A/N: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Sorry if I didn't manage to reply, ff net is being weird.
Two Days Later
At the SSR offices in Whitehall, Peggy looked up from a mission report as one of her intelligence officers walked by.
"Williams, did we get that intelligence brief in from Agent Homer and Agent Badger?"
"No, Agent Carter, they missed the check-in."
"Hm. Nothing they haven't done before. Let's give it another day or two before making contact."
Six Days Later
"What do you mean you haven't had anything from the drop sites in a week?"
Poster displayed in Berlin by the Propaganda Department, January 1945 [Translated]:
January 30th (Tuesday), see THE SIREN at Treptower Park for a live outdoor performance!
NOTICE: CANCELED
Eight Days Later
"Colonel Phillips, I'm requesting permission to send an agent into Berlin. Homer and Badger's network in the city is crumbling and I'm not sure why, and we haven't had contact with them for some time. They haven't sent out any emergency alerts, though."
"Go ahead. I'll handle Rogers and his lot."
January 31st, 1945
At a camp in the east of France, Steve paced back and forth through a groove he'd tamped out in the thick snow. Bucky sat on a rock nearby, his collar turned up against the wind and his chin on his fist.
"I want to go to Berlin."
"You know why we can't do that, Steve-"
"Well someone has to do something," Steve urged. "Who knows how long she's been missing?"
They'd found out four days ago. When a report they'd been expecting on HYDRA's factories in East Germany didn't arrive, they'd reached out to the SSR, and got the stomach-dropping news that no one had heard from Alice or Otto in days. Apparently the intelligence wing of the SSR was going nuts trying to find them, and Peggy was working every angle and resource she had.
But orders were orders, and they had a mission. They'd travelled up to the Alps again after Gabe had used the frequencies Alice had given them at Christmas to figure out that Zola was going to be moving through the Swiss alps tomorrow. They had an intercept plan set up, but Steve wasn't thinking about that right now.
"Believe me, Steve, I want to go and make sure she's okay just as much as you do," said Bucky frustratedly. "But we would not blend in in Berlin, and the SSR has agents that will. We have to leave it to them."
Steve ceased his pacing and grit his teeth. He knew Bucky was right, but he sounded just like the SSR: We're looking for her, Captain Rogers. Let us do our job, and you do yours.
He'd grown used to long silences from Alice, but this felt different. And even from France he could tell that the SSR were scrambling. No one had expected Alice and Otto to go completely silent at the same time with no indication of what had happened - in most cases there was at least a hint, a witness, a rumor.
Snow squeaked under Bucky's boots as he stood and came over to grip Steve's shoulder. The sun was falling behind the mountains, turning the air dark and cold. "It's Alice," Bucky murmured. "If anyone can get through this war, it's her. You know her, she's probably cooking up some plot right now."
It was a thought that had comforted Steve often. Alice, with her shrewdness, cunning, and perception, could make it through nearly everything.
"Then where is she?" he murmured.
A long silence passed. Because Bucky couldn't answer that. No one could. And Steve was stuck here, in the snow, with all the strength and speed Doctor Erskine had given him being absolutely useless to help.
Eventually, Bucky's hand tightened on his shoulder. "C'mon. We'd best get some sleep before the mission tomorrow. No use fighting tired."
Steve hesitated for a moment, and then followed. Bucky was right. He usually was.
The mood at the start of the mission the next day was grim. They'd journeyed into the bitter heights of the Swiss alps, where the air flurried with snow. The 107th Tactical Team stood on the rocky outcrop at the top of their zipline, waiting as Gabe listened in to the hijacked radio frequency.
Steve found himself staring down the zipline, the landscape ahead of him a drab plateau of rock and ice. He was working to push all worries for Alice out of his mind, just for the mission. He owed it to his men to be completely focused.
