68.
London, United Kingdom
February 14th, 1945
It turns out that even Isabel herself doesn't make it to the Stork Club in time for their date.
The Commandos spend the entirety of the day after they lose contact with Steve at the Hydra base, clearing it out, ratting out all of the hiding agents, taking pictures of everything for evidence, and then drawing up maps of the base to reference later. It's a long and lengthy process, considering this is the largest and most complex Hydra base they've ever come across. They begin to think they'll never find every room as they continuously stumble across doors and corridors. But they can't just blow this base to the ground like they did with all the others. This is the base with all of Hydra's plans, all of its information, all of its evidence. They need to scope out every little detail if they want to make sure they definitely take down Hydra for good.
In the basement, Morita, Jones and Dernier are unfortunate enough to come across another facility for testing the super soldier serum. They find the bodies, hundreds of them, dead in the morgue, all of them falling victim to the side effects of Zola's serum. They've all been experimented on intensively as Zola tries to determine the problems with each version of his serum, but it appears that none of them have survived. The only surviving experimentees the Commandos have found so far have been the three at the Hamburg base, which the guard had killed anyway, and Bucky. With a solemn face, Morita and Jones instruct all of the Allied soldiers who'd fought with them to begin clearing out the morgues and get the people, files and all, back home so that they can be put to rest peacefully.
Meanwhile, whilst they're clearing out the rest of the base, Howard spends his time planning a rescue mission to find the Valkyrie. He'll need a boat and a team and machinery to actually retrieve the plane if they find it, or at least to be able to dive down and free Steve from the wreckage. He works on the designs for a small submarine that can swim down into the depths of the ocean with a camera so that he can operate it from above the sea, with a camera attached so he can see where he's directing it. He gets the plans done quickly and works on building it, all the while getting together his team through a radio back to the SSR base in London.
Isabel hears of this and expresses interest in a passing comment that she wouldn't mind joining the mission to find Steve but seems to drop the subject after that. It's one of the only things she's said since they left the radio room after they lost contact with Steve. Peggy, however, doesn't forget.
When the base has been scoured and all evidence removed, they blow it sky high so that it can't be used ever again, practically taking half of the mountain with them. From there, the soldiers and Commandos pile into trucks to drive them to the closest Allied airfield a few hours away. The surviving soldiers part then, marching toward their own posts to rejoin the fight, whilst the Commandos board a small plane flown by Stark.
It takes another few hours to get back to London, and Isabel spends the entire plane ride sitting in the corner on the floor, staring with a blank face at the wall in front of her. There's still black tear marks town her cheeks that she hasn't bothered to wipe off yet. She looks a mess, not that anyone could blame her. The Commandos and Peggy sit together at the other end of the plane to give her space, watching her with worried frowns. Everyone is silent and solemn. There's only the rumbling sound of the engines.
They land back at the airfield on the outskirts of London as the sun is setting, two days after they lost contact with the Valkyrie. The Commandos file silently from the plane toward the cars waiting for them by the road. As Isabel steps off the plane, Dugan stops and tucks her under his arm, walking with her against his side. She doesn't protest, but doesn't really acknowledge it, either.
Howard disappears instantly, a car taking him down to the docks where his team are getting together their supplies and preparing the boat for as immediate departure as they can manage. The Commandos climb into the remaining cars.
The ride to the base is silent. As with any other mission, all of them are exhausted, but they also aren't quite sure what to say. The two men of the team that brought them all together and held them all together, their Sergeant and their Captain, are gone forever, lost to the war. Without them, none of them really know what to say or how to go about it. They don't know how they can have a casual conversation without feeling guilty for being happy in the light of their loss, which has been a major blow to all of them, but to one soul in particular.
They don't know what to say to Isabel. She cried when she lost contact with Steve over the radio, but once she calmed down, she strangely stopped sobbing and crying and has been dry-eyed ever since. She's been extremely quiet and subdued, but she's followed Peggy around and helped with the documentation, almost as though she was pretending it never happened. And maybe she is, because there was no way she could be this calm and quiet in light of what's happened. They fully expect her to be screaming why to the Heavens in anguish.
