond awesome, seriously, and I can't wait to take it my own way when we get to it in this series, because I already have plans. Like seriously evil plans.
I'll also be keeping the poll up for the next chapter, and I'd love to hear who you guys want to show up a lot in the sequel. I'm actually really surprised that Tori is leading the poll by a landslide. Wow. Didn't realize you guys liked Tori that much, I would have brought her in a lot more. But yeah, she'll be playing a big part in Idiosyncrasy… and she'll also play a huge part in what will end up as the Bohemia sequel covering the events of Winter Soldier.
So that'll be something to look forward to. ;)
As always, I don't own anything related to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This chapter very heavily relies on the movie, though next chapter will be more original. However, this chapter is crucial, since it does have a few Mack moments that are pretty interesting. Plus, this is just one of my favorite scenes in the movie, so I couldn't miss having it.
Thanks again for the reviews as always, but remember. The more reviews I get, the faster the update. Hopefully that's a good incentive. Thanks as always for reading, I hope you all enjoy, and please leave a review on the way out.
Bohemia
In her three years at SHIELD, Mackenzie Donahue has run into some strange things. Weird hammers, egocentric billionaires, and of course her archer SO. Somehow, a gentleman soldier out of his time turns out to be the best of it all. Steve/OC
Chapter 38 – Bridged We Burned
May 3, 2011
For a few moments, there was dead silence.
Mack pulled herself away from her own shock long enough to glance over at Steve, and she always flinched when she saw the emotions dancing across his face. His expression was somewhere between shocked and enraged, and she knew that no matter how many times she had seen him upset, this was the point where he was incredibly close to genuinely losing his temper.
Steve whirled at her, and she managed to hide her flinch at the dark expression on his face. "Did you know about this?" he demanded, his voice rough and accusing.
"No," Mack replied, her voice calm. Steve knew her well enough to recognize the tone was a sign that she was truly enraged, a level of anger he hadn't really seen from her before. "This, I would have told you about."
"Sure you would have," Steve muttered, grabbing one of the weapons from the case before slamming the lid shut. He started away, and Mack stared after him for a few seconds.
She scowled before following him, grabbing his arm and stopping him as she glared up at him. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she demanded, glancing around the catwalk to make sure that they were completely alone.
"You told me yourself that there are some secrets that you're not going to tell you."
"Can't tell you, not won't tell you! I told you that I was bringing you into the HYDRA investigation!" Mack snapped. It took a genuine effort to keep her voice down and not shout at the man in front of her, no matter how much she really wanted to lose it at him.
"Were planning on telling me about investigating Hydra?" he demanded. The anger in his voice actually hurt him, and for a few seconds, there was an irrational desire to slap him. "Before Moreau was killed, were you planning on telling me? Or were you planning on keeping it from me forever?"
"I was planning on telling you. I decided to tell you the day you and Tori found Moreau's body," Mack snapped back, shooting him a glare. She glared down at the weapons. "I've been investigating Hydra since December. Knowing that SHIELD's been developing weapons based on HYDRA technology might have helped a bit!"
He watched her for a second. "You told me once that you respected Fury," he said in a low voice. He gestured sharply at the weapon in his hand. "And he would keep something like this from al of us?"
Mack gave a bitter smile. "Respect and trust are too very different things, Steve. I stopped trusting him around the point Moreau died." She ran a hand through her hair, scowling over at him. "So don't you dare pretend that I had any idea about this. Fury must have had a reason."
"You're defending him?" Steve demanded. He gave a bitter laugh before he walked away. Mack scowled before following him, her hands in painful fists at her sides.
"I'm saying that Fury has a reason that makes sense in his mind!" Mack growled, taking a step forward, moving so she stood in front of him, blocking Steve's path out of the storage room. Steve watched as her one hand slipped to her belt, dangerously near a knife. "Don't you dare put words in my mouth, Steve!"
"Then don't lie to me," Steve growled. This was already worse than their fight in his apartment after Moreau's murder. This time, Steve was ready to attack her just as much as she was attacking him.
"I'm not." Mack's eyes were narrowed, and her eyes had turned to green ice. "If you really think I would keep lying to you about something like this… you really don't know me."
"Maybe I never did," Steve admitted, shaking his head as he moved past her. There was contempt in his gaze at that moment, and an anger that nearly pained Mack.