His men stood with their hands tucked under their armpits and their jaws clenched. Normally they'd be talking and teasing at a time like this, but silence stretched between them. They all knew about the sudden silence from Berlin, after all. None of them were willing to hypothesize what the silence could mean. Dernier sat quietly sharpening his knife, and Dugan had paced to the far end of the outcrop, his face grim.
Only the wind and the faint whirs from Gabe's radio set broke the silence.
When Bucky spoke, Steve almost jumped.
"Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?"
"Yeah," Steve said distantly. "And I threw up?"
"This isn't payback, is it?"
Steve's eyes finally focused and he looked up the length of the zipline, a half-smile crossing his face. "Now why would I do that?"
Bucky laughed, and like that, the mood on the outcrop eased.
Steve thought back to that time they'd gone on the Cyclone, which had been just after Alice had left the first time. Bucky'd been trying to cheer Steve up. Bucky had always been there to remind Steve of himself, to remind him to have fun, in Alice's absences. He glanced back down to the train tracks below, which stretched on into the distance. How long would this absence be?
"We were right, Doctor Zola's on the train!" Gabe called, one ear to his radio headpiece. Steve and Bucky glanced over. "HYDRA dispatcher gave him permission to open up the throttle."
Steve's jaw clenched.
Gabe's looked up. "Wherever he's going, they must need him bad."
Steve and Bucky traded a wordless glance. Steve hadn't forgotten that they were after the man who'd tortured Bucky for days in Austria.
Bucky nodded minutely, and Steve pulled on his helmet. The outcrop rustled with activity as they finished off their last minute preparations, stashing weapons and tugging on gloves for the zipline.
Falsworth, on lookout, called: "Let's get going, because they're moving like the devil."
"We've only got about a ten second window," Steve called as he hooked up his zipline. "You miss that window… we're bugs on a windshield."
"Mind the gap," Falsworth said wryly.
"Better get moving, bugs!" Dugan called.
Steve hovered on the edge of the precipice, fingers clamped around the pulley handles, his eyes on the tracks below and his whole body buzzing with energy. After this, Alice, I promise. I won't rest until we find out where you are.
Dernier threw his hand down. "Maintenant!" [Now!]
Steve set one foot on the edge of the cliff and leaped.
"Bucky! Hang on!"
Wind screaming, rock and ice blurring past.
"Grab my hand!"
Bucky's eyes were so, so scared.
"No-"
Steve stared, and stared, until there was nothing left to see. Iron crumpled under his hands and he caved in to himself, his head dropping between his shoulders and his whole face crumpling as the wind screamed in his ears and the beat of his heart told him gone, forever, gone.
They'd heard that the Whip & Fiddle got hit in the last bombing raid in London, but Steve had either forgotten or not cared enough to remember when he found himself heading that way after his briefing with the SSR. He'd had to get out. Everyone kept looking at him.
The pub was right, he felt. When he arrived at the blasted-open front of the pub, it felt welcoming. Everything here was shattered: the doors blasted off their hinges, windows smashed, tables and chairs splintered, the roof caved in. It made sense.
He trudged into the darkness and debris, not caring what he crushed under his feet. There was a radio in the corner. He turned away from it.
Steve took one of the last surviving bottles from behind the collapsed bar, found the last intact table, and started drinking. He didn't really stop to taste the liquor, but it reminded him of the bottom-shelf stuff he, Bucky, and Alice used to drink in Brooklyn, and that made him cry. Then everything made him cry.
When he heard crunching footsteps and looked over to see Peggy, her face solemn and knowing, he started talking. She listened patiently as he explained to her that Erskine had told him that he couldn't get drunk. As if it was important. She said nothing about his choked voice and the dampness of his cheeks.
"Your metabolism burns four times faster than the average person," she said in a startlingly normal voice. She righted a toppled chair and sat across from him. "He thought it could be one of the side effects."
Again, for no good reason, a haunting image flashed across Steve's mind: Bucky's outstretched, grasping hand.
He looked down.
"It wasn't your fault."