But when they look at her and search past that blank expression, every one of them can see the pain and heartbreak in her dark eyes, can practically hear how her heart has shattered. How she isn't showing that on the outside is beyond their understanding. The only thing that gives it away is the flash of emotion that crosses her face at times, or the expression she gets where it looks as though she were about the pick a fight with God Himself. That expression is dangerous and terrifying and heartbreaking. Never have they seen the optimistic one of their team so downtrodden and hopeless.
The cars pull up outside the hotel and Strategic Scientific Reserve base, and Isabel opens her door before the car has even stopped, making the driver slam on the breaks to accommodate her. She steps out onto the footpath and disappears into the building without a word, without even a glance. The Commandos watch her escape into the elevator and assumedly go to her room as the cars come to a full stop and the drivers turn off the engines.
The men get out of the cars, silent, and no one speaks until Peggy joins them, too.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph; what are we supposed to do with our Baby Barnes?" Dugan mutters, for once in his life entirely serious.
"What can we do? We aren't Cap or Serge. We can't do anything," Morita answers, looking equally as worried.
"All we can do is be there to support her," Peggy tells the men. "I know a little of what she's going through. A shoulder to cry on is always helpful."
Falsworth nods in agreement. "This is something she needs to work through herself. She's got a lot of acknowledgement and understanding to do before she can start to heal. We just have to watch and be there to help her pick up the pieces."
The rest of the Commandos go downstairs to the base to file their reports on the events at the final Hydra base, and Peggy goes off to ensure that the evidence is correctly stored. After hours of paperwork and debriefing, the men are finally released. Even though they worry for Isabel and for each other, they're all so exhausted that they practically stumble to their beds and are asleep before their heads hit the pillow. They can only hope that Isabel's taken herself to the safety and privacy of her room for the night until she's ready to come out again.
Unfortunately, their assumptions are incorrect. Peggy comes up to the rooms once everything's been dealt with and after a long conversation with Howard, who returned to base and informed the Reserve about his planned rescue mission out to the Arctic icefields to search for the Valkyrie. Peggy had told him Isabel had expressed interest in being a part of it.
"Steve couldn't bring Bucky home," Howard replied, solemnly. "I hope I can bring Steve home in whatever way I can, or at least provide closure to what happened to him. If she wants to come, I won't stop her. Doesn't mean I think it will be good for her."
Peggy opens the door to the room she shares with Isabel and finds the room empty. Frowning, she goes next door to Steve and Bucky's room where the lock is still busted and opens that too, the room empty, exactly the way Steve had left it the night before they left for the mission.
Peggy sighs. It's just like Steve all over again, and Peggy knows exactly where Isabel's gone – her and Steve promised to meet at the Stork Club. She shrugs on a coat, despite her exhaustion, and prepares to repeat her actions from the weeks before and search for Isabel.
As she walks into the hallway, Falsworth passes her. He stops and looks at her outfit questioningly. "Going somewhere, ma'am?"
"How many times have I told you to call me Peggy?" The brunette asks in exasperation. "I'm going out looking for Isabel. She's done a runner."
"I'm coming with you," Falsworth says immediately, turning around from the way he had been heading and walking in the direction of the elevator, which he holds open for Peggy and presses the button for the lobby. "It's my understanding that Captain Rogers did the same thing with Sergeant Barnes' disappearance?" Falsworth says into the silence, looking worriedly at Peggy.
"Yes, he did," Peggy agrees.
"I hope you have some idea of where she is."
"She's at the Stork Club. Steve promised he'd meet her there."
Isabel walks into the bombed-out Stork Club. She hadn't known it had been ruined by bombing. She hadn't known the doors had been collapsed, the windows blown out, the bar and tables scorched by fire, rubble littering the floor. She steps in carefully, not wanting to slip on the debris, and emerges into the room the Commandos usually spent their nights in. It's relatively untouched in here, being further back into the building away from the road. The walls are still green, the floor still wooden and unharmed, the piano still sitting in the corner, the chairs and tables relatively unharmed.
