Chapter 26

"Go ahead in," the secretary told Sharon Carter before she could even announce herself, and then leaned forward to press a button that slid open the door behind her. "Director Fury will be here in a minute."

Fury's office wasn't empty, Sharon discovered when she walked in; Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton and Brock Rumlow were already waiting there. Romanoff was sitting in Fury's chair, her feet up on the desk, chewing on a pencil with a contemplative air. Her hair wasn't its usual fall of red curls; she'd straightened it and had it cut bluntly at the ends, which had the effect of making her look almost severe, although her beauty still shone out. Sharon wondered idly if the change had been a matter of fashion preference, or just one of the usual tricks of women in their business to keep them from being recognized too easily.

Barton was perched on the edge of Fury's desk, taking a swig from one of those energy drinks that contain an obscene amount of caffeine and sugar. "Agent 13," he said politely, nodding to her.

"Hey. Go get me one of those," Rumlow said, nudging Barton with his elbow.

Barton unexpectedly produced a second can from the pocket of his jacket and handed it to Rumlow. "Knew you'd say that," he said with a hint of smugness, and Rumlow raised the can in a silent toast to Barton before cracking it open.

"13?" Barton asked, holding up his can. "You want one? I'll go grab one for you."

"No thanks," she said quickly. As if she needed something like that to put her on edge. A meeting with Fury did the trick just fine.

Just then, Fury himself strode into the room and took in the four of them in a single glance, his eye lingering on Romanoff's feet on his desk with a faint scowl of disapproval, but he merely leaned up against the cabinets and folded his arms expectantly.

"Final recommendations on Steve Rogers," he said without preamble. "Agent 13?"

"He's doing well," Sharon said warmly. "A few lingering symptoms here and there, but nothing like before. He's stable, he's happy, and he's anxious to get back into the fight. I think we should let him."

Fury nodded. "Barton? Romanoff? How did your training with him go?"

"Sir, I have never seen anyone work that hard or learn that fast," Barton put in. "Steve drinks in new combat forms the same way Rumlow here downs Red Bull." He slapped Rumlow's back, and Rumlow snorted with agreement. "And I have to say, sir: he is one of the easiest people to get along with that I have ever worked with. Just an absolute pleasure. Agents are gonna be fighting each other to get assigned alongside him."

"Romanoff?" Fury prompted.

She smiled slightly, tilting her chin up at Fury. "Ditto."

Fury raised an eyebrow at her brevity, but moved on without comment. "Rumlow?"

"He's a force to be reckoned with," Rumlow agreed. "He gave me and the boys a real good run for our money these last few weeks. Of course, he's no Hulk. He ain't impervious — if he gets shot point-blank in the back of the head he'll be just as dead as anyone — but even though he feels every hit he takes, he takes it like a man and gets up and dishes it right back out. He's easily S.H.I.E.L.D.'s best asset, sir: The perfect soldier."

"Steve doesn't like it when you use that word," Romanoff suddenly interjected.

Rumlow stared at her blankly. "What, soldier?"

Her only answer was a sly smile, and after a moment, Rumlow shrugged one shoulder and turned back to Fury. "Sir, I recommend you put him out in the field as soon as possible. He's ready."

"I agree," Sharon chimed in.

Fury looked at Romanoff and Barton, who exchanged glances.

"Nick, we wanted him out weeks ago," Romanoff said.

"Mostly because he's gonna make our jobs so much easier," Barton added with a glint of fun in his eyes.

"I guess that makes it unanimous," Fury said. He stood up and opened the door to his office. "Thank you for your work, everyone."

Fury had the rare gift of keeping meetings short and to the point, and Barton and Rumlow both fairly bolted for the door: it was Friday afternoon and they were probably glad to get the chance to leave a little early. Romanoff, on the other hand, made no move to go, she just crossed her ankles and wiggled deeper into the seat to get more comfortable.

Sharon nodded to Fury and strolled out, past the secretary's desk and through the secure door into the corridor. Barton and Rumlow were just turning the corner out of sight, leaving Sharon free to slip into a nearby conference room, where she found Maria Hill waiting to hear the second half of her report.