Steve drew in a breath. "Did you read the report?"
"Yes."
He let out a poor imitation of a laugh. "Then you know that's not true."
"You did everything you could," she said calmly. God, that calm - he didn't know how she did it. A few moments passed. "Did you believe in your friend?"
Steve looked up, almost glaring.
"Did you respect him?" Peggy persisted. "Then stop blaming yourself." Steve couldn't stand her compassionate, relentless gaze any longer, so he glanced down. "Allow Barnes the dignity of his choice. He damn well must have thought you were worth it."
A long silence passed. Steve's mind was crowded with sickening images, real and imagined, without even the blur of alcohol to soften them. He had a question. But he didn't know if he had the courage to ask it. He drew in a deep breath.
He finally looked up, his eyes red. "She's dead too, isn't she."
The look in Peggy's eyes shifted, her determined compassion giving way to a flicker of grief. She didn't break eye contact, though. She paused a moment to take a breath. "They classified her as Missing in Action today. For a spy of her level and importance…" Peggy sighed, and her dark eyes welled with tears. "We should always have hope, but there's been no sign of hide nor hair of her, not even a word that she was en route to a concentration camp or jail. Her apartment is empty, she hasn't been seen for two weeks. The Propaganda Department has canceled all her upcoming performances with no explanation. And we just got word," her face creased, "that Otto has been found dead."
Steve's face crumpled and he looked away, as if to fend off a blow.
"The German papers say it was a suicide, no way to know if that's true or not. The Nazis are keeping quiet, and it's not unusual for people in Germany to suddenly… vanish." Peggy's head bowed, and she broke eye contact with him for the first time since she'd sat down. "Either way… yes, Steve. I think she's dead."
Steve let out a sound as if he'd been punched in the gut - he should know, he'd experienced the feeling more than enough - and curled forward in his chair, hunching over the supernova of pain. After a moment, Peggy reached out to rub his shoulder.
Steve stared sightlessly at the floor. He thought of the last time he saw her: the cabin in the snow, holding her close and being so sure that one day they would have some kind of normal together.
I can't wait until the last time we have to say goodbye, she'd said.
Steve didn't know how it had all gone so wrong so fast. He drew in a sharp, painful breath that made his chest shudder.
He sucked in another breath. "Her… her brother." Peggy's brow pinched as Steve choked out the words. "Tom. I have to tell him the truth. He needs to know-"
"Alright," Peggy agreed, her eyes still gleaming. Steve could hardly imagine going back home with this terrible burden, finding Tom, telling him… he pressed his eyes shut.
"I'm the one who wanted to fight," he said thickly. "They were never meant to be fighters."
His vision blurred with tears. My wife. My best friend.
"But they were fighters, Steve, and that's why you loved them. Give them the dignity of their choice."
Still hunched over, Steve looked up into Peggy's face. He saw the way she was holding back her heartbreak to support him in his, and it made him straighten.
Peggy leaned back in her chair, watching him sit straight. Steve felt a calm settle over him: Alice's calm, the kind that you wore into battle.
When he spoke again, his voice was even. "I'm going after Schmidt." His brow furrowed slightly, but he fought for control of his expression with the strength he'd seen Bucky fight with this past year. "I'm not gonna stop until all of HYDRA is dead or captured."
He felt Peggy's eyes on him. He wondered if she saw how flimsy his facade was, how hard he was fighting not to crumple in on himself again. Or if she saw something more, like she always had.
Finally, she spoke. "You won't be alone."
Excerpt from article 'Steve Rogers: The Last Days' by Marley Anaheim (2 February 1985):
… at the end of that winter, Steve Rogers had suffered greater losses than he had throughout the first four years of war. When his friend fell from that train, he lost his whole world.
It's no wonder what happened next.
Zola had spilled his guts: the devastating amount of bombing power HYDRA had achieved, their plan to begin their campaign within 24 hours, and the location of their base in Switzerland.