She steps inside, slowly, the room empty and dark and echoing. She closes her eyes and she can almost imagine it as it used to be, packed with people dancing and singing, music in the air, smoke in their lungs, alcohol in their bellies. She can hear it, smell it, and with her eyes closed, she can see it. She does a small spin in a circle, arms out as though she were dancing and then she can feel it, can feel the wind in her hair and the movement of her clothes, even if she wears pants rather than her usual dresses.
She pauses when she hears a creak behind her.
He's here. He's really here, he's come to meet her, he's okay.
She spins around, her heart pounding in her chest and her eyes wide, but slumps when she sees there's no one there as she'd been expecting. It's just the creak of the worn floorboards and the damaged walls, the sounds of an old building wailing for its wounds. Steve isn't standing there in his uniform, alive and healthy and ready to dance. He isn't here. He's gone.
Isabel swallows down the thick lump in her throat.
Her previous weightlessness and imagination distinguished, Isabel walks slowly over to the bar and heads around it, staring up at the bottles. Some of them are smashed by falling debris and the floor is sticky with alcohol. She picks a couple of bottles from the shelf, probably the strongest she knows of, and then takes them with her to one of the booths at the back, the one that she and Steve always chose. She puts her bottles on the table but abandons them for a while moving over to the silent piano.
She sits carefully at the stool and slowly lifts the cover from the keys to reveal the ivory squares. Her fingers hover over the keys, but suddenly, she can't remember anything, can't remember any of the songs she knows; not even the first ones she ever played, the ones she's played her whole life. The spark dies as soon as she feels it. She stares at the keys for a little while longer before she simply closes the cover over the keys again and leaves the piano untouched, never again to produce her music.
Instead, because she can't stand the silence, she backtracks for a moment to the record player and gets out one of the records from the stash, putting it on quietly to somewhat fill the quiet of the club. The crooning jazz starts up, and she turns it up just enough that she can hear it but it isn't overwhelming, letting the sounds of the saxophone wash over her.
She goes back to the booth and sits, sinking into the cushions and just wishing they could swallow her whole. If the sky opened up above her and sucked her up into the Heavens, she would hardly care.
Isabel picks up the bottle of vodka, unscrews the lid, and takes a long swig of it straight, frowning and then coughing at the burn in her throat, right down into her stomach. She hasn't eaten much in days, not for lack of food but she just couldn't, and so she knows it won't take much to make her drunk. The sooner, the better, she thinks, and takes another gulping drink as though it were keeping her alive.
The amount of liquid in the bottle becomes significantly less as the time passes and the songs switch, the melody slightly different and faster. Isabel picks up one of the other bottles, sick of the vodka, and downs some whiskey too, and then some rum. The world is spinning around her as though she were on a merry-go-round and her pulse is screaming in her ears. The music seems to echo in her head, the sounds repeating themselves, the words drawn out and slow, and then there's a loud scratch as the needle comes to the end of the record and scratches along the paper sticker on the inside of the record.
Isabel stands to change it, not wanting to ruin the record, taking the bottle of rum with her. She stumbles out of the booth and straight onto the floor, her legs wobbly beneath her and the world spinning even more. The bottle flies from her grasp and smashes on the ground, glass and rum going everywhere and soaking into the floorboards. Isabel grabs her head and scrunches her eyes shut, trying to keep the world straight.
Once she feels a little better, she crawls on her hands and knees to the record player and stands on her knees, swaying, to change the record. She purposely picks a record she knows Steve liked, letting the voice of Bing Crosby fill the room.
She manages to get back to the booth and grab the bottle of whiskey from the table, though she doesn't get back into her seat. Rather, she slumps on the floor beside the booth, leaning against it heavily, the floorboards cold beneath her. She lets her head rest back against the wall and every now and then brings the bottle to her lips, missing her mouth a few times in her drunken haze, spilling it down her front and barely noticing.
A very small part of her mind tells her to stop. You'll regret doing this. You can't just spend the rest of her days drinking to forget what's happening. You'll be sick tomorrow. You look just like your father all those years ago. You've never been this drunk before in your life.
She recognises, somehow, that the voice is Steve, and she frowns.
"Unless it's you comin' back here, don't talk t'me, Stevie," she slurs, aiming it at that voice in her head. "Now is not the time for you to start berating me."
No one responds.