"Something more you wanted to say?" Fury asked Romanoff knowingly, shoving one fist inside his pocket as he paced the length of his office.

"You know, when I first met him, I thought Rogers was an even better actor than I was," Romanoff said, tipping her head back against the seat to look up at him. "Noble and upright and honest and all that Captain America baloney. Not a single crack in the facade. Pretty impressive feat."

"But?" Fury said expectantly.

Romanoff shook her head slowly, growing thoughtful. "It isn't an act, is it? He's the real deal. I never would have thought it was possible. A grown man, who's seen the things he's seen... and somehow he kept himself above it all." Her eyes flicked up to Fury's face, genuine puzzlement etched in her features. "Do you know that was possible?"

Fury took a long moment to answer. "In his day, maybe. It's a different world now."

"Is it?" Romanoff asked softly, almost to herself. She tapped the pencil against her lips a few times, and then looked up at Fury with almost a challenge in her eyes. "Rumlow's wrong," she said flatly. "Rogers isn't a perfect soldier. He's way too nice for that."

Fury smirked slightly. "Going back on your recommendation, Romanoff?"

"He's a good man," Romanoff said seriously. "And that makes him a lot more dangerous."

Fury's brow contracted. "More dangerous? How so?"

Romanoff shrugged one shoulder. "Even the perfect soldier can be beaten, if you throw enough resources and personnel at him. But a good man, well... you're going to have to beat all the people who follow him, too. People who love goodness as much as he does." Her voice unexpectedly went a little softer, her eyes growing distant. "They're drawn to him like moths to a flame."

Fury gave her a look that was a little too knowing. "He get to you, Romanoff? Turn you into one of his moths?"

"Of course not," she said quickly. "But... he doesn't even try to draw people to him. That's exactly why it's so hard to resist." She took her feet off the desk and stood up, looking at him with a sudden suspicion. "Haven't you felt it too, Nick?" She scrutinized him carefully for a long moment. "You have, haven't you?"

But Fury didn't answer, he just stared out his window for a long moment, back stiff. "Don't you have some place to be, Romanoff?" he asked abruptly. "I've got a lot of work to do."

One corner of her lips turned up in a faintly suppressed smile, and then she left.

"Agent 13," Maria Hill said expectantly. "Have a seat."

"Fury said you had more questions for me," Sharon said, closing the door and joining her at the end of the conference table.

Hill nodded, folding her arms and resting them on the table thoughtfully. "I'd like to know who's getting close to Rogers, particularly during his hours away from the Triskelion."

"Romanoff most of all," Sharon said promptly. "She goes out of her way to draw him out. I mean, even after she spends all day with him at work, she's constantly texting him in the evenings, and going out with him on the weekends."

Hill's eyes flicked up to her face in surprise.

"I don't mean 'going out' going out," Sharon said quickly. "At least, I don't think- Well, I guess maybe, but I think it's just a friendly thing. Hanging out at his place, or hers, or out and about in the city." She shut her mouth before she devolved in full-blown babbling. She didn't quite understand Romanoff's zeal when it came to befriending Rogers, and thanks to the strangeness of Fury's assignment for her, Sharon had become more suspicious than she wanted to be. Was Fury worried that someone would try to mess with Rogers' head somehow? Undermine his loyalties to S.H.I.E.L.D.? Was he worried about Romanoff in particular? Given her past, it seemed obvious to suspect her of ulterior motives. But then why assign her to work closely with Rogers in the first place?

"Uh-huh," Hill said, stretching out the syllables as she made a small note on a notepad. "And is Rogers responding to her?"

"Yeah. I don't go through his apartment much anymore — Fury told me to back off from that — but the few times I have, I've looked through his sketchbook and seen sketches of her in there. And Barton, too," she added. "He flattered them both; I think they've made an impression on him."

Hill made another note. "Barton too. Okay."

"Are you worried about that?" Sharon asked before she could stop herself.