Steve absorbed it all with calm, eyeing the arrayed documents and listening to Stark, Phillips, and his men. When the gravity of the situation had turned the room silent, Morita spoke:
"So what're we supposed to do? I mean, it's not like we can just knock on the front door."
"Why not?" Steve asked. Everyone in the room turned to look at him, with varying degrees of confusion, as he looked down at the map of HYDRA's mountain base. And Steve realized, with a stomach-dropping sensation, that there was no one left who would tell him his plans were over the top.
Don't do anything stupid until I get back.
I never do anything crazy. I leave that to you.
He looked up. "That's exactly what we're going to do."
Steve tore through HYDRA's troops with a cold, precise fury. He rammed through their lines on his bike and then took his shield in hand, striking out at every man in a HYDRA uniform his eyes landed on. But eventually it was too much even for him.
When Schmidt swaggered up to him inside the base, Steve stared him down. Was it you? he wondered. Did you have her taken away and killed?
Steve knew better than to think that Schmidt would ever tell him. The man was right back to talking about Erskine again, like a kid who hadn't been picked for a baseball team. Steve still felt calm, almost detached: he wanted more than anything to end this fight, but he'd lost all fear. It was as if there was ice in his veins.
"So," Schmidt hissed, his eyes on Steve. "What made you so special?"
Steve allowed himself to smile. "Nothing. I'm just a kid from Brooklyn."
When Schmidt hit him in the face Steve wasn't exactly surprised, but Schmidt's strength did startle him - he'd forgotten that the Red Skull was just as strong as him.
"I can do this all day," Steve gasped.
Moments later Gabe, Falsworth, and Dugan smashed through the windows, and Steve lost himself in the fight once more.
The SSR's assault on HYDRA's headquarters was one of the fiercest battles Steve had ever seen: the air was alive with flashing blue light, rattling gunfire and screams. The whole base shook with explosions. Steve fought through it all, hunting down Schmidt. Hunting down the end.
Schmidt got aboard the main plane in the massive hangar - the Valkyrie, Zola had called it. Steve chased the plane.
The plane outstripped him. Steve felt cold horror sink into his gut.
But then Peggy and Phillips roared up beside him in a car, and with a dizzying rush of relief Steve climbed in.
They chased Schmidt down the runway.
With the wind whistling in his ears, Steve climbed up onto the side of the car as they approached the plane, his eyes focused.
"Wait!" Peggy called over the roar of the engine. Steve glanced back, and she rose up to kiss him on the cheek. Her lips were warm on his skin, and the contact jolted him. When she pulled back, Steve looked down at her and saw the blazing look in her eyes. Unspoken words echoed between them, and Steve knew that they were both thinking of the two people who should have been here. They both knew it had all been for this. "Go get him," Peggy commanded.
Steve glanced away.
"I'm not kissing you," Phillips shouted over the noise of the approaching propellers.
Steve ducked past the propellers, feeling them slam against the shield on his back, and as the blinding light of day rushed toward him he bunched his muscles and leaped.
He clung to the landing gear, conscious of the runway dropping away beneath him and a sudden bitter wind screaming around him. He looked back to make sure Peggy and Phillips had made it: there, already almost a distant speck, the car hung off the edge of the cliff at the end of the runway. Steve let out a breath and looked up, to where the hull of the plane opened up as the landing gear retracted.
The darkness of the plane swallowed him whole, and Steve felt that same icy calm focus fall over him again.
One way or another, he thought. This will be over soon.
Ten minutes later, Steve sat bloody and covered in soot in the pilot's seat.
He'd killed the HYDRA suicide pilots at the back of the plane, jumped on top of the bomb headed for New York, and after a heart-stopping struggle in the sky had flown it right back into the Valkyrie.
The responsibility of all those bombs in the plane's hangar had weighed heavy on him, crushing his breath in his chest. They still did.