She realises then she's talking into the silence to no one in particular, and not even taking note of how insane she must sound talking to herself.
Isabel looks down at the ring on her finger, at the intricate design and the gold sparkling in the dull light. "It wasn't just a promise, it was a reminder," she whispers, as though Steve were really there and she was telling him. "Why'd you have to do this, Steve? Why'd you have to leave me?"
She scrunches her eyes shut against the pain and against the tears that well up, blurring her vision even more than the alcohol has. The rest of her mind seems to agree with her and blocks out that voice of Steve telling her to stop. Her own voice tells her to keep drinking to wash out the pain and the picture engraved in her mind of Steve as the plane crashes into the ice and of Bucky's terrified face as he falls from the train, and so she does. She drinks and drinks until she doesn't know what time it is or where she really is, and until she can barely keep her eyes open anymore.
The record scratches again that its finished, but she barely hears it.
What she does hear, though, is hurried footsteps across the floorboards coming toward her, and then a man's hand is placed softly on her shoulder, shaking her slightly.
"Stevie?" Isabel asks in part confusion and part excitement and part relief, opening her eyes and blinking repeatedly to clear the sleep. She frowns and then pouts when she's looking into Falsworth's worried eyes rather than Steve's beautiful baby blues. "He's not here?"
"No, Isabel, I'm afraid he isn't," Falsworth says quietly.
Isabel nods, her expression turning sad and her bottom lip quivering as though she may cry again. She raises the bottle to her mouth again to take another sip, but nothing comes out at all. She frowns and turns it upside down, but the bottle is empty except for one drop that comes out and drips onto her lap. Isabel lets the bottle drop toward the ground, and Falsworth just catches it before it can smash, putting it up on the table beside the others.
The horrid scraping noise from the record stops and then Peggy's also bending in front of Isabel, looking worried.
"Thought I'd take a page from Steve's book," Isabel tells her in a slur, pointing to the bottles. "It works for me, you know. Always been a lightweight. Not like Steve."
Peggy doesn't acknowledge that. "How much have you had to drink?" She asks worriedly instead, looking at the empty bottle in Isabel's hand, the one sitting on the table and the third smashed on the floor. She has no idea how much of each Isabel's drunk, but by the smell of her breath and her behaviour, she's had her fair share. She could have alcohol poisoning with that amount-
"Only thiiis much," Isabel slurs, drawing out the words as the shows Peggy with her thumb and forefinger a small gap between her fingers.
"We don't believe you in the slightest," Peggy says immediately for her and Falsworth, her tone disapproving and flustered.
When Isabel's eyes droop a little, Peggy pats her cheek to wake her up again. Isabel widens her eyes and blinks again to stay conscious. "Was tryin' ta forget," Isabel tells them both.
"Yeah, I figured, love. I don't blame you, I really don't. But Isabel, you could have gotten hurt, or given yourself alcohol poisoning. Or worse, you could have died."
"Good," Isabel says surprisingly, her tone entirely serious and all signs of intoxication apparently fading from her features, replaced with a mask of solemnness and sadness one should never wear. "Would've been good."
"You don't mean that," Peggy reassures her, her voice soft and comforting.
Isabel's eyes well with tears, the first proper bout of tears since she lost Steve. She shakes her head violently yes, her movements big and exaggerated, her hair flicking everywhere. "I do," she cries, black trails running down her face again. "I do. I… I d-don't see the point anymore. Of living. A-All m-my reasons are g-gone."
If everything else was gone, and only Steve remained, I would still be. But if he was gone, the world would be as foreign and unnerving as the woods we trek through every mission. I've grown so used to Steve, I can't function without him and I don't think I'd ever want to. He's always on my mind…
"Don't you start that bloody bullshit with me. Steve and Bucky would've wanted you to live," Peggy says firmly, her hand grasping Isabel's shoulder to get her to concentrate."
"They're gone. There's no point."
"You have many more reasons to live," Falsworth says pointedly, his tone slightly more sympathetic than Peggy's. "You have a family back home waiting for you, and you have a family here with us. There are so many people who love you. So many people and things for you to live for."