Though he didn't see it, Mack flinched as though she had been physically slapped by his words. She dimly realized she would have preferred a physical slap to what Steve had just said to her. She'd tried to let Steve in as much as possible over the last few weeks. Maybe she had let him in too soon. She had fallen in love with him, was definitely still in love with him.
Something was going on, and she didn't like it.
Mack didn't say another word before turning around and following him out of the storage area. Perhaps luckily for them both, no one stopped them in the hall, even though it was fairly obvious that Steve was carrying a weapon. It was also fairly obvious that they had just come from one of the secure storage facilities, and that Mack had been with him the entire time. There went any hope of keeping her relationship a secret from SHIELD as long as possible. No one stopped the two as they made their way back to the lab.
Then again, Mack would not willingly stop Steve carrying a weapon in the hallway if he had that look on his face. Steve was pissed, more pissed than she had seen him before. It was actually surprising to her, even though Mack herself was completely furious that this had been kept from them.
"What is Phase 2?" Tony wondered just as Mack and Steve made their way into the lab.
"Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the Cube to make weapons," Steve spat, tossing the HYDRA gun onto the table. Mack stood a bit back, leaning against the door as she watched the group with narrowed eyes. Steve nodded over at a surprised Tony for a second. "Sorry, computer was moving a little slow for me."
Fury stepped forward, a placating expression on his face. His eye flashed to Mack for a second, but the brunette agent remained silent, glowering at the four men in the room. "Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract," he explained. His tone was almost reasonable, one that Mack recognized as Fury trying to calm someone down. Clint and Natasha had gotten it a few times. "That does not mean that we're making-"
"I'm sorry Nick. What were you lying?" Tony asked, gesturing at the screen to his side. Sure enough, blueprints for what were clearly weapons sat on the screen, as plain as day. Mack shook her head, glaring over at Fury.
"I was wrong, Director," Steve replied coldly, his gaze meeting Fury head-on. There was a formalness to his tone that wasn't out of place in Steve, but the look on his face was far more Captain America than Steve Rogers. "The world hasn't changed a bit."
Mack looked up sharply as Natasha walked into the room, Thor right behind her. Mack couldn't help her back stiffening slightly at the sight of the Russian. She hadn't seen Natasha since their fight just before Mack had gone to talk to Loki. There was still a small part of her that was angry at Natasha. Mack knew that the tensions on the Helicarrier were making everything worse. She just didn't know why things had gotten this bad between everyone this quickly.
"Did you know about this?" Bruce demanded, glaring over at Natasha. He turned his accusing stare to Mack a second later, and the younger agent's spine stiffened slightly at the anger in her eyes. "Did either of you?"
"From the fact that I'm standing here glaring at Director Fury just like the rest of you, no, I didn't know about this," Mack spat, gesturing sharply at the weapon still sitting at the table. This was odd. She was usually able to control her temper better than this.
At this point, Mack honestly didn't care.
"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" Natasha asked, watching Bruce as though he was a time bomb. In a way, Mack had to admit that the mild-mannered doctor was a time bomb, when one remembered to add the Hulk into the equation.
"I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed," Bruce replied, shaking his head. Maybe bringing the doctor onto the Helicarrier wasn't the best idea. Mack of all people knew how much of a bitch hindsight could be.
Natasha stepped forward, her eyes narrowed and her voice low as she said, "Loki is manipulating you-"
"And you've been doing what, exactly?" Bruce demanded, just glaring over at her.
Natasha's eyes narrowed dangerously as she just watched him, and Mack caught the small spark of warning in the Russian's eyes as she glared at the scientist in front of him. "You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you," she replied, an edge of anger coming over her tone.
"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." Bruce turned to Fury, gesturing at the screen to his left. There was a spark of something darker in his eyes, and it sent a nervous twinge down Mack's spine. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."
For a few seconds, there was a tense silence in the room as everyone stared directly at Fury, waiting for an answer. Mack honestly didn't expect one. Fury had no reason to start telling the truth now, not after he had gone to such lengths to keep it hidden from everyone in the room. Mack was taken by surprise a moment later when, for what very well might have been for the first time since they had all gotten on the Helicarrier, Fury gave them a direct answer.
"Because of him," the Director of SHIELD answered, pointing at Thor.
For a few seconds, Thor looked taken aback with the answer. "Me?" he repeated, gesturing at himself. Genuine surprised played on his face, and a few things started to make sense to Mack.
"Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet, who had a grudge match that leveled a small town," Fury explained, his one eye shooting a glare over at Thor. Mack shifted slightly when the one-eyed gaze turned to her for a few seconds, sending the attention of the others over to her.
"Agent Donahue, you saw what happened there," Fury pointed out, watching her carefully for any sign of a reaction.
Mack shook her head, pointedly looking away from everyone as a few of the others glanced at her. Even a year later, Mack still had the occasional nightmare about what had happened in Puente Antiguo. Coulson was the only one who knew she still had those nightmares, but somehow the SHIELD agent wasn't surprised to realize that Coulson must have mentioned it to Fury.
She was going to have to reconsider what she told Coulson after this situation was taken care of. She was actually going to have to reconsider what she told anyone in SHIELD after this situation was taken care of.
Fury turned away from Mack after a few seconds, looking at the others in the room. Mack was glad that the attention was off of her. She did not want to be at the center of this mess. "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned."
"My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor protested, his eyes narrowing over at Fury.
"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury countered, his eye narrowing over at Thor. From the scowl that crossed Thor's face, Mack knew that the Director had raised a good point. "And you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, that can't be controlled."
"Like you controlled the Cube?" Steve asked, shaking his head. There was anger in Steve's eyes, and Mack knew then that whatever little trust the super soldier had in Fury had been taken away for good.
"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies," Thor said, stepping forward. His eyes were narrowed, and there was something that resembled disappointment on his face. "It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.
"A higher form?" repeated Steve, genuine concern crossing over his face.
"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something," Fury countered, turning his attention back to Thor. The Director at least was trying to calm the situation down, Mack realized. He was fighting a losing battle.
"A nuclear deterrent," Tony supplied, shaking his head. There was something that resembled a bitter smirk on his face for a few seconds, but it was gone before Mack could fully identify it. "Because that always calms everything right down."
"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury demanded, his tone almost amused for a few seconds.
Steve stepped into the conversation then, gesturing over at Stark as he continued to glare over at Fury. "I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep-" The super soldier was interrupted a few seconds later by the billionaire in question.
"Wait, hold on. How is this now about me?" Tony said, scowling over at Steve. Mack realized then that the tensions between Steve and Tony were about to collide in a spectacular explosion. Part of her was interested in seeing the chaos, and the other knew that this delicate situation had gotten a thousand times worse.
"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Steve demanded. Mack was almost proud of how much sarcasm she heard in Steve's tone, but dropped the thought a few seconds later.
"I thought humans were more evolved than this," Thor said, his voice almost surprised. Mack just settled for glaring over at him. She crossed her arms across her chest as she glared over at him, making a very conscious and deliberate effort not to play with any of her knives.
"Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?" Fury wondered, raising an eyebrow over at the god before turning his attention back to Stark and Steve.
"You treat your champions with such mistrust!" Thor protested, gesturing at the others in the room.
"Well, one of your champions blew up a small town and just came back for a second round, so I think there's a few reasons here for mistrust," Mack snapped, glaring over at Thor as she slipped around Steve and faced the blond Asgardian.
"You would judge all of Asgard on the actions of one man?" Thor demanded, his icy blue gaze meeting her green one.
"I'm sorry, who just destroyed a small forest a few hours ago?" Mack demanded, tilting her head as she stepped forward. There was a major height difference between her and Thor, but she met the blonde's glare head on. "Seems like blowing things up isn't just Loki's first reaction.
Thor shook his head, frowning down at Mack. "You do not understand-"
"No, I don't understand, okay?" Mack finally snapped, her glare turning icy as she stepped forward, standing only a few feet away from Thor. "I saw what happened in New Mexico. I saw what the Destroyer did to everything, how it nearly killed everyone, you and your Asgardian friends and my friends included, so don't you dare say that we shouldn't try and figure out a way to defend ourselves!"
"And this is the answer?" Thor demanded, gesturing over at the arguments that had exploded between all of the others. As much as she might have hated to admit it, Mack knew that Thor had raised a good point.
"No, it's not," Mack admitted, shaking her head as she shot another glare over at the HYDRA weapon. Of course everything that got complicated came back down to HYDRA. "But sometimes, you have to take what you can get."
"You speak of control, yet you court chaos," Thor continued, this time addressing the rest of the room. Mack ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head for a few seconds before someone answered Thor.
