69.

?, Arctic Ocean

February 23rd, 1945

Isabel stands at the back of the boat. The cold winds whip her hair around her face and seem to cut through her thick clothes, chilling her to the bone.

It had taken a few days of sailing and open sea to reach the search site that Howard has worked out. Howard developed the search area based on the direction the Valkyrie flew, where Steve had said the plane was, and by the signature of Tesseract energy he picks up on a device he invented that can source out readings of the energy. He's got a very wide area to search for of very deep sea, and they're expecting it will take a while of searching, if they don't get lucky, to ever have a chance of finding the Valkyrie. The landscape is constantly changing, ice forming and melting, snow and blizzards moving over the land. It's a dangerous territory to be working in, and the chances of the Valkyrie being at the bottom of the ocean or covered in snow on an ice field is very high.

Once the boat and its crew reach the search area, which has been divided into smaller grid points, the captain of the ship steers the boat, stopping in the correct position, and Howard sends down the submarines he's invented, searching the area. They concentrate mainly on areas of where Howard detects higher concentrations of Tesseract energy, hoping that the plane, even though it lost the Tesseract mid-flight, will still emit some form of energy signature, as the energy must have been coursing through the plane to power it.

Howard works tirelessly for days, Isabel by his side, scouring every section of the ocean floor beneath them. They watch on the cameras that are within the submarine, and for a while, Howard lets Isabel steer one around, searching the ocean floor.

There are a lot of variables to consider. Even though Howard seems adamant that Steve is lost, there are also a lot of contradicting theories rolling around the boat from the inventor himself and from the crew, who often provide their opinion. Everyone's suggestions are always valid and based off their evidence, and many of them have something to do with the super-soldier serum. A few of the crew members decide Steve might have parachuted or jumped from the plane just before it hit the water. One of them suggests he may have begun to swim back toward land. Howard sends that man to his room to think because "no one could swim all those hundreds of miles back to land in freezing waters, not even a super-soldier".

They aren't exactly sure how, if they find the Valkyrie, they'll recover Steve anyway. If the Valkyrie did sink underwater, the entire plane probably filled with water as well. If Steve was inside, he likely drowned, not to mention how cold it would have been. But Howard had said that Steve's body temperature was higher and he was more resilient to cold than the average person. If he'd managed to survive the impact, which would have been like smacking onto concrete at 500 miles per hour or faster, he could have found a way to swim to the surface and escape. If he wasn't too terribly injured, his strength would have allowed him to out-swim the force of the sinking wreckage pulling him downward. So, while Howard searches beneath the waves, they post men on all sides of the ship with binoculars to search the ice sheets around them for anyone lying on top of them waiting for rescue, or for the plane itself if it landed on the ice.

If Steve didn't manage to escape and he is still inside the plane, they can't possibly lift the entire plane from the depths of the ocean – they just don't have the ability to move something that large and heavy, especially not with their equipment and relatively small crew. The Valkyrie is larger than any vessel they've got at their disposal. But perhaps they could send divers down to retrieve the… body. The thought still makes Isabel shiver.

Every now and then, Howard sends Isabel away for a break, telling her to get some food and some sleep, but she always goes to the same spot at the back of the boat instead to look out at the looming expanse of blue ocean and white ice fields stretching all around them. It's kind of calming, if she doesn't think about how dangerous and abandoned it is, and if it weren't for the fact that her own eyes flick around the ice fields around them, searching for any signs of any life at all. She thinks she sees him sometimes, when there's a movement on the edge of her vision, but when she looks, it's just a hole in the ice or a frozen wave.

Out there on the balcony of the ship, she almost feels like she's the only person in the entire world. It probably isn't the best considering everything, but she'd take the quiet over the bombings and gunfire and screaming and blood.

Suddenly behind her, Isabel hears a commotion in the cabin. It's always silent because they never find anything. A commotion, yelling and excitement and triumph, means they've found something of interest. Isabel swallows down her fear and the nausea in her stomach and hurries into the cabin. Howard's at the submarine control panel in front of the camera and controls for one of the submarines, moving it carefully with the robotic mechanisms.

"What did you find?" Isabel asks, skidding to a stop beside him, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

"The Tesseract," Howard says, picking up the glowing cube from the bottom of the ocean floor with the robotic hand on the submarine, the cube shining a bright white against the black of the water on the greyscale screen.

Isabel pauses, staring at the Tesseract – the object of Schmidt's fascination that led to his ultimate demise; the mythological stone that powered all of Hydra's advancement and was still not enough to stop Captain America; the thing that caused them all this trouble. As much as she hates it, despises the very idea of the cube, she feels a wave of hope rush over her.