Isabel is still shaking her head, and they don't know if she's even heard what Falsworth's said. "I-I d-don't know how to d-do this a-anymore. I-it would be easier, Peg. It'd be s-so much e-easier," she cries through her tears and her wailing cries. "I-I'm drowning."
All of a sudden, she doesn't look twenty-four. She doesn't look drunk anymore either. She looks like a scared little child sitting on the ground, looking to someone, anyone for guidance. She looks like a child dragged in way too deep, drowning in sorrow and needing to be pulled from the depths. Peggy's heart breaks just that little bit more.
"Shh," Peggy hushes, pulling Isabel against her tightly and sharing a worried look with Monty. "Shh, love, everything will be alright in the end. I know it feels hard, like it will never get better. But it will, I promise. You'll never forget the pain and the memories, but they'll get easier to deal with. Time heals all wounds."
"H-How?"
"You have to give it time and let it work, love. It's only been two days," Peggy says patiently. She pulls back and takes the sides of Isabel's face, staring right into her eyes, brown to grey. "You will get through this, Isabel Barnes. You will, because you are one of the strongest people I have ever met. You will get through."
Isabel sighs, her eyes downcast. "If you say so," she mumbles, slurring once again, her voice betraying no sense that she believes Peggy's words.
Her eyes go a bit glassy and then droopy, and she slumps to the side. Peggy catches her before her head hits the ground. Falsworth stands and then leans over Isabel, picking her up easily from the ground and carrying her bridal style, Isabel's head flopping backward over his arm.
Peggy makes sure Isabel hasn't left anything before she leads Falsworth out of the burnt-out pub. She has a strange feeling in her stomach, both relived and a little triumphant that for a second time she's managed to save one of her friends from an alcoholic-induced demise, but also a sense of dread at the road ahead. Isabel's lost both her brother and her love, two major blows. It'll be much different this time, for her to move on, not that anyone fully moved on from the loss of Bucky before they lost Steve as well.
Falsworth carries her back to the hotel, a dead weight in his arms. The world is silent as Falsworth and Peggy walk beside each other in a silence, equally as quiet, except for the soft stomp of their boots on the pavement.
Isabel wakes up part way to the hotel, barely even recognising she's being carried through the streets. She blinks and looks up at the stars above, her eyes flicking around as she searches the night sky. Falsworth watches her, watches her face turn from curiosity into a deep frown of concentration.
"You see it?" Isabel asks vaguely, her voice still incredibly slurred. She sounds equally as confused as she looks, and Peggy turns at her voice, watching her as well.
"See what?" Falsworth asks in confusion.
"The brightest star in the sky," Isabel says as though it should be common knowledge. "It's Steve. We always said that if we died we'd become stars, and he'd be the brightest. He promised he would be up there, so I could see him shining. If he didn't come to the club that means he went up there," she says, pointing up at the sky.
Falsworth decides to humour her, slightly intrigued by the way her mind's working in her drunken haze. "You see him, then?"
Isabel frowns deeper, out of sadness rather than confusion. "No, none of them are bright enough," she decides. "He's probably catchin' up with Buck and Sarah first. They've been waitin' for him longer than I have."
"Probably," Peggy agrees, looking up at the stars herself. By the time she looks back down, Isabel is passed out again in Falsworth's arms.
The next morning, Isabel wakes up, somehow in her own bed, with a pounding headache. She groans and covers her face with the pillow, holding her head tightly as though the pressure will drive away the aches.
The last thing she remembers is looking up at the night sky, and then waking up here. She remembers going to the Stork Club and beginning to drink, but not much after that. Everything is surrounded by a hazy blur, some of it just a black spot of missing information. She knows she was drinking, can smell the alcohol on her own breath. She regrets it as soon as she works out what happened.
She chances the light of the room and blinks away the headache, spotting something on the bedside table. Sitting up as the room spins, she sees a glass of water, pain medication, and a small note on the table. Take the pills and drink all of the water. Howard has asked to see you in his lab at 1600 hours, the note reads, and Isabel recognises the handwriting as Peggy's. She suspects Peggy came to find her last night when she was drunk, just as she had for Steve.
