12:30pm, Sunday, March 9, 2014
The car comes to a stop so Natasha takes this chance to make sure they weren't being followed. Steve gets out of his seat, looking around where he was trained. The memories come flooding back. The long runs they would go on. The gun training. The circuits they would have to train with. The other soldiers making fun of his size. Falling in love with Peggy. Becoming friends or some derivative of the word with Phillips. Trusting Erskine with his life. Choosing to be a part of Project Rebirth. And beyond that. Enlisting. Double dates with Bucky. Spending time with his mom. His whole life in the forties.
This camp brings out the memories in his mind that not even the Smithstonian could. His hand goes down to where his dog tags would've been, smiling when he remembers how he gave them to the triplets.
Steve smiles bittersweetly, "this is it."
Natasha goes over next to him and holds his hand. "Changed much?"
"A little." He gives her a nod. Natasha scans the place with her phone.
"This is a dead end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio. Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off," she can see him staring at something a few yards away "what is it?"
He brings the two of them over to a bunker. "Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred yards of the barracks. This building is in the wrong place."
Steve makes a move for her to step back. He smashes his shield into the lock on the door, nothing stronger than a super soldier with vibranium. They shove the door open together.
They walk down a hallway that leads to an office area. On one of the front walls is a SHIELD emblem. An eagle, encircled with the words 'Strategic, Homeland, Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division', and black like the shadows the agency lives in. None of the history books or files at SHIELD show this, probably for good reason.
"This is SHIELD." She observes, flipping through a few old files. The computers date back to the early nineties at the latest. They had to have moved to more efficient buildings after Peggy retired.
"Maybe where it started." They continue looking around. "Hey Nat, come look at this If you're already working in a secret office... Why do you need to hide the elevator?" He shoves the two bookcases away from each other, revealing the interior of an elevator.
Natasha uses Ronnie's app on her phone to unlock the elevator code. "Hmm, retro tech." She says as they walk into a large room, filled with a large computer. "This can't be the data-point, this technology is ancient."
Steve steps forward, Natasha follows him. The computer seems to turn on by itself.
"Initiate system?" A robotic voice questions.
Natasha steps forward, typing "Y-E-S, spells yes." she grins for a minute "Shall we play a game?"
"Nat...No" he huffs over exageratedly.
The camera turns, trying to identify the people in front of him "Rogers, Steven Grant. Born, 1918. Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna. Born, 1984." A heavily accented voice announces.
"It's some kind of a recording."
"I am not a recording, Fräulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am."
"Arnim Zola you've been dead for years." Steve growls at the computer.
"Look around you. I have never been more alive. In 1972 I received a terminal diagnosis. Science could not save my body, my mind, however, that was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of data banks. You are standing in my brain. A bit rundown but still ever useful."
Steve looks at the computer, looking for any signs that there is someone else here "How did you get here?
"Invited"
"Operation Paperclip after World War II." Natasha explains. Steve knows well enough to know that it didn't end up the way they expected.
"They thought I could help their cause. I also helped my own. You may think HYDRA died with the Red Skull. But cut off one head, two more shall take its place."
A surge of anger runs through him. He killed the Red Skull, that should have been enough to stop HYDRA. "Prove it"
"Accessing archive. HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize, was that if you try to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, SHIELD was founded and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew. A beautiful parasite inside SHIELD. For seventy years HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed. Accidents created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA's new world order will arise. We won, Captain. Your death amounts to the same as your life, a zero sum." Steve punches the main computer screen with Zola's face. The glass shatters and his face appears in another screen "As I was saying..."
"What's on the drive?" Steve asks impatiently, he doesn't exactly feel like being told this by a man he hates.
"Project Insight requires insight. So I wrote an algorithm."
Natasha steps around Steve. "What kind of algorithm? What does it do?"
"The answer to your question is fascinating. Unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." The door to the elevator starts closing. Steve looks back and tosses his shield at it, hoping that it could block the doors before they close. It hits the metal as the doors slam shut, the shield makes a boomerang effect back to him.
Natasha grabs her phone out of her pockets. "Steve, we got a bogey. Short range ballistic. 30 seconds tops." Steve's face contorts in confusion.
"Who fired it?"
"STRIKE satellites"
"I am afraid I have been stalling, Captain." Steve looks around, trying to find something to hide in. The grate. "Admit it, it's better this way." Steve throws away the top of the grate, Natasha grabs the drive and runs over to him. "We're both of us...out of time."
The ceiling starts crumbling all around them. Steve holds his shield above their heads as Natasha holds onto him. When the blocks stop falling, Steve tries standing up. He lifts the rubble off of them as best he can. The whole place is on fire. Next to him is Natasha, passed out. "Oh please be alive." He pleads as he feels her pulse point. It's still there.