"That's his MO, isn't it?" Bruce demanded, drawing the attention of everyone in the room. He gestured at the others. "I mean, what are we, a team? No, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're a time bomb."
The worst part was that Mack knew Bruce was completely right.
"You need to step away," Fury said, his voice low as he held up his hands, taking a step towards Bruce.
"Why shouldn't the guy let off a little steam?" Stark demanded, frustration evident in his face and tone as he stepped forward, gesturing over at Fury and Bruce.
"You know damn well why. Back off!" Steve growled. One hand caught Tony's chest, sending him back a few inches. It wasn't enough to hurt Stark, but it was clearly enough to jab his already risen temper.
"I'm starting to want you to make me," Stark said, moving carefully. The billionaire was face to face with the super soldier a few moments later. Both looked completely furious, and Mack could see the rage playing in both of their eyes.
"Oh my God, you two can't be serious," Mack snapped, rubbing her temples as she shook her head. She gave a bitter chuckle, ignoring the looks that Thor and Natasha shot her.
"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off. What are you?" Steve demanded, glaring down at him. Steve still had a few inches of height against Tony, and there was no deny who was the stronger of the two.
"Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," was Tony's lightning-fast response. Mack pretended not to see the smirk that crossed Thor's face, or the little shrug that Natasha gave in response to the comment.
Steve didn't seem deterred by the comment. "I know guys with none of that worth ten of you. I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you."
Maybe it was a sign of how well she knew him that Mack knew exactly who Steve was talking about in that instant. She had heard the stories of what the Howling Commandos had gone through in World War II. She had heard a majority of them from Steve himself, and she would not have been surprised if Steve had been talking directly about Bucky.
A small part of her wished that she could have had the opportunity to meet Bucky Barnes. Mack's focus was brought back to the situation at hand a few moments later as Tony spoke.
"I think I would just cut the wire," Tony replied, his voice surprisingly controlled. Mack had to give him credit for that at least. Nobody had resorted to screaming yet, which could probably count as a very good thing for now.
Steve scoffed, staring at Stark with what reminded Mack almost of genuine hatred. "Always a way out," Steve murmured, watching Stark carefully. "You may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."
"A hero?" Tony repeated, a disbelieving smirk coming over his face as he looked Steve over. "Like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle."
Though the super soldier hid it well, Mack caught the pain that shot through Steve's eyes. Tony had struck a sensitive point on Steve, whether or not he had realized it. The brunette closed her eyes, just ignoring everyone for a few seconds as she tried to calm herself down.
Bruce was right. They were a fucking time bomb, and Mack had a feeling that the explosion was going to occur sooner rather than later.
"Put on the suit," Steve suggested, his voice drowning with a challenge. God, he couldn't be serious. Mack had no idea what he was playing at with this, but realized with a mental groan that the super soldier was dead serious. "Let's go a few rounds."
"You people are so petty and tiny," Thor chuckled. It took another conscious, more determined effort from Mack not to snap at him, throw something heavy, or the worst option of them all, go directly for one of the knives stashed on her person at the moment.
"Yeah, this is a team," Bruce muttered, going back to the main desk in the lab. Loki's scepter still sat on it, and the young brunette agent shot it a quick glare. If she couldn't glare at Loki, she was going to have to settle for glaring at his stupid scepter.
Fury had turned his gaze over to Natasha, nodding briskly at her. "Agent Romanoff. Would you escort Doctor Banner back to his-"
"Where? You rented my room," Bruce pointed out, and Mack barely managed to hide her wince. She knew that had been the cell's original purpose when it had been installed, but she hadn't thought that it would have come down to this point.
Then again, Mack hadn't thought that the personal tension between everyone would have gotten this bad this quickly.
Fury shook his head. "The cell was just in case…"
"In case you needed to kill me! But you can't. I know. I tried," Bruce said, his voice frustrated and almost resigned. He paused a second later, almost as though he wondered if he really had shared what he said out loud.
The dead silence in the room only confirmed it.
Everyone's attention had turned to the scientist. The anger in the room had disappeared for the moment, replace by surprise, sympathy, and even pity. For a few moments, Mack was able to calm down enough for the full gravity of Bruce's words to hit her. Her eyes had widened slightly, and sympathy crossed her face as she winced. Mack had never gotten that low.
She wouldn't pretend she knew what that low was like, but she knew that no one deserved to reach that point.
