2012

The next morning, the team sat around the briefing room table, two carafes of coffee sat in the middle of the table filling the room with the scent of fresh coffee that kept them all awake as no one looked to have gotten any sleep the night before. Sergeant Harkins took seat at one end of the table, Colonel Rhodes taking the other end in the form of a large screen projecting his presence at the meeting from D.C.

Charlie couldn't help but notice that once again she and Marco were seated as far away as possible from one another but this time she knew that was more of a conscious effort by the rest of the team.

The icy glares being sent his way confirmed that.

"While the events of yesterday were traumatic," she noticed the sergeant try not to look only at her as he started his speech, but she was sure she was the most traumatized of all of them. Not that it was a contest. Certainly not one she wanted to be winning. "I don't think we need to go outside this room for an investigation just yet. We knew Hydra had plants on base, so it's not out of the realm of possibility they have infiltrated every level. Including comms and internal servers."

"And my parachute? How'd they hack that?" She made sure to stare at the wood grain of the table, otherwise she wasn't sure if she could control the daggers she'd shoot at Marco.

"Yeah, how do we know it's not someone in this room?"

It almost felt as though the air in the room was sucked out, the silence deafening. Out of the corner of her eye, Charlie could see that Sam said that while staring directly at Marco. As much as she admired his no-nonsense attitude, she wasn't sure now was exactly the time to confront their theories just yet.

"We've thoroughly vetted all of you, Captain Wilson." Colonel Rhodes spoke up. "Not only when you joined the Air Force but when you were put on the short list for this team. Anything even remotely suspicious was flagged."

Charlie could see the look in his eyes that he wanted to ask the same question she did, what if those files were hacked and changed too? But she felt this was all too soon to start pointing fingers at Marco. Afterall, cornering him didn't seem like the right play and Sam was quickly working on backing him into the wall behind him. Even though Marco looked pretty calm and collected for someone getting thinly veiled traitor accusations thrown at him.

Subtly she shook her head, hoping he caught the signal to drop it for now, save it for a time when they had a plan, a strategy.

Even Colonel Rhodes looked like he wanted to ask Sam what he was thinking, what led him to questioning the team makeup, if he knew anything specific. Afterall, Colonel Rhodes would be lying if he said he didn't have suspicions of his own, he had plenty, but being in D.C. made it harder for him to act on those suspicions and he wasn't so sure his video feed or the office he was in wasn't compromised too.

"I'll be honest Parker, we don't know what happened to your parachute and we can all come up with theories, but they'd be just that. Theories and no way to prove them." Charlie tried so hard to not roll her eyes at her sergeant. Bureaucratic bullshit. "But we can remedy that. Next mission, we'll do the checklist as normal, but pilots will keep their chutes with them at all times as soon as they've been signed out from the weapons and armor room. That way no one will be able to tamper with it from the time you do your check to if you should need to use it."

Charlie was satisfied with that, although not thrilled about carrying the pack around for close to an hour.

"To combat the issue of our systems being hacked." Rhodes spoke up once again. "We'll try to keep missions to flyers and ground back up. They can't hack our vehicles on the ground and you all have managed to mark a solid perimeter of where we can move in and out of. So we shouldn't need the chopper for scouting any longer and we'll stick to using it for emergencies should we need to."

Great, Charlie thought, first I don't get wings and now I've been literally grounded. She couldn't help but feel like she was getting punished for almost dying.

"Is there anything else we need to address at this moment?" Sergeant Harkins asked as he stood up. "No offense, but you all look like shit so I think you could do with a day off."

There was still tension in the air but they all shook their heads, muttered a no sir and got up to leave the meeting room.

Charlie, Sam, and Riley were the first out of the room, feeling like they needed to get out of the stuffy room and into the open hall, feeling like they needed to come up for oxygen.

"We need to have our own debrief," Books whispered as he passed by the little circle they had all formed in the hallway outside briefing.

"How are we gonna do that without Marco catching wind that we're on to him?" Charlie whispered as she watched Books walk away, trying to look as casual and inconspicuous as possible.

Sam crossed his arms, leaning against the hall, not looking quite as relaxed as he probably hoped he did. "Let him know we know." He said with all the confidence in his voice and a shrug for emphasis. "We outnumber him."