Thanks to his hearing, Steve can hear several helicopters approaching. They have to leave now if they still want to use the car. He picks her up carefully and brings her out of the fire. He gets into the driver's seat, looking behind him into the back. There's only one place he can go.
Her eyes flutter open. She panics for a minute but sees that Steve is next to her. "Where am I?" She asks him hoarsely.
"We're at Sam's, it's been a few hours." He hands her a glass of water and kisses her forehead. "It's around four, you should go clean up. Can you stand?"
She sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. She gets up to go take a shower and not for the first time this week, takes off the grime of nearly being blown up.
Steve takes a deep breath as he leaves the room, relief flooding him all over again.
"She gonna be ok?" Sam asks. Steve nods, taking out the peanut butter to make Natasha a sandwich. "Some kids called your phone. They didn't seem like the typical pranksters, told them you would call them back." Sam nods over to where Steve's phone is charging. Steve puts down the sandwich, they must've heard of the explosion by now.
"Dad?" Three voices answer together. "We heard about Leigh. What happened?"
"It was HYDRA, I'm not sure what's going on, but you need to be careful. Who are you with?"
"Maria, Grandpa, and some annoying doctor. We have to go silent soon, our routers can only keep us secret so long" Ronnie tells him. Her voice is shaky, something that Steve hasn't heard since she and Henry recapped what happened when they got kidnapped.
"I love you guys, just stay safe until me and Nat can get to you. Bye" He puts down his phone, seemingly forgetting who else was in the room. He looks over at Sam, smiling sheepishly.
Sam raises an eyebrow. "You two have kids? Man, I didn't see that one coming"
"Yeah, we adopted the triplets right after New York. Apart from being trained, and having one of each part of Nat's personality, they're not really like us. They're geniuses." Steve smiles. "As you can probably tell, they're a secret."
"I get it man, don't want Mama Widow angry with me. They want to be like you?"
Steve nods, "yeah, it scares me how much they do. Our youngest, Einstein or Xander or Prince, has superpowers genetically. We found out about that while looking into his heritage. The triplets, well not really, their birthdays are all around the same time and they can speak to each other with their brains. But they lived in the same foster homes together from when they were young, we adopted them when they were twelve. I think that you might get to meet them. They prank and joke around a lot, you'd like them."
"If you and Natasha ever need a babysitter for them, my sister's a great reference." Sam jokes. Steve smiles.
"I have a feeling that if anything, they would be babysitting you."
"Wait so what are all of their names?"
Steve takes a deep breath, there is no easy way to make this clarification. "Well our oldest is Henry, he has an array of nicknames but the most usual ones are Salk and Hen. The middle is Ronnie, her real name is Veronica, but only Nat calls her that when she's mad or speaking in Russian, we call her Tesla, Ron, or you'll just know when you hear it. Xander is Einstein or Xan or Prince, because he's technically the prince of a third world country" he laughs at Sam's confused face. "I'll explain more later" Steve hears the shower system stop. "I'm going to go check on her." He grabs the sandwich and walks to the guest room. He sets the plate down next to Natasha who is drying her hair. Her face focused on something that couldn't be seen.
"I've been married to you long enough to know that you got something on your mind. What's going on?" Steve puts the sandwich down next to her and sits with her on the bed.
"When I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight. But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA. I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but...I guess I can't tell the difference anymore. I love everything in my life now, but I feel like I failed. Who knows what they're capable of. I've done a pretty shitty job of protecting them so far."
Steve shakes her shoulders. "No Nat, you are an amazing mother. You've kept them safe, we've just had to fight some pretty big battles. If you hadn't insisted on training them, they wouldn't have been able to protect themselves. Because of you they've been able to deal with anyone, from Flash to a possessed weather witch. I also just got off the phone with them. Maria is with them, there's no safer place."
"If Maria's with them that means that they're with Fury" her lips part from realization, brushing away a few tears, "makes sense, those 'goat' sounds sounded like an EKG machine. If he's with them, he's in the best hands."
"They're going to want to help if they can. It's not like we can tell them not to, it doesn't matter that they are usually well behaved, they have too much determination about these things."
Natasha taps her chin. "Wonder where they get that from." She rests her head on his shoulder. He kisses the crown of her head, wrapping his arm around her waist.
"But we're totally beating Fury up for getting them involved with this right?" He asks.
"Oh absolutely."
So in this, the sky is dark while Steve escapes from the blown up camp because of the fire and smoke, not because it's nighttime. Me thinking back to last week when I decided it was a good idea to make all these events happen within a weekend so I'm rewriting a few timelines from the script. Also, Sam knows and none of the avengers do.