"That means the Valkyrie must be nearby," Isabel finally whispers, her face hopeful for the first time since they got on the boat and looking at Howard for reassurance.

"I'd say so, yes," Howard eventually agrees, his tone not overly believable, looking at Isabel nervously. That hope is not always a good thing. Isabel frowns back at him.

"Sir?" One of Howard's engineers asks, wondering what to do next and which direction to go in.

"Take us to the next grid point," Howard says as he steers the submarine back up to the surface, Tesseract in tow.

"But there's no trace of wreckage. And the energy signature stops here," the man argues in confusion. He holds up the energy signature tracer, which detects nothing else in the vicinity.

"So, we move to the next grid point. That receiver can only detect a signature within a few miles at most," Howard argues back. "Just keep looking," Howard pushes, turning and raising his eyebrows significantly at the man. "It's gotta be somewhere."

?, Arctic Ocean

February 27th, 1945

Late one night, while Howard is sitting at the desk in his quarters, pouring over the map and attempting to track the plane's journey with their new information of where the Tesseract landed, there's a knock at the door. He reaches across the small room and opens the door from where he sits, eyebrows rising when Isabel stands there, a bottle of whiskey in her hands.

"I couldn't sleep," she says by way of explanation, walking into the room and sitting on the end of Howard's bed.

"Is that a normal thing for you?" Howard asks, because it's always been that way for him.

"I haven't really slept much in the last two years, no," she admits, popping open the lid and taking a long swig. "But the last month, not really at all. I get maybe two hours a night, if I'm lucky."

"That isn't healthy. Sleep deprivation is a real and dangerous thing."

"I know it is," Isabel reassures. "I try as hard as I can to sleep. But between it all, I haven't been able to. Sometimes, a little nightcap works wonders."

"From what Carter told me, your nightcaps are sometimes binge drinks," Howard says disapprovingly, taking the bottle when she offers it and taking his own burning sip.

"Depends how bad I want to sleep or forget."

Howard pauses a moment, thinking. "What is it that keeps you up at night?"

"The nightmares, mostly," Isabel says quietly, a hollowness to her expression, her eyes empty. "I just see it over and over. Bucky blasted out the train, falling with a terrified scream all those hundreds of metres to the bottom of the ravine, Steve crying for him as he clings to the side of the train. I wasn't there but I saw the footage. It's like I could hear his terrified screaming, could hear Steve shouting for him. And then I see Steve at the pilot's seat, terrified and talking to me, the ocean approaching fast as the plane freefalls. I always imagine that he survived it, that he laid there for days until he died, waiting for us to come and find him. Or that he's still alive, suffering, waiting for us. While I was at the Stork Club drinking myself into oblivion, he was in the plane, freezing to death, crying and praying… It's horrible. I want to find him so that I know what happened, but at the same time, I really don't want to know."

"I know how you feel," Howard reassures. "You want closure, but closure makes it all the more real."

Isabel nods. "I'm also waiting for a response from my parents. I sent them a letter after we lost Bucky to explain what happened. I thought they deserved that, and for it to come from me. I asked Peggy to radio us when the letter comes through. They won't take Bucky's death very well at all. Buck… he was special. And then, well, before they even got the letter from me in the mail, they might have seen about the plane crash…"

"They would have seen it in the news, right? In the paper? On the radio?" Howard pauses, his brows furrowing. "Did they know about Steve?"

"Yeah, they knew. Before we left New York, Steve vaguely explained he was going through an experiment. Then, while he was on the USO Tour, I had to explain to them why the skinny kid they always knew was suddenly six feet two and two hundred pounds. They were proud as punch, of course, even though they didn't know much about what we were doing."

"They weren't scared?"

"If they were, they hid it well. We left them plenty in the dark, anyway. The comics, though… my brother reads them, my younger brother, and my parents worked out pretty quickly that the dangerous missions our comic counterparts embark on aren't so far from the truth. Especially after I was injured. They knew how dangerous it was, but I guess I always reassured them that Steve could protect us all. Apparently, I was wrong. I should never have put that pressure on Steve's honour, even though I never pressured him like that in person." She pauses, looking down at her hands. "They'll be devastated. Steve was like a son to them, too."

Howard isn't quite sure how to reply to that. His parents aren't exactly in the picture, so he rarely thinks of how they would react to his behaviour. But Isabel and Bucky and Steve, they all had families, close families, that are going to be affected by this just as much as them. He realises then that Isabel's mentioned her own family – a mother, father, sister and brother – but she's said nothing of Steve's relatives.

"Steve, did he… does he have a family?" Howard asks carefully, still unsure what way to phrase the question. Did or does? Is or was?