Swallowing, Charlie raised her eyebrows, skepticism written all over her face. As much as she wanted to believe that, she wasn't sure she could. "Do we?"


"Welcome to the first resistance meeting, codename Watergate." Riley's shit-eating grin on his face welcomed Books, Johns, Charlie and Sam, with his arms spread wide in greeting, as wide as he could in a humvee. Which meant his hands almost smacked Sam and Charlie in the face. This humvee was one of the six assigned to the team and somehow they'd all managed to stealthily get to the vehicle, with no one the wiser. Or so they hoped.

Looking around at the others, and taking in how they all were cramped in the back, Charlie's eyebrows lifted, "Watergate? That's really what you want to go with?"

"We called this meeting quickly, I didn't have much time to think of a name and it felt appropriate." Offense filling his voice, had this not literally involved life and death matters, Charlie absolutely would play into the humor of this and appreciated Riley's playful manner of the situation, but she was still struggling with her close call.

Sam, always the one to keep everyone on track, especially Riley, spoke up, "We're not bringing Walker into the fold?"

"Wasn't sure if we wanted to do that just yet. I mean I trust the guy but I think we need to get our information together first, make sure the five of us are on the same page first." Riley replied with a shrug.

"Do we think Miller is Hydra? At the very least—" Charlie cut herself off, not really knowing where to go with what she was thinking because she was still so conflicted.

"At the very least, he's got plausible deniability." Books spoke up. Charlie pointed at him, agreeing with his assessment.

"Marco has rank in Hydra for sure, probably more pull than Miller, I think he's calling the shots for them." Johns spoke up.

"So Miller is just a follower." Charlie said, tossing this idea around in her head. "You think Marco's the highest Hydra rank on base?"

"It'd make sense to have the highest ranking member infiltrate a top secret special ops team," Sam spoke up. "Big picture though? What happens if they're not the only two on base? What happens after we expose them?"

No one had an answer to that.

"What if we handle it internally?" Riley asked.

With a furrowed brow Johns spoke up, "You mean like put out a hit on 'em?" They all swung their head around to look back at Riley because that's exactly what he made it sound like.

He shrugged with a thoughtful look on his face, "Wasn't really what I was thinking but now that you mentioned it, is that not what he did to Goonie?"

Charlie inhaled deeply at his point. But would they be able to get away with it? "Look, why not bring this to the sergeant? We have a pretty solid theory and we have no reason to believe Sergeant Harkins or Colonel Rhodes are in with Hydra, right?" She looked around at everyone, making eye contact with Sam last. "What do you think?"

She didn't mean for it to seem that she trusted him and his opinion on the matter more than the other three, but somewhere deep down she knew she did. She trusted them all with her life, after yesterday she had no reason not too, but her trust in Sam was different. She'd be lying if she said she couldn't exactly pinpoint why she intrinsically trusted him so deeply but she was trying to swallow that down. That was something to deal with later.

With a sigh, Sam thought for a second before giving his opinion. "Unless something major happens again, let's give it a couple days, see if we can get more evidence to back up our theory and then we go to Harkins."

Everyone nodded in agreement. After all, what they had could be seen as circumstantial, it would be best to solidify their theory with more evidence, just hopefully it didn't put any of them in as much danger as it had yesterday. Luckily, they now knew to be on alert, all of them being extra visualant and hopefully preventing any more close brushes with death.


While Charlie had hoped her shaken nerves would've calmed overnight or after both debriefs, she found herself still feeling restless. She felt like a caged animal sitting in her dorm and quite frankly, didn't love being under the same roof as Marco and Miller on top of being alone in her room. Lacing up her beat up converse, she grabbed her Captain America biography off her night stand and headed outside, figuring some fresh air had to help the residual anxiety looming within her.

And of course like a moth to a flame, she found herself heading outside the hangar looking directly at Sam sitting against the cool metal, knees bent, with a book in his lap. She couldn't help the small smile that crept on her face. She admittedly stared a little too long but seeing his features so soft and his body relaxed felt like a welcome sight after the last twenty four hours. As quiet as she could, she made her way over, passing in front of him before sitting down to his left, facing him and also the hangar opening feeling the need to be on alert.