Schmidt had snuck up on him in the cockpit. Hadn't been expecting that - Schmidt wasn't normally so subtle. They'd smashed up the cockpit pretty good, the two of them. There was a hole in the windshield and the machinery was all screwed up, leaving nothing but the stuck autopilot and the manual controls.
When they'd hit the Tesseract and blue light had flickered everywhere, revealing a strange, beautiful world of muted lights and glimmering stars, Steve had paused. Maybe that thing isn't just a power source. The cube had shaken and streamed with color, making Schmidt scream.
He said that the cube belonged to the Norse gods. Maybe he wasn't half so crazy as I thought he was.
Didn't matter now. Schmidt was gone, in a pillar of blinding multicolor light and a deafening clap of thunder. Tesseract was gone too.
Steve now sat, alone, the captain of an empty plane. His eyes were fixed on the horizon. It looked beautiful: it was the hour before sunset, and the light across the soft clouds had turned gold. Icy wind whistling through the cracked windshield brushed Steve's cheeks, cooling the sweat of battle.
Ziel: New York City, the autopilot readout had said. Steve knew Ziel, Alice had taught it to him: Target.
Steve drew in a deep breath, still watching the horizon.
He reached down to turn on the radio.
"Come in," he said, still slightly breathless. "This is Captain Rogers. Do you read me?"
The reply was instant. Morita's crackly voice rang out: "Captain Rogers, what is your-"
"Steve, is that you? Are you alright?" Peggy. Her voice cracked over the radio, and Steve didn't think it was static.
"Peggy, Schmidt's dead." He had to raise his voice over the wind whistling in through the hole in the cockpit.
"What about the plane?"
Looking over the controls, Steve hesitated. "That's a little bit tougher to explain."
"Give me your coordinates, I'll find you a safe landing site." There was that determined level headedness he remembered. It almost made him smile.
"There's not going to be a safe landing," he said, and finally voiced the thought that had occurred to him as he watched that beautiful horizon. "But I can try to force it down." The breath in his lungs felt icy.
"I - I'll get Howard on the line, he'll know what to do."
Brilliant, inventive Howard, who could find an answer for anything.
"There's not enough time," he explained, "this thing's moving too fast and it's heading for New York."
He recalled Alice's calm determination. It's not often that I consider throwing my life away, Steve, I promise. But for something that worth it-
Nothing's worth it, he'd told her.
She'd proved him wrong, once again.
The radio had gone silent. Once again the cockpit was filled with nothing but the swirling arctic wind, and the sound of Steve's breathing. The horizon blurred as his eyes filled with tears.
"I've gotta put her in the water."
"Please, don't do this," Peggy's voice cracked again. "We have time, we can work it out-"
"Right now I'm in the middle of nowhere," he told her, willing her to understand. He wondered if he was asking permission. "If I wait any longer, a lot of people are gonna die." Bucky's sisters. Tom. Everyone I've ever known back home. A whole world.
"Peggy," he breathed. "This is my choice." I'm sorry, he didn't say.
He felt bad for a fleeting thought that crossed his mind: at least there's less people to grieve for me.
Peggy did not speak.
Steve reached into his pocket and found the plain old army surplus compass which he'd had for ten years. He set it on top of the cockpit pressure readout where it sat, empty, pointing north.
I could tell you something sweet and stupid about how I hope you always end up going in the right direction. But truthfully, I'm worried you'll get yourself lost the minute you leave New York.
Still looking down at the compass, Steve wrapped his hands around the steering column. I had no idea how lost I'd get.
He tore his gaze away from the compass, fixed it on the horizon. Beams of sunlight broke free of the clouds and shone bright across the sky. Steve forced his grip down.
The autopilot fought him, but Steve was stronger. The plane groaned as it tilted downward, shaking at the shift in air pressure.
The compass shifted on the readout, and as the plane plunged into the cloudline Steve's stomach felt as if it was trying to fight its way through his diaphragm. The readouts on the console were going wild, spinning arrows and flashing lights trying to tell him to stop. Steve's heart thundered in his chest as he looked into the misty mass of clouds before him.