Isabel dutifully swallows the tables and drinks the water before dragging herself out of the bed and into the bathroom. She's still wearing the clothes from the mission multiple days ago, and she smells terrible. She spends a long while in the shower, partly because she hasn't got the energy to actually move, but also because she spends the time thinking as she runs the soap slowly over her skin and washes her hair with shampoo. She scrubs and scrubs at her skin until it's red raw trying to get rid of all the dirt and alcohol smell and the memories.
Eventually, she turns off the water, but then she just stands there, dripping wet and cold, until her skin is mostly dried, and her hair is only damp. She grabs a towel and dries herself, pulls it through her hair to rinse out the water, and then puts on her clothes for the day. She doesn't bother with makeup – there's no one to impress anyway – and lets her hair dry into its natural curls before pulling it back into the neat bun. She never wears it like this, only when she can't be bothered dealing with it.
She looks at the clock on the bedside table and sees that it's half past three, leaving her thirty minutes until her meeting. She's slept all of the day away, practically, unless you could her near two hours in the bathroom.
Isabel leaves the room and walks down to the laboratories slowly, dragging her feet. As she walks through the hallways, everyone looks at her, does a double take, and all of their expressions morph either into surprise at seeing her or pity. Isabel wants to scream.
At four on the dot, Isabel walks into the laboratory and takes a seat at one of the abandoned chairs near where Howard is standing, his attention fixed on a large map of the world laid out on the table in front of him. There's a large cross marked on the area of ocean and icefields in the Arctic.
"Hey, Isabel," Howard says, looking up at her arrival, his face pinched into a worried frown. "How are you?"
"Okay, I guess," Isabel replies quietly, not looking at Howard. Instead she fiddles with the ring on her finger, fighting with her emotions as a wave of sadness rolls over her and she feels her eyes begin to sting with tears. "I don't know," she amends truthfully. She looks up then, at Howard's expression. "Please, don't look at me like that. Everyone's been giving me that pity look for the last two weeks, and I can't stand it."
"Alright, doll," Howard agrees easily, though it takes a bit more to school his expression.
"And don't call me that. Bucky called me that."
Howard thinks for a second on how to address the situation, even though he's had all day to ponder it, ever since Peggy found him this morning to tell him about Isabel's drunken breakdown last night. He doesn't want to upset her further but he wants to help her, desperately. He wants to help Steve, too, wants to find Steve.
When Peggy had spoken to him this morning, she'd mentioned again the possibility of Isabel going with Howard on the rescue team to find the Valkyrie, which Howard had been busy planning the last few days and had planned on leaving this afternoon once his crew were all finalised. Isabel still has the opportunity to come along if she wants. Howard is well aware that joining the team could be helpful to her recovery as it could not only give her something to do, but also give her closure. But then again, what if they never find the Valkyrie, or what if what they find is unpleasant? Howard isn't expecting anything but unpleasant. The ship crashed into below-freezing waters, or into the ice fields themselves, with a cabin full of explosives. No matter what, he isn't imagining a happy ending.
"Peggy told me that you wanted to join the rescue mission to find Steve." Isabel looks up at that and nods slowly. "I already have a boat out there searching, but they haven't got the proper equipment. All they're really looking for is something big and obvious. My boat will have the correct equipment to track the Tesseract - sonars, sensors, extraction equipment. We were supposed to leave this afternoon, but my submarine isn't ready yet and still needs a few more touches. I've postponed the boat until tomorrow morning, which also gives me time to speak to you about it."
Isabel smirks slightly, her eyes determined. Howard knows that look. She had left and returned from every Howling Commandos mission with the same look in her dark blue eyes. She shared that determined look with Bucky and Steve.
"I'm not sure it's the best idea."
Isabel's eyes flick to Howard, looking hurt.
"I need you to be honest with me - are you sure you're up for it?" Isabel opens her mouth to answer what would have been a lie. But now that she takes the time to think seriously about it, rather than just a passing comment, and now that the offer is on the table, she wonders if her current state would only become a burden on the mission. "Hear me out. It's only been three days since we lost contact with him," Howard continues, slowly and calmly. "And I don't think you are handling everything as well as you pretend to be. Not that anyone expects you to."
