Author's note: If you haven't seen the deleted scene from "The Avengers" that takes place just before the scene between Fury and Steve in the boxing gym, I suggest you go watch it now, as it is relevant to this chapter. It depicts Steve looking at the files of Peggy, Howard and his Howling Commandos, and wandering New York City alone and isolated. It's unfortunate that the scene was cut out, as it explains a lot about Steve's state of mind just before he's called up to fight Loki.

Thanks to Lamarquise, distanceincrowdedrooms, sofiarose613, 4ever, Amir-015, Nzie, and various Guests for your reviews!

Chapter 15

It was nearly midnight, and there was no sound in the laundromat but the quiet hum of the dryer. From her seat by the window, Sharon glanced up from her book at the only other occupant of the room, an older man with scraggly gray hair who was sitting at the folding table with his head laid down on his arms, dozing while he waited for his clothes.

The quiet made it easy for her to hear what was coming through her earpiece. Rogers was at the boxing gym across the street, and although all the clients and even the manager had now left for the night, still he remained. There was a continual flurry of loud thumps and grunts coming through her earpiece, and it was plain that Rogers was going through one of his usual insomniac routines, that of trying to beat the living daylights out of a punching bag.

In her head, she couldn't help but egg him on, silently willing him to hit it harder and faster. If he could only exhaust himself enough, maybe he would finally be able to sleep tonight. Despite the brief respite of a single night's sleep after his visit from Agent Hill, he'd immediately relapsed. But he hadn't spent his latest wakeful hours in the usual way, reading books or drawing or running. Instead he had sat at his kitchen table slowly leafing through the personnel files S.H.I.E.L.D. had sent him, then looking over at the phone, then going back to staring at the files. Rinse and repeat, twenty times in a night. Once he had gone so far as to get up, take the phone off the hook and punch in several numbers before he stopped, and then slowly hung up the phone and went back to slump at the table. Most of today had been spent in his numb phase, wandering the streets until he ended up at a restaurant near Stark Tower to sketch, too exhausted and detached to even notice the waitress trying to flirt with him.

Unfortunately, by the time the sun went down his numbness had fled. Sharon cringed slightly as she heard an unusually loud thump in her earpiece, followed by an odd swishing sound; Rogers had probably just destroyed another punching bag and spilled its sandy innards across the floor, the third one that night.

Her phone rang. The man in the laundromat looked over at her blearily, then put his head back down on the table.

Sharon glanced at the screen. It was Fury. Quickly, she pressed "accept" and put the phone to her ear. "Thirteen," she said.

Fury started talking without preamble, as usual. "I'm at Rogers' place. Where is he, and where are you?"

"Two blocks away," Sharon said, keeping her voice down. "Sully's Gym at 51st and 7th. I'm at the laundromat across the street."

"I just put a debriefing packet under his door." She could hear Fury's boots clopping rapidly in the background. "I'm coming over to give him the rundown on his assignment. Stay out of sight while I'm there."

Sharon paused a long moment, dismay flooding her whole body. "Sir, I thought you were waiting until he was stabilized to give him a mission."

"We can't afford to wait any longer. I need him now." She heard a car door slam. "Besides, your reports made it sound like he's on the mend."

"He was," Sharon said, "but he relapsed. He's on a really bad jag right now, Fury. He hasn't slept." She hesitated. "I hate to say it, but I don't think he's stable enough for-"

"It doesn't matter if he's ready or not," Fury interrupted. "I'll give him the your-country-needs-you speech. He won't turn me down, which is more than I can guarantee for Stark or Banner."

He was trying to bring in all three of them for a mission? "What is it, sir?" Sharon asked, brow creasing with sudden concern. "What's going down?"

"Need-to-know basis, Thirteen." Fury hung up. A moment later her earpiece went silent, too, and she knew she'd been disconnected from Rogers' mic.

A few minutes later, a black SUV pulled up to the curb across the street, and Fury climbed out. He strode into the gym without once looking in the direction of the laundromat. Sharon watched him disappear with a sinking feeling.

Because she knew Fury was right. There was no way Rogers was going to turn him down.

Steve's anger still hadn't cooled by the time he got back to his apartment, despite the spring chill in the night air.

Hydra's secret weapon. Schmidt's energy cube. Or the Tesseract, as it was now apparently being called. The thing that had been haunting his dreams on a regular basis since he'd first woken up from the ice.

It was back.

Steve couldn't help but think of the number of men he'd seen vaporized or disfigured by the weapons Hydra had developed using the power of the cube. The images flashed through his mind as clearly as if it had happened yesterday: The carnage on the battlefields. The medical camps filled with rows upon rows of groaning men. The Valkyrie itself, along with the weapons of mass destruction it had carried to obliterate America's eastern coast.

He'd been willing to die to stop Schmidt from using the Tesseract to kill any more people. For months now, every time Steve snapped out of yet another war flashback that left him shaken and exhausted, he had comforted himself that at least the thing was lost in the ocean where it couldn't do anyone any more harm. And then Nick Fury had strolled into the gym tonight and informed him, cool as a cucumber, that Howard Stark had fished it out of the ocean decades ago, that S.H.I.E.L.D. itself had been playing around with it all this time, and that they'd been so careless that it had fallen into the hands of yet another bully looking to gather more power to himself.

At least S.H.I.E.L.D. had only used it to generate energy. But for some reason Steve couldn't call that a comfort. Too many people knew that the Tesseract was useful for weapons development. It would always be a temptation for less-than-scrupulous men. Why couldn't they have just left well enough alone?

When he made it back to his apartment, after a quick shower and a change of clothes, Steve read through the debriefing packet Fury had left, absorbing it as quickly as he could. When he got to the intel on Loki, though, he had to stop and do a double-take.