"Me? I don't worry about anything." Hill's face was unreadable. "Who else?"

"This maybe isn't exactly what you're looking for, but I think it's worth mentioning," Sharon said. "Rogers hasn't spent much time outside of work with Agent Klein, but he-" Sharon considered the right words. "Well, you know what Klein's like. He's one of the best technicians we have, but most agents don't realize it. He's so easy to overlook. But Rogers, he goes out of his way to talk to him. He's always asking his opinion, coaxing him out of his shell. And lately Klein's been a different man. He doesn't always hover around in the background anymore. I've even heard him speak up in a few meetings."

"I noticed that," Hill said, sounding a little surprised. "I wondered what that was about. Usually it's like pulling teeth trying to get him to talk. In person, I mean; he's always preferred communicating through emails." She added Klein's name to the list. "Okay. Who else?"

"Gabe. The janitor from our Manhattan headquarters, the one who helped Rogers transition into modern life after he first woke up?"

"Rogers has been to see him?" Hill asked, puzzled, and no wonder: Lacking the proper security clearance, Gabe had never even been told who Rogers really was, although he must have figured it out from watching the news after the Battle of New York. But then Rogers had transferred to D.C.

"Not exactly," Sharon said. "Not in person. But he signed over his last paycheck to Gabe."

"A whole paycheck? What on earth for?" Hill said in mystified tones.

"I took the liberty of contacting Gabe's supervisor," Sharon said. "Apparently he quit his job that same day to enroll in John Jay. His supervisor wasn't surprised; he'd been saving up for that for a while. He'd been planning to quit a year from now, but I guess his plans got accelerated. A check that big would do it."

"Did Gabe contact Rogers recently?" Hill asked with a frown.

"No," Sharon said positively. "They haven't spoken since New York. I think Rogers just got the idea on his own. You know, he- he never got to finish his own education, back in his own time. He went for a year, and then he just couldn't afford any more. And the way he used to talk to Gabe, when I was listening in on the mics... I think maybe he saw a little of himself in Gabe."

"Wow," Hill said in wonderment, shaking her head. "Okay. Who else?"

"Father Andreassen at St. Patrick's."

"His priest?"

Sharon nodded. "He goes to both Mass and confession regularly."

"How do you know it's about the priest himself?" Hill asked. "Maybe he's just going out of a sense of duty."

"It's more than that," Sharon said with certainty. "Rogers tried going to Mass in New York and never went back; there was something about that priest that was off-putting to him, I think. But it's different with Father Andreassen. I've seen Rogers go into the church for confession only to come right back out when he finds out Father Andreassen isn't there that day. He's even been over to his house a few times after services and stayed for hours. I think there's real trust there."

Hill didn't jot down that name, and Sharon guessed why: when Fury had given her this assignment, he had asked her to keep an eye on Rogers' S.H.I.E.L.D. contacts in particular. Apparently he wasn't as interested in Rogers' outside relationships, and granted, there weren't many, given the kind of hours Rogers had been working since he moved to D.C. There were a few elderly veterans he was friendly with and visited from time to time on the weekends, but nothing significant.

"Any women?" Hill asked.

Sharon nodded. "He's dated a few. I have their names and their background checks." She pulled the papers out of her back pocket, unfolded them and handed them over. "But none of them work for S.H.I.E.L.D., and he didn't contact any of them more than a few times." She was a little puzzled about that, to be honest. None of the dates had been as disastrous as that one in the nightclub in New York, as far as she could tell, and he had looked like he was enjoying himself while he was with them. But then he just... stopped calling them. Apparently they hadn't met his criteria, whatever they were.

"Okay. Anyone else?" Hill asked.

"That's it," Sharon said.

"What about Rumlow?" Hill asked. "Seems like Steve spent a lot of after-hours time with him and some of the STRIKE guys while they were training together."

Sharon nodded reluctantly. "I know, but-"

Hill watched her closely. "But what?"

