"Are you sure about this?"
Beckett nodded even as she bit her lower lip, clearly nervous. "Castle, with the way our lives and our schedules the way that they are, if we don't do this today there's a chance it might not happen for a long, long time. You don't want to wait..." she hesitated as her admission forced Beckett to give voice to her worst fear. "...do you?"
Castle shook his head. "No. Do you?"
Beckett shook her head. "No."
The kindly older woman behind the counter smiled at the younger couple standing in front of her. "In my experience, honey, the hardest part is walking in that front door. But since you've already done that, the rest of this is all just ceremony and paperwork."
Beckett drew in a deep breath and let it out in a slow, shaky stream of air. "Okay, let's do this. Do you have a pen?"
Castle smiled and produced a fountain pen out of thin air. "Always."
Beckett resisted the urge to roll her eyes before taking the pen out of her fiancé's hand. Castle pushed the paper over to her side of the counter. She let her eyes follow the pen's path past the header that read "Marriage License, City of Las Vegas" to the first blank that she had to fill out. "Name," she read aloud. "Katherine Houghton Beckett..."
Guys, Ryan's voice echoed through the minds of both Guardians, we need you back in New York. Espo's figured out where Dr. Foster's friends are.
Castle let out a sigh of frustration as their attention turned away from the paperwork in front of them. "I don't suppose you orchestrated all of this just to prove your point?"
"'Fraid not, Castle," Beckett replied, her smile turning sad and wistful. She turned to the old woman behind the counter. "I'm afraid something has come up. Can we come back another time?"
The old woman frowned in confusion as she pulled the unfinished form back to her side of the counter. "Well, you haven't officially signed the paperwork, so there's no rush for y'all to get back here. Once you've got a notarized copy, it's only good for one year, and then after that y'all will have to get a new one. But for now...I think y'all can take your time. I'll be here long as these 'ol bones got breath left in 'em."
Beckett found the old woman's drawl oddly comforting, and she smiled back in return. "Thanks. I promise we'll be back as soon as we can."
The old woman smiled as she watched the man 'Castle' hold the door open for his fiancée. The strides of purpose that she saw the couple take gave her the distinct impression that this wasn't a couple that left to argue or get 'cold feet'. On the contrary - the couple reminded her far more of the few rare times that she had seen two cops stand in front of her. Or two firefighters. Or two soldiers...getting married before going off to war. Possibly never to see each other again. "I sho do hope you do come back," she whispered quietly. "Meantime, tho, I'll just keep this warm for y'all..." She slipped the unfininshed paper into her desk drawer before mentally switching gears to turn her attention to the next nervous couple in line. "NEXT!"
#
"Are you sure about this?"
Ward studied the nervous expression on Skye's face, amazed that she was worried about him and his safety even after everything that he'd done. "I've changed, Skye," he explained. "You know it, and I know it..."
"You didn't change..." Skye protested.
"But they don't know that," Ward argued, pushing past Skye's thought before she had a chance to complete it.
Skye wasn't about to let him go that easily. "They don't need your help..."
"Yes, they do," Ward insisted. "If they're on HYDRA's radar they could be sitting ducks. You could be a sitting duck. I refuse to let you go into a fight like that without backup." He took her face gently into his hands. "Skye, you saved me. Over and over again. Just to prove to me that Garrett isn't the only person who ever cared about me. I have to prove to them...to myself...that I'm the man that I see when I look in your eyes."
Skye gasped as Ward's admission took her aback. "Grant..."
"Skye," Ward continued, unable to stop the flow of his words now that the dam had broken. "I'm in love with you. I think I was long before you spent all this time in my head, and now, now that I know how much you still believe in me even with everything you know about me..."
The torrent of words came to an abrupt halt when Skye's lips met Ward's. Once the shock wore off, Ward wrapped his arms around Skye, deepening the kiss as he melted into her embrace and time itself seemed to stop around them.
When the pair finally came up for air, Skye was beaming. "Maybe we should continue this conversation after we get past the life-threatening mission we're about to go on?"
Ward's smile finally matched the expression of the woman he held in his arms. "Deal," he agreed.
#
"Are you sure about this?"
Bucky rolled his eyes as his worried best friend followed him down the hallway. "For the thousandth time, Steve: YES!" He stopped in his tracks and turned toward the man he had tried to kill only days earlier. "Do you trust these Guardians friends of yours, Steve?"
Steve nodded. "Yeah."
"And they've given me a clean bill of health, right?" asked Bucky. Steve nodded again, and Bucky crossed the space between them