Not much Nat and Sarah interaction this time, but we say welcome to the one and only Bucky Barnes.
Chapter 4
The meeting had gotten heated quickly. Somehow her boss obtained a blueprint of the accords. Around her the big wigs shouted, Sarah tried to make sense of the blueprint in front of her. It was riddled with construed language, loopholes and make believe rules. She truly hoped that Tony had a good set of lawyers to go through this with a fine tooth comb, that piece of legislation was one large land mine.
"Miss Enders, What do you think?" Her boss, the head of the ERU division looked at her. "To be quite honest, I have no clue what I'm doing here. I'm not a lawyer nor high enough in the food chain to sit in this meeting." "Well, you are uniquely qualified to comment on the avengers, aren't you?" One of the other heads of departments threw in.
Sarah sucked in a breath, did they know about Natasha? They couldn't, she hadn't told anyone in the office, they all knew her as Nathalie.
"What do you mean?" She replied vaguely.
"You have led the last ERU after an Avenger mission, haven't you? Seen the destruction. What happens to people who are caught in the cross fire. And you know Tony Stark."
Ah there it was, thank you bro for working for one of the most well known avengers.
"First of all, i don't know Tony Stark, its my brother who works for him." She let her eyes wander round the room "Second, I think the avengers are handled like any other agency, their fuck ups are public and their successes are private." She let that sit for a while, she remembered the media outburst after Sokovia too clearly.
"I think that this is a complicated paper written up by scared people and politicians trying to make the most of that fear."
"What do you think about the accords."
"Nothing."
"Care to elaborate?"
"I can't give you an opinion within 5 minutes of reading a document that's clearly full of expert language, you'd need a bunch of lawyers to make it understandable."
"We don't have that time, it's getting presented to the avengers today, and signed by the UN in 3 days."
A storm broke loose in the room.
"Are you kidding me?"
"This is crazy!"
"Why so quickly?"
Slowly order returned to the room.
"We need to come up with a position." The chairman said.
Sarah leaned back, fuck this was really way over her pay grade.
She thought of Natasha and Steve, it was not even quite morning yet in New York. She needed to call them, warn them, do something.
Sarah sighed, what viable information could she give Nat? She didn't even had a chance to take a picture of the accords. All phones had been confiscated before entering that meeting room.
A sharp knock interrupted the discussion. One of the assistants head appeared "Miss Enders there is a phone call from Lagos for you. It's urgent."
Sarah looked at her boss and he waved her off.
"Over here." The Assistant waved her towards an empty desk "It's line 3." Sarah took a deep breath and punched the key.
"Hello?!"
It was one of her colleagues in London, they needed someone in an refugee camp. Most of the project organiser were wiped out with the flu, 4 days tops, they promised. Sarah rolled her eyes at the phone receiver, what was that for a question - of course she'd go.
She could hear the sigh of relief from her team on the phone. The next moment her mobile pinged with the flight details. She had 2.5 hours to get to the airport.
Sarah smiled at the assistant and asked her to organise a cab before heading back into the meeting.
The atmosphere was still tense and Sarah stood behind her vacated chair. She cleared her throat "I'm really sorry, but I need to leave." All of the eyes were on her now "there seems to be an epidemic of flu going around in camp A-1164 and the Australians have asked us to send some support until their back up can arrive in 4 days.
"Of course Ms Enders" the head stood up "I don't think I need to reiterate that anything you heard or read today was highly confidential." "Of course not, Ma'am." Sarah nodded at her before leaving.
This was going to be a cluster fuck!
Sitting in the taxi her head fell against the car window. No rest for the wicked and there went her plan to go and see Natasha in the new avenger facility. Her text to Nat was short, "tables turned this time. New mission for me, not too sure when I'll be back, deploying in 2 hours."
Then another one on a different number
"Don't sign anything without going through it with a fine tooth comb. This is going to blow up."
Sarah was going through all the different scenarios in her head. They'd sign, they didn't sign, half of them did, they would retire, go underground...in no way shape or form was this going to end well.
Not that she didn't agree with some of the accords sentiment, but not like this, not on the sly and through the back door.
How long must have Secretary Ross sat on the piece of legislation? How did he manage the get it ratified by so many nations without one journalist getting wind of this?
This all doesn't add up.
Her musings were disrupted by the cab pulling into the airport drop off zone.
Going through the airport procedures like a well rehearse dance, Sarah's mind still was going in circles about the accords.
She checked her phone repeatedly, no response from Nat on either phone numbers.
Sarah could feel the annoyed look from the stewardess, and after one final check turned her phone off.
Here goes nothing.
"We have what we have when we have it." Natasha's words stuck with Steve, all the way too Sarah's house. He needed another perspective, he needed someone to tell him, he was doing the right thing.
He just buried the woman he loved for so long, and the woman he trusted the most left him too. He hasn't felt that lonely in a very long time.
Sarah's house came into view, the front garden was still in bloom from the left over summer. Steve rang the door bell and tried to detect some movement behind the Art Deco glass.
He could hear the front gate closing and he turned around.