"It isn't just about the amount of time he spends with people." Sharon turned to face her fully. "Look, I can't read his mind, I'm just... reading his body language. Rogers does this thing with his shoulders: he squares them up when he's doing the Captain America routine. But when he's with people he trusts — with you, for example — he rounds them. He relaxes. And I saw him interact with Rumlow on the Fourth of July; he never slipped out of Captain America mode. I'm not sure Rogers even realizes he's doing it, but..." She shrugged. "He sizes people up instinctively, and I think he always has; back in his day he chose his Howling Commandos without taking much time for deliberation." She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from explaining that it was Aunt Peggy who had told her about that. "Either he gets really lucky, or he has an intuition worth paying attention to."

"Okay." Hill tore off the sheet of paper she'd been writing on and handed it to Sharon. On it were written four names: Natasha Romanoff, Clint Baron, Brock Rumlow and Cameron Klein.

"I want you to keep a close eye on them," Hill said. "They're all trying to get close to Rogers. Maybe it's innocent, and maybe it isn't. I need you to be sure of the reasons why."

Sharon nodded, although she already knew that the ex-KGB agent on the list was going to get the lion's share of her attention, no matter how blithely her cousin Harrison had insisted that she was okay. The idea that Cameron Klein could have ulterior motives was almost laughable... and then Sharon froze at the thought. Didn't that just mean that if he was up to something, he had a really good act down? Pretending to be socially awkward, always fading into the background, so that no one paid attention to him? His IQ was nearly off the charts. He had a high security clearance, high enough that Sharon herself had not been able to access the name of the project he was currently working on. He was qualified to launch helicarriers, she knew that much. He'd been on the crew of the helicarrier Clint Barton had nearly brought down during the hunt for Loki.

And that thought made Sharon pause again. Barton had always struck her as the trustworthy kind... but was it possible he could have suffered long-term effects from Loki's manipulations? Were Hill and Fury worried that even now he could have some mental command lying dormant in his brain, just waiting for the right moment to be unleashed? He hadn't been given any missions since the Battle of New York. Maybe there was a reason for that beyond the given excuse that he was helping train Rogers.

And as for Rumlow...

Well, he could be a bit of a jerk. Not that that was a federal crime. Men who were at the absolute peak of military skills weren't always known for their sensitivity, her own Uncle Steven being one of the exceptions to that rule. But Sharon didn't know Rumlow all that well. She'd have to rectify that now.

She really couldn't automatically dismiss any of the names on this list, Sharon realized as she folded up the paper and put it in her back pocket. She would watch them all like a hawk, then. Not only were Nick Fury and Maria Hill counting on her take this assignment seriously, but so was Aunt Peggy.

Hill stood up and patted her shoulder. "Good work, Agent 13. Keep it up." She started to walk out of the conference room, and then she paused and turned back.

"What does he do around you, by the way?" Hill asked, tilting her head curiously. "Rogers, I mean. His body language."

"Around Kate, you mean?" Sharon instantly corrected. "Same thing he does around Fury. Sometimes he squares up and sometimes he doesn't." Sharon paused. "I guess he doesn't know what to make of either one of us."

Hill nodded thoughtfully and then left the conference room, skirt swishing. Sharon sat there for a long moment alone, head bowed, before she finally stood up, brushing the creases from her slacks as she walked out of the room and headed down the hallway, passing other agents on their way to their own meetings.

Rogers knows I'm a liar, she thought dully. He senses it.

Not for the first time, Sharon permitted herself a brief regret for the assignment she'd been given. It was a good assignment, an important one, and it was earning her a chance most agents would kill for: to impress the people at the very top of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hierarchy. Even Undersecretary Pierce likely knew who Agent 13 was by now, even if it was only through the anodyne official reports she was writing and not the full reports she was giving directly to Hill and Fury. Good things were bound to follow once it was time to move on; this assignment was going to make her career.

But it meant she would never be able to have a real relationship with Rogers. Not like the agents on the list in her back pocket. As soon as she was released from this assignment, she'd have to stay away from Rogers. If he ever found out Kate the nurse was really a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, he would feel betrayed... and justifiably so.