"No," Isabel says quietly. "His father died when he was only six months old from complications of mustard gas poisoning. He fought in the Great War. Steve's mother, Sarah, she raised him all through his childhood; even though he was so sick, she never gave up on him. When Bucky and Steve became friends, Bucky became a helping hand looking after him and paying for Steve's medications and schooling. I only found out about that last year." Isabel pauses, swallowing hard. "My mother would often have Steve over after school when Sarah was at work, so pretty quickly I became friends with him, too, and I guess the rest is history."

"What did Sarah do?"

"She was a nurse. She worked all crazy sorts of hours, but she had to. Nearly all of her money went on rent, food, or medications. Seeing her as a nurse and saving people was what made me want to that myself. She got me into nursing school. I mean, I passed the tests easily myself, but she helped me enrol, and then she secured me a position at the hospital. I worked with her a while as her junior nurse while I was training until I was handed over to another nurse when Sarah was transferred to another department… the tuberculosis ward." Isabel pauses and shivers. "That work would eventually kill her. She contracted TB and she couldn't shake it. Died in October nineteen-forty-two."

"I'm sorry," Howard says sincerely. "She sounds like she was a beautiful lady. I would have liked to have met her."

"She was," Isabel agrees. "I loved her like my own mother. At least she isn't alive to see all this. She would've been proud of Steve, but she would've been worried sick. One of her biggest fears was that she would outlive Steve, and that fear was pretty justified considering how many times we nearly lost him over the years to illness. If she lost him, I'm not sure she would've coped at all."

They drink in silence for a while longer, passing the bottle back of forth. The whiskey slowly fills the void, but not entirely, and not forever. Isabel shifts on the bed. Isabel tells Howard she just didn't want to sit alone and for him to keep doing what he was doing when she interrupted, so he goes back to his work, pouring over the map again and making marks with his pencil. The room is silent, but not uncomfortable, and being in each other's presence is somewhat comforting. The boat rocks slightly in the waves, the wind outside cold and dull. A spray of water splashes on the circular window.

"Why did we come here?" Isabel asks, seemingly out of the blue.

Howard turns around from where he's working at his desk, looking at her in confusion. Her legs are tucked up to her chest, arms wrapped around her shins, staring at the ring on her finger. She spins it around with her other hand, fiddling with it absentmindedly. She looks up at Howard eventually for an answer, though Howard isn't entirely sure what answer she is searching for.

"To the ocean?" Howard asks, unsure. "Well, to find your man, sweetheart."

"No, I mean… why did the three of us come to war in the first place? Bucky, Steve and I," she clarifies, looking thoughtful.

"I know you all had your reasons," Howard says, putting down his pencil and spinning around to give her his full attention.

"It was a mistake. I shouldn't have let this happen."

"What do you mean, doll?"

Isabel glares, because she told Howard not to call her that, but she speaks anyway. "When Bucky got his draft letter, he was so scared. He didn't want to go. He could think of nothing worse. I should have smuggled him to Mexico or Canada so he could dodge his enlistment. And even if he came to war, I should've tried harder to get him to go home after Steve freed him from Hydra. I should've made him go back to Brooklyn," Isabel says quietly, the hollow look of her eyes replaced with a heartfelt guilt. "When Steve signed himself up for Project Rebirth, I should have put a stop to it; should have begged him not to do it and to stay. I never should have let him walk into the unknown like that."

"He was an adult, Is. Rogers could make his own decisions," Howard protests.

"Steve was blinded by what he wanted. He spent his whole life being downtrodden, judged, restricted, told 'no'. He was so determined to do good, to show the world what he could do. He couldn't see the danger. And I was so blinded by my desperate wish to give him what he wanted, because I was so sick of seeing him underwhelmed and underappreciated, that I didn't think either. Or at least not enough to stop it."

Howard, again, doesn't know what to say. He has a feeling no matter what he says to persuade her, she won't believe him. These guilts, they're deep within, and it's going to take a long time for her to work through them. They're mistakes playing on her mind. The things she's feeling guilty for are the events that sparked everything of the last two years. If Bucky hadn't gone to war, Steve probably wouldn't have signed up for Rebirth in his desperate attempt to catch up to his friend. Maybe he would've been content to stay in Brooklyn if Bucky was still there. If there was no Captain America, there would be no Hydra raids, no Howling Commandos. And if there were no raids, none of them would've been experimented on, none of them would've been hurt, and none of them would've died. Sure, they'd have sacrificed a few good things, like their friends and Peggy and Steve's health and defeating Hydra, but they'd all be alive and living happily in Brooklyn as they always had before.

Isabel takes a long swig of whiskey, wincing at the burn. She meets Howard's eyes then, utterly broken. "We should never have come here," she whispers. "Should never have let this happen." She runs a hand down her face. "God, it should never have been us."