"Been a while since we had book club," She tried to keep her tone as light as possible. After all if she could fake that she wasn't feeling antsy, maybe her mind and body would believe it. Sam looked over and smiled.

"I think we have to be reading the same book for it to be a book club."

Charlie just batted a hand at him playfully, "Semantics."

Chuckling, he tipped his chin at her, "How are you feeling?"

She knew this was just in his nature, to ask how people were because he genuinely cared about them and normally Charlie appreciated it tremendously but today she really wished he hadn't.

Lifting a shoulder in what she hoped looked like a nonchalant shrug, she responded quietly, "I'm okay."

Sam could swear he saw her chin slightly wobble before she answered and her eyes watered a little, he definitely wasn't supposed to notice it, so he just nodded in acceptance. He understood that not enough time had passed for her to really be honest with her emotions regarding the day before and if he was being honest, he wasn't ready either. He wasn't sure he had a stretch of sleep last night that was longer than 10 minutes because every time he shut his eyes, he just saw her plummeting to the hard ground and he could never quite catch up to her. Every time she was just about to crash, the absolute terror that filled her eyes in that second had Sam startling awake in a panic. It was a wonder how he didn't wake Riley in the bunk on the other side of the room with his near dry heaves.

"Whatcha reading?" She interrupted the thoughts he was drowning in and Sam was grateful but he could still by the tone of her voice that she was forcing the nerves away and trying to replace it with the appearance of being ok. So he went along with it.

Flipping over the cover, Sam let a small laugh of embarrassment out. "Uh well, I think it was supposed to be a joke from my dad but it's turning out to be super interesting." He scratched the back of his neck, feeling the most uncool he has ever felt as he tilted the cover towards her. In big bold type the cover read THEY'RE HERE, with a silhouette of what could only be an alien standing in front of what she assumed was supposed to be some kind of modern day fort.

She couldn't help the loud laugh that bubbled up, "Area 51?" She asked incredulously.

With a mock-offended look on his face Sam stared at her with raised eyebrows, "Oh, you're gonna judge me? Weren't you the one that believed Carol Danvers was abducted by aliens?"

"Pfft. Yeah, but there's a difference than believing aliens are up there," Charlie motioned to the wide open sky, swirling her hands around to emphasize the expansive area. "It's entirely different believing the government has some kind of fort holding them to experiment on or whatever."

With a snort Sam continued, "Look I never said I believed it, I said I found it interesting." He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself more than her.

"Okay, sure." She said with a very sarcastic nod and smile. "So if you don't believe in it, why did your dad send it to you?"

Sam gave a heavy sigh and Charlie knew she was about to get something good from this story. "My dad is a state representative for Maryland and has worked for the government my whole life. So since I was old enough to learn about Area 51, I would pester my dad about it, convinced he had to have some insider knowledge." A wistful smile came across his face, it was clear how he talked about him that Sam had a close relationship with his dad, that in turn had Charlie smiling just as much. "My mom's been a capital hill reporter since before I was born, so of course she had to have sources on it too. I used to ask her to ask the president next time she was at the oval office. I was like seven so I just figured she must walk around the White House all day and had to hear things. Eventually I grew out of the alien phase but my dad makes sure I don't forget about the obsession I used to have." He chuckled holding up the book a little bit to emphasize it, and Charlie couldn't help but find their family dynamic cute, even if this was just one example.

And then a realization came to her, she noticed the similarities between Sam and someone she used to see on TV every weeknight.

"Wait! Is your mom Sarah Scott? From ACN?" She tried to hold back her excitement.

Sam's eyebrows shot up, by now he'd gotten used to Charlie's perchance to fangirl over strong females, so he couldn't say he was too surprised that Charlie not only knew who his mother was but clearly had a love for her work. He nodded and chuckled when Charlie's eyes got wide. She just barely was able to hold a squeal back.

"I love her!" Charlie thought about slapping herself for blurting that out, she felt her cheeks burn red with embarrassment of her lack of filter. "Uh, I mean. My dad and I always watched her segments on the nightly news and my mom read her book to me when I was kid. It almost had me going into journalism but school is more of my brother's thing than mine. He's ten and probably smarter than I'll ever think about being." Maybe if she rambled enough she could forget about her earlier uncontained excitement.