Footsteps hurried up behind her, but slowed when they caught up to her, and Sharon pulled herself out of her thoughts and turned to see Agent Romanoff walking beside her.

"Agent 13," Romanoff said in a friendly kind of way.

Sharon met her eyes for a long moment. "Romanoff."

"Fury's going to put Rogers back in service now," Romanoff said conversationally. "I guess that means your assignment's coming to an end, isn't it?"

Sharon raised her eyebrows. "Not that I've been told."

"Why not?" Romanoff asked, her expression curious and her tone casual. It was utterly convincing, and Sharon had a strong suspicion that it was exactly that: an utterly convincing act. That hadn't been a question, it had been an accusation.

"He's emotionally stable," Romanoff continued. "That was the reason for surveilling him in the first place, wasn't it? And now it no longer exists. So why does Fury still have you watching him?"

"You know I can't answer that."

"He deserves his privacy," Romanoff pressed. "He's done nothing to warrant this kind of scrutiny."

"That's Fury's decision to make," Sharon pointed out calmly. "Not mine or yours."

Romanoff stopped in the middle of the hallway and locked eyes with her. "Are you telling me you're comfortable with this?"

"If you have concerns about my assignment, you should take them to my supervisor," Sharon said, turning to face her squarely in return.

"What makes you think I haven't?" Romanoff's eyes narrowed. "You still have a camera in his apartment?"

"No," Sharon said definitively, glad she could be honest about that. Probably not the best time to mention that the place was bugged, though. But Fury had been very clear that only Sharon herself would have access to the audio files. As far as anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D. knew, the bugs didn't exist. "No, it isn't like before. I'm more hands off now."

"Good," Romanoff said. "Because if I thought anyone was getting overzealous in their treatment of Steve Rogers?" She paused, and smiled too-sweetly. "I'd have something to say about it."

Sharon forced herself not to swallow in a suddenly dry throat, and kept her poker face on as she walked away. She swore she could feel Romanoff's eyes boring into her back and sure enough, when she made it into the elevator and turned around, Romanoff was still staring at her.

She hit the button for her floor and breathed out a long sigh of relief the moment the doors slid shut, cutting Romanoff off from her view.

"Should have listened to Mom," Sharon muttered to herself in the silence of the elevator. "Should have gone into real estate."

"This is dangerous," Jack Rollins said, voice low. "We should just kill Rogers while we still can. Arrange for an 'accident' during a mission. At this point he won't be expecting-"

"Don't be dense, Rollins," Rumlow interrupted. "Why would we kill our best asset? He wants the same thing we want. World peace." He laughed humorlessly. "Even he wants to go about it all backwards, trying to give people freedom they don't want and can't handle. No, we're gonna stand back and let Fury put him out in the field. Pierce can keep leading the Council around by the nose like always. They'll point Rogers anywhere and everywhere we want him. Don't worry about that."

"I saw the same reports you did, Rumlow," Conners suddenly put in. She was on the team as a profiler, by the request of Pierce himself. "Rogers has a history of disobeying orders he doesn't like. What if-"

"No, there's no 'what if,'" Rumlow said impatiently. "We use him for as long as he's useful. If he becomes difficult, then we take him ourselves and handle him the same way we handle his dear old buddy. Simple as that."

"You really think we could?" Rollins said skeptically.

"Why not?" Rumlow demanded. "They're practically twins. Same strength, same speed, same everything. Everything we did to our guy can be done to him. Trust me."

"Be nice to have two of 'em at our beck and call," Malik said thoughtfully.

"I don't know," Conners said slowly. "You saw 13's reports. Rogers went back to work after a serious psychological trauma within a matter of months. I don't know if he's as breakable as you're assuming."

"I don't know if you've noticed this, Conners, but Agent 13 is not exactly objective about this guy, and I think we all know why," Rumlow said with contempt edging his voice. "She sees what she wants to see when she looks at him. Period."

TO BE CONTINUED

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