"Who else would've been able to do it? If Steve wasn't Captain America and Bucky wasn't a Commando and you weren't the medic, maybe Hydra could never have been defeated."

"You think no one else in the world could've done it?" Isabel asks, sceptical.

"No, I don't. I think you three and your dynamic was the solution. I think without you three, it wouldn't have been possible. Sure, the Commandos still could've come together and someone else could've been Captain America, but maybe they wouldn't have been successful. Hell, if it hadn't been Steve and Bucky who were injected with those serums, maybe there wouldn't have been any super soldiers anyway because no one else has survived successfully that we know of without some major side effects. It was meant to be those two."

Isabel shakes her head. "I don't believe that. Of the two billion people on this planet, only three can fill those roles? It doesn't work like that, Howie."

"Okay, for argument's sake, let's say it doesn't. Other people could have done it. But would you really let someone else take their place?" Howard asks quietly, clearly expecting Isabel to say no.

"Steve and Bucky, they wouldn't have. They wouldn't have wanted to let anyone else suffer in their place. But me...Yes, I would. If that makes me a terrible person, I couldn't give a damn. I'd do anything to have them back, Howie. Anything."

"Sweetheart, you gotta respect that this was what they chose. Bucky chose to fulfil the draft, Steve chose to become Captain America, and you chose to follow them. You all chose to continue fighting." Howard leans forward and takes her hand, squeezing it tightly. "You are only responsible for yourself. None of the blame for anything else goes on you."

Isabel glares at Howard a moment, clearly not liking how he's seeing through her guilt, how he's finding the cracks and holes in her logic. Eventually, though, she nods, but she doesn't look convinced.

"I'm just... angry. At everything," she admits.

Howard sits on the bed beside her and pulls her into a hug, feeling a little guilty for getting snappy with her. He rubs her back. "I'm sorry, Barnes. I want them back, too. Everyone does. But we can't change what's already been done. We can't rewrite the past or go back and change it. As much as it would be nice to fix the world when we've got the hindsight, it isn't possible. I'm sorry."

"I know," Isabel whispers. "The world would be very different if we could rewrite the past. But I'm not so sure it would be any less terrible. There's people out there who want to watch the world burn."

"Exactly. We can't change the past, it isn't possible. So, we have to learn to accept what's happened, as hard as it may be, and instead look forward to the future. The future, sometimes, is all we have left."

"We have our memories of the past," Isabel supplies.

"That we do, my friend," Stark says, finally pulling away and looking Isabel in the eyes. "You hold onto those memories, okay? You remember even the finest details. One day, you're gonna be able to look back and it won't hurt as much. You'll be able to think back and laugh and smile, rather than feel like the memories are ripping you to shreds."

"I hope so, I really do," Isabel says, her eyes downcast to the ring on her finger. "I… I can still see them in my head, as they were – laughing and joking, smiling at me. I can hear their voices. Right now… it hurts to hear and see them. I dread going to sleep or remembering things because it means it's gonna hurt. I want to get to the point where I like to see them, where I miss them but it doesn't hurt. Where I look forward to remembering, and I can laugh with them."

"You will, I promise," Howard says, kissing her on the forehead. "As Peggy told you, give it time."

Isabel leaves not long after, her eyes glassier than when she came in, and retreats to her own quarters in silence.

Although their conversation was open and meaningful, and maybe provided her a bit of closure, Howard is wracked with guilt. He should've known it would be bad to allow her to come. The suspense with nothing to distract her isn't healthy. Wallowing in her own pity and sadness, and in the memories, isn't good for her, not when she needs to start accepting what happened. Not that he expects her to move on, it's only been a little more than a week since they lost Steve, and four since they lost Bucky. But she needs to learn how to start healing and being here isn't helping.

Besides, if they found Steve and he was gone, couldn't be saved, it wouldn't be healthy for her to see that. The chances of him being alive, or salvable, are growing slimmer every hour that passes, especially if the ship crashed into the ocean like they suspect. Sure, if he is alive and conscious, it would be a relief for Isabel to be there to comfort him, but it's unlikely, and everyone on the boat is aware of that and prepared for what they might find.

Howard decides that when they get back to port, which will be soon as they need to restock and check in with headquarters, he won't be allowing her back on the boat. She can do much more and be much more productive and distracted at the base with the other Commandos and Peggy. He'll bring her the closure she so desperately wants; she doesn't need to be here to get it.

Howard goes to sleep not long after, unable to work anymore on his project and on the planning of the rescue mission. He lies in his bed, staring up at the ceiling, just able to hear the sound of someone crying themselves to sleep on the other side of the wall.