Isabel is silent. She fights to keep her face blank. Of course she isn't handling it well, but does anyone expect her to? She's lost everything in a matter of weeks. She'd gone to the Stork Club last night to try to drink away her feelings. A faint memory in her brain, only fuzzy... All my reasons for living are gone.
"We had a date," she finally says. "Eight o'clock at the Stork Club, two days ago. Steve promised. And he never skips out on his promises. Never. I went there yesterday, even though I was late. But, you know, when we go doesn't matter, it's more that we actually do."
"Belle, I don't think we'll..." Howard trails off, not knowing how to reply.
"Please, don't call me that either," Isabel breathes, holding a hand out to stop Howard. "I thought the search party would have found him by now," she says, seeming accusatory momentarily, her eyes narrowing toward Stark, before she slumps again in defeat. "I thought that we would've found the plane right after he crashed it, or maybe that he would've managed to land it safely. It was silly, to expect that, and I know that. I thought he'd be okay and we still could have gone. We never did enough when we were together, never danced enough."
Howard is silent, weighing up whether he should be frank with the broken woman in front of him. "Isabel," he begins slowly, moving toward her. He sits in the seat next to her, placing a comforting hand on her slim shoulder. "I don't blame you for wishing those things. It's only normal to hope for the best. But we have to be real, here." He pauses, choosing his words carefully but still wanting to be forceful. "Steve crashed into an icy ocean. The plane was going an unimaginable speed, it travelled from Belgium to the Arctic in minutes. He hit the water at that speed. I don't think any serum could have protected him from that-"
"I don't want to hear it, Howie. You don't have to tell me that he's dead for me to know it. But a part of me still wants to believe he may be okay, if that's alright with you? And most of me just wants to bring him home," Isabel interrupts simply. "If you don't find him, I will. I'm going to find Steve, even if it's the last thing I do. It doesn't matter what happens, where he is, what state I find him in... I'll find him with or without your help."
She isn't entirely sure how she thinks she could do that, but she says it anyway because its true. Isabel stands up at that and leaves the labs, having had enough of the conversation and having some things she needs to prepare if she's going on the rescue mission tomorrow morning.
"What if you don't like what you find?" Howard calls after her, standing from his own seat and following her into the hallway. He knows she can't be reasoned with in her state of mind and when she sets her mind to something, but he has to try before she does anything stupid or damages her own mental health even further.
Isabel stops in her tracks but stays facing away from Howard. "Then so be it, but I'm not going to just leave him like I left Bucky," she says stubbornly. Her eyebrows rise at her own comment, almost in shock.
Howard gives her a knowing look. "Steve went back every day searching for him. It was an impossible recovery."
"Steve looked, but I didn't," Isabel whispers. "And that ain't ever gonna sit right with me, that I didn't search for my own brother. Because Bucky damn well would've searched for me." Isabel takes a deep, shaky breath. "I need to find Steve."
"I understand," Howard says sympathetically.
"Thing is, Howard, you don't. Not really," Isabel says stubbornly, so much like Barnes and Rogers she noticeably winces. Her fists clench at her sides and her eyes plead to him. "What if he is alive somewhere? We have no idea what happened! He could have jumped from the plane… Maybe he didn't even land in the ocean? We don't know. So, I'm going to find out."
Tears are streaming freely down Isabel's cheeks as her words begin to tremble, her eyes growing dark and cold. Howard is silent, watching Isabel as she draws a shaky breath. She looks down at the ground, avoiding eye contact.
"I keep imagining him inside the ship; in the cold, scared and alone and injured. I don't want him to stay like that for much longer. And if we do find him, I want to be there, whether he's alive or not. If he's awake, I need to be there to reassure him. If not, I can't–" She pauses again, before looking Howard dead in the eye. "He said he would come back to me, Howard."
Howard is silent for a moment longer, pity rolling through his body for his friend. Eventually, he nods. "Okay, okay! You can come along. We'll have to return to docks to refuel and restock the ship, but other than that, I'll be out on the boat. But you can come and go as you please when we dock. But I'm not going to return until I have an answer."
Isabel lunges at Howard, hugging him tightly. "Thank you," she breathes, almost silently, into his ear.