"That's a bit of an age gap."

"Yeah, we're not quite sure which one of us was the accident." Her voice was laced with humor, clearly a joke that she had made more than once. Thinking about it, maybe her brother was a little young to make those jokes with but they both knew it was all in good natured fun. "The fourteen year age gap was definitely weird at first but it was way more fun as he got older. And I like that I get to at least share my memories of our parents."

Sam gave her an inquisitive look as a somewhat sad look came over her features.

"My parents died in a car crash right after his third birthday. So we have lived with our Aunt May and Uncle Ben since then." She paused, looking down as she wrung her hands together. She didn't feel as uncomfortable talking about them, it was just that she wasn't sure if this was too much too soon. She'd just learned over the years that the dead parents conversation wasn't one that generally kept guys around.

"I'm sorry that happened. It's not fair." Sam was genuine in his apologies and Charlie was grateful it didn't have the same throwaway tone she'd heard from others. "But your brother is lucky to have you to keep your parents' memory alive."

"Thanks." She said it softly, looking down at her own book, trying to figure out how to get away from this conversation. She really didn't mean to bring the mood back down, she had been trying to stay in the happy bubble she was attempting to create but of course word vomit got the best of her. So she went for the abrupt topic change, or really topic turnaround. "So what about you? Any siblings?"

Biting her lip, she was cringing on the inside. Were you even supposed to bring up family this early in a date?

Date? She hoped the look on her face was not what was reflecting her thoughts in her head or else Sam would've been confused by the screams, alarm bells, and wide eyes that just popped out as her brain threw out the idea of this being a date without even a conscious effort.

Could this even be a date? Is that allowed?

"I'm an only child."

"Oh." And suddenly her cheeks were flaming even harder because she was so stuck in her own head now and having an inner conflict that she couldn't even properly engage in this conversation now which in turn also had her annoyed and even more embarrassed. She just could not win today.

She wanted to take her hardcover book and just hit herself as hard as she could, surely being unconscious would be less embarrassing than her current feeling.

Thankfully, Sam seemed to have a knack for defusing her awkward tendancies. God bless him, always saving her. From the external physical threats and the internal mental ones as well. "How do you like it so far?" He said pointing to the 500 page biography she was only a quarter of the way through, one she borrowed from him. Captain America's handsome face brightly smiling back at her.

"Oh! It's really good, I'm surprised I haven't read it before. But probably for the best since now I get to read it with the additional chapter. I mean I can't even imagine being in a coma for like a year let alone being an actual popsicle for decades." She had to pull back her excitement on the topic just a bit, pace herself in the conversation, because much like Carol Danvers, Captain America was something she could get going about for hours.

Sam shook his head with a chuckle, "Me either. I mean that's a lot of transitions he missed in music. Going from 40s music to the current stuff? That might have him wanting to go back to being frozen."

"So music would be the first thing you'd seek out?"

"I don't know if it's the first thing I'd seek out, maybe the first thing I'd recommend to someone like him. Marvin Gaye? The Trouble Man soundtrack? That's all you'd need!"

A wistful smile covered his face as he closed his eyes, clearly hearing the music in his head. Charlie couldn't help but stare at him, the soft look on his face a stark contrast from yesterday, the afternoon sun shining behind him, she wished she had a camera so she'd have a physical reminder of this moment and the warmth she felt from it.

"What about you? If you met Captain America, what would you recommend he do first?" Sam asked, tipping his chin at her, smiling with genuine interest.

"Before or after I pass out?" Charlie's tendency to fangirl often showed her rambles as evidenced earlier but she knew, given the chance to meet an actual hero she's read about in history books in school and biographies beyond that, she was sure her brain would most likely short circuit.

Sam snorted.

With a smirk and shrug, she replied, "Probably watch The Goonies."


Hope y'all enjoyed this chapter, it was a little slower on purpose. Needed to have a chapter for everyone to catch their breath after last chapter and before the next one because it's gonna be another heavy one. Let me know what you think! Thanks for reading!