Squinting his eyes, he looked at Loki's page again, focusing on one particular line. That couldn't mean what he thought it meant... could it? He looked up, astonished. So that was what Fury had meant by "he's not from around here." He'd assumed the director was simply telling him that Loki wasn't American. Steve blinked several times, and then pulled out his wallet and checked to make sure he had 10 bucks in there. He should have known better than to bet with a man like Nick Fury.

He had just finished reading the last page of the packet when there was a knock at the door. When Steve opened it, a balding man in a suit with a S.H.I.E.L.D. badge clipped to the lapel was standing there.

"Captain Rogers?" he said. "I'm here to pick you up for your mission." His voice was soothing, almost bland, but there was a hint of nervous energy in the way he held himself. He offered his hand to Steve, and when he shook it, Steve noticed the man's hand was slightly sweaty. Definitely nervous. Well, he had plenty of reason to be, with the Tesseract in the hands of an enemy combatant. "I'm Agent Phil Coulson."

"You wrote the report I just read," Steve observed, recognizing the name, and stepped aside to let Coulson in.

"I did." Coulson clasped his hands in front of him loosely, turning to face Steve as he closed the door. "Any questions?"

Steve opened the file again. "So, this Thor and Loki..." he said, wanting to make sure he hadn't misunderstood somehow. "They're from another realm? In another part of space?"

"Right," Coulson said.

"Then... they're aliens."

"Pretty much."

Steve nodded slightly, and then flipped through the pages in the file again, pausing on the one that outlined Dr. Selvig's extraction theory, along with a bunch of gobbledegook about Couloumb barriers and quantum tunneling and anti-proton collisions. He longed to ask Coulson what it all meant, but he held his tongue, hesitant to admit that he still didn't know about this stuff, which he was sure any kid on the street could explain in this time. Well, it probably didn't matter much. S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn't expect him to operate the Tesseract, just get it back for them.

"You're taking this very well."

Steve glanced up to see Agent Coulson looking at him with bemusement.

"The existence of aliens?" Coulson prompted. "Invading our planet and stealing our stuff? This doesn't surprise you?"

"I assume this is old news," Steve said. He'd so often used his poker face to hide the fact that he didn't understand the things everyone else in this time took for granted, he was starting to do it reflexively now.

"I wouldn't say that," Coulson said mildly. "The public doesn't have a clue. If we're lucky, we'll get this little mess cleaned up fast enough that we won't let the cat out of the bag and cause a global panic." He paused. "Nice to not be the last one to find out for a change, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Steve said, surprised and a little comforted that Coulson understood. He glanced down at the picture of the Tesseract again. "It all kinda makes sense, actually," he said slowly. "There was something about that thing that was... unearthly." He took a deep breath. "So Fury wants this guy — Loki — captured, not killed?"

"Our top priority is to find out where he took the Tesseract," Coulson said. "I don't expect it will be easy. I mean, he's the god of mischief. You know, from the old Norse myths."

"Yeah, he's just as much a god as Johann Schmidt was," Steve said.

Coulson gazed at Steve steadily. "Well, whatever you want to call him, he's Asgardian. They're far stronger than humans. I know your reputation, Captain, probably better than anyone around here, but judging from what I saw in New Mexico..." He hesitated a second. "I just want to be upfront with you about what we're dealing with. I know you're a man who appreciates honesty. I think Loki might be enough to give even you a run for your money."

Steve shrugged slightly. What could Loki do to him that was worse than what had already been done?

Just then Coulson's pocket beeped. He pulled out a slender phone and glanced at it. "Oh, good. Banner's in," he said, looking pleased as he put it away.

"Banner?" Steve said.

"I can fill you in on the way there. If you're in, that is. You ready?"

Steve opened his mouth, and then closed it again. Was Coulson simply asking if he had packed what he needed? Or if he was ready to be put back into combat in general? He tried to picture himself as he had seen Brock Rumlow the first time he had met him, dressed all in black with the S.H.I.E.L.D. logo on his sleeve and modern combat gear strapped on. Steve wasn't quite seeing it, and yet...

He suddenly realized that ever since he'd opened up the debriefing file, he hadn't had one single thought about his own mental state. The flashbacks and the rage had subsided, thanks to the distraction. He'd been so interested in the mission that he'd even forgotten to look at Peggy's file where it was sitting on the kitchen table three feet away, although the compulsion to do so never seemed to take a vacation.

If he refused the job, he'd have to stay here and go back to all that. Alternatively, he could take care of Loki for these people before he used the Tesseract for whatever mischief he had planned, and undoubtedly save a lot of lives in the process.

It wouldn't be quite the same as saving his own world. He was a stranger now, fighting for a people he no longer knew or understood. But they needed protecting, and he could be the one to do it. He could make himself useful. He could fight an alien with delusions of godhood. It wasn't anything he had ever pictured himself doing, but then again, Johann Schmidt had stripped himself of his humanity so thoroughly that he might as well have been an alien. How different could it be to face Loki?

"I'm ready," Steve said firmly.

A smile spread across Coulson's face. "Fantastic," he said. "I have a car waiting downstairs. We'll be on the jet and in the air in no time. S.H.I.E.L.D. will provide all your gear. Anything else you need to get? We're in a bit of a rush."

Steve patted his pocket, making sure the compass was inside. "I've got everything I need."

"Let's go."

TO BE CONTINUED

Author's note: A short chapter today, but the next one is an action-packed monster with Loki, Iron Man, Thor and Black Widow! In fact, the next few chapters will take place during the events of "The Avengers," skipping around to fill in some "missing scenes" we didn't get to see. This might be a good time to watch the movie again, if your memory needs refreshing!

I welcome reviews!