"Peggy?"
"I'm here."
The clouds broke apart and Steve saw, for the first time, the ground below: dark, undulating ocean and an ice shelf ahead. The ice stretched on for miles and miles. No one below to get hurt. Just him.
"We were married, y'know."
"What?"
The memory soothed his short, scared breaths. "Alice and I. We got married on that mission south of Montluçon in April, by a pastor. We went back to our missions the next day. She's… she was my wife, Peggy."
"Steve," Peggy's voice was wrought with emotion. He could practically hear her heart cracking over the radio. "She'd be so proud of you. She'd want you to live."
"Y'know, I was gonna cash in that dance you promised at our wedding. Alice and I were going to have another one after the war." He could see the rugged terrain of the ice now, the details of spidery cracks and shadowed hills. "Do it properly."
"You still can." Peggy sounded desperate. It helped distract him from the sound of the whole plane juddering and screeching, the wind screaming around it. "A week, next Saturday, at the Stork Club."
"You got it." The world ahead was white, white, white.
"Eight o'clock on the dot, don't you dare be late. Understood?"
His chest was hurting, like it had that night that Peggy had told him: Yes, Steve. I think she's dead. Staring at the oncoming ice, Steve tried to push away the hurt. Maybe I'll see her soon. Her and Bucky.
"Y'know," he said, fighting off the tremor in his voice, "I still don't know how to dance."
There was a pause. When Peggy next spoke her voice sounded softer. Or maybe the sounds of groaning machinery and screaming air were growing louder.
"I'll show you how, just be there. We'll dance to one of Alice's favourite songs."
Steve couldn't see the sky any more. Snow flew into the cockpit, stinging his face.
"It's Only A Paper Moon." He took a breath. "She liked that one. But I'd hate to step on your-"
"Steve?"
THE END
(Just kidding. Again.)
Reviews (lots of them!):
Guest: And I love you!
Guest: language ;)
Guest: I would never do that to my mother ;)
AceCookie: You too! Language! Glad you liked the chapter though ;)
Lola: Ooh I see you picked up on that last name ;) Can't wait to show you where I take it! Sorry about your heart ❤️
Teaanddoctorwho: Yes ma'am ;)
Misspumpkin: Thank you! Stay safe!
Guest: Yes indeed, you were on the money with your bad feeling! How interesting that you guessed how the propaganda department would spin this - hopefully you liked this chapter :)
GuestPrime: Yes last chapter was a bit of a monster (in length and content!). I'm glad you liked the christmas party (to answer your question, Alice would need a pardon to convince people that she's on the right side, and to absolve her of any crimes committed in her duties. Can't argue if FDR says the Siren's good!).
And yes, I can't resist a cliffhanger! Alice is a good spy, but if someone is determined to catch you out on something it's almost inevitable. RIP Otto, he was a good one.
As for the golden light… we'll have to wait and see ;)
Guest: We'll have to wait and see!
Guest: Sorry for microwaving your heart haha - I don't imagine this chapter helped to fix things!
Guest: language ;)
spanieluver1973: Brace yourself for ongoing unanswered questions ;)
FelinePurrfect: Haha sorry for the heartache! I'm glad you're excited for what comes next though :)
Anonymous Companion: (ffnet won't let me reply directly). Haha yes I admit I did do a bit of a fakeout about the Alps ;) I'm glad you liked the Christmas party, and Alice's influences when she's fighting. I'm so glad you're excited for what comes next!
Guest: Sorry I didn't update early! Life is pretty busy at the moment so I haven't had any time to get to writing (which means wanting to keep my already-written chapters as reserves). Hope you enjoyed (maybe not the right word) this chapter!
CaptainLoki: I'm glad you liked last chapter, and sorry for killing off Otto :/ I can't wait to show you what happens next!