Bruce shuffled uncomfortably, refusing to make eye contact with anyone in the room. "I got low. I didn't see an end. So I put a bullet in my mouth, and the other guy spit it out. So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good."
Bruce's angry glare turned to Natasha, who stiffened slightly under it. "Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk," he continued, shaking his head. Mack didn't focus on what he was doing, instead wondering how quickly she could put herself between Bruce and Natasha if things got ugly.
Bruce turned to Natasha again, the tension identifiable in his every feature and body language. "You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff, you want to know how I stay calm?" His hand had drifted behind his back, and every instinct Mack had exploded in warning.
Everyone else seemed to catch the movement as well, judging from the tense posture of everyone in the room. Mack caught Natasha's hand slipping down to the gun at her side, and saw Fury doing the same at the exact same moment. Mack's own hand went for the knife stashed at the back of her belt, and she knew Steve had noticed her doing it.
She knew that Natasha's gun would do little good. She knew that Fury's gun would do around the same, and there was no way that she could take on the Hulk with just a knife. If what Doctor Banner said about the Hulk was true, there was no way any of them stood a chance against him in a fight.
Mack had a very strong feeling that Banner wasn't lying about what the Hulk was capable of.
"Doctor Banner," Steve said, his tone low, calm, and controlled. She didn't know how he did that sometimes, but if it worked right now, she was not going to complain. Fighting the Hulk on the Helicarrier was about the worst idea Mack could think of at the moment. "Put down the scepter."
Bruce paused, glancing at the scepter in his hands. Mack caught the genuine surprise that shot over him, and wondered if he even knew he'd been going for the scepter. For a fleeting moment, Mack wondered if that damned scepter had something to do with the fact that everyone in the room probably wanted to punch each other at the absolute minimum.
There had been tension between them all, of course, but that tension hadn't threatened to explode until they had all been close to the staff. Maybe that had been what Loki had wanted all along. She would worry about that later though. No one had killed each other yet, so they could deal with the scepter manipulating them later on.
Mack closed her eyes for a second, running a hand through her hair before slipping her knife back into the holder on her belt. She managed to shoot Steve a grateful look, but the super soldier ignored her gaze. She shook her head, turning back to watch Bruce, moving slightly to stand near Thor.
"We got it," Tony mumbled, glancing over at the computers. He shook his head sharply, almost as if he was clearing it, and Mack wondered again if something had been affecting them all.
"Sorry, kids, you don't get to see my party trick after all," Bruce said, pointedly avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room. He hurried across to the console, focusing all of his attention on it.
"You located the Tesseract?" Thor asked. His voice sounded almost relieved, and Mack wondered how eager Thor was for everything to be over.
Mack just shook her head. "Let's get it and just end this entire thing," she muttered, rubbing her temples. She dimly caught Steve and Tony arguing over by the door. A migraine was threatening to overtake her again, and she pointedly ignored it. She didn't have time to deal with a migraine.
She knew that everything was far from over. There was still the fact that Clint was still out there, that her relationships with Steve and Natasha had come under so much strain in the last few hours. She would worry about her relationships later. Right now, she had a job to do, and she would do that job if it killed her.
It was only then that Mack realized that Bruce had gone silent.
Mack looked up, frowning when she saw Bruce watching the screen with a growing realization and horror on his face. Bruce stared at the calculations, his eyes widened as something clicked. "Oh my God," he said, turning to look at the rest of the group. Mack knew instantly that whatever it was wasn't good at all. Bruce, however, didn't have a chance to elaborate.
The room exploded before he could say another word. She was dimly aware of a large hand grabbing her arm and pulling her back sharply before everything went black.
Author's Note: Oh, look, another cliffhanger. I do that a lot. Wait until we get to Idiosyncrasy. I give you some doozy cliffhangers. It'll be fun! Or rather, it'll be fun for me as a writer and not you guys so much as the readers. But hopefully you're forgive me for that.
As another major note… Bohemia is ending at Chapter 50. We have eleven chapters left after this one, and I'm seriously in shock that there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is an end in sight. But we'll worry about the end of Bohemia when we get to it. Soon.
As always, thanks for reading, and please leave a review on the way out. The more reviews, the quicker the update. ;) Thanks again, and I hope you enjoyed!
Chapter 39 – On the Edge
"Yeah. You can hope that my knives are sharp." Mack dove into the hall without another word, throwing the knife as she went for her gun.