"I thought you'd come here." Natasha leaned against Sarah's car, her arms crossed.
"Twice in one day, Natasha? Shouldn't you be on the way to Vienna?"
"What are you doing here, Steve?"
"Just visiting a friend."
"She's not..." "She's not what? Not my friend? Do you think you have the power to make that decision for us?"
Natasha took a deep breath. 'Don't Hit him, he just lost the love of his life. Don't hit him, you do love him.'
"I was going to say, she's not here."
Steve kept looking at her, challenging her sentence silently.
Natasha groaned and pulled her mobile out of her pocket, handing it to Steve. "Open the App." She encouraged him. Steve swiped to the secure messaging app on her phone and there it was Sarah's last message:
'tables turned this time. New mission for me, not too sure when I'll be back, deploying in 2 hours.'
"She was supposed to come to visit...belated birthday present." Natasha elaborated. Steve nodded and handed her back the phone. "What are you doing here, Steve?"
"I...I just wanted to hear her opinion." That stung...deeply. He valued Sarah's opinion over her's. He never - sought her out over the accords. "Why? Do you think it would be different to mine?" "Well, I didn't think you'd disagreed with me on that."
Natasha took a deep breath, this was not what was supposed happened, especially not here in Sarah's front yard.
"You know what she would say to you, Steve?" Natasha was fuming now, how dare he bringing Sarah into this, actually coming here alone could put her into danger "she would say that we needed oversight. That the killing in Sokovia and Lagos was on our heads. That we were reckless and stupid and we should be held accountable just like a non avenger would if they wreck havoc." "Are you kidding me, Natasha." Steve pushed his hand through his hair "Sarah wouldnt! She believes that we should decide where we go! That we shouldn't be penalised for things that happen while we save people's lives. That we should have a right to choose where we go and not being forced to watch if we could help." Steve was getting agitated, why wouldn't she understand! Why did she want to give up control, Natasha never relinquished control, why would she know?
"This is not the conversation to have in her front yard and without her, don't you think."
Natasha broke his trail of thoughts.
"I'll need to head to Vienna, the signing is tomorrow."
With that she turned to leave, but then she looked over her shoulder once more: "Steve, I know we don't agree on much at the moment. But please don't involve Sarah. You know she'd do anything to help... put herself in danger and even worse in legal trouble."
Steve looked at her, the worry etched into her face was real. Natasha could hide a lot of things but not the depth of feelings she had for Sarah.
"I promise."
Exhausted sat Steven and Bucky in the quintet. Both still shaken with what happened in that bunker. He fought Tony, he'd almost killed Tony, he almost killed his friend. The jet sweared and they needed to hold on tightly, just as much as he needed to hold onto his frayed thoughts.
Steve sat toward the back, while Bucky had taken his spot in the co-pilot seat. The auto pilot was doing all the work for them at the moment.
Something caught Steve's eye, a bag was shoved underneath the seat opposite him. He crouched down and recognised it as one of Natasha's smaller duffel bags. He opened it slowly, maybe she had left a widow bite in there. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, her room in the compound was rigged up with little traps as well. He shook the bag carefully with his foot, nothing exploded.
He opened the bag with trepidation, you could never be too on guard with Nat.
Change of clothes, some cash, toiletry bag and something else...hidden in the jeans pocket. It was an older phone, he recognised it from some older movies they watched together.
He turned the phone in his hand, it could be their lifeline, the ability to call for help.
Taking a deep breath, he promised himself he would apologise to Nat...or more likely adding it to the long list of things he needed to apologise for.
Steve unlocked the phone and was met with a text message. He gasped, she had known, she had known something, if he'd just had the time to talk to her.
Before he could contemplate the text further, the jet took a deep dip. "I think something just went off." Bucky's voice was raw as he intently watched the lights on the control board flicker.
"Yeah, you could be right." Steve joined him in the cockpit and Bucky looked at him "what do you mean, I could be right?"
"I'm actually not a pilot, jerk."
"Are you telling me, that we stole a Plane and you don't actually know how to fly?"
"I do!"
Bucky just kept looking at him
"Once it's on autopilot."
"Fuck!" Buckys eyes not leaving the dashboard, the jet losing height slowly, and a flickering could be seen through the windows.
"Any ideas where we are?" Steve looked outside. "Somewhere over Europe, I'd guess." Bucky started pressing some buttons and managed to find some maps. Who'd guess, Stark would still have something that old school in his jets.
"From what i can see here and according to the coordinates we are over south Germany."
"How far do you think we can make it?" Steve still toyed with the phone in his hand.
"Not sure, maybe 1,500 km if we are lucky, but knowing us, I don't wanna push our luck." Bucky was still bent over the maps.
'1,500 km should get them to the UK.' Steve thought. He took a deep breath, glancing at the text on Nat's phone once more, send from Little Sis.
"What are you doing?" Bucky looked at him "Planning to help me anytime soon, Punk?"
Steve sighed, he was going to break the most important promise he ever made and it didn't even take him 5 days to do so.
"Getting us some help." Steve pressed the dial button.
Natasha was going to kill him!
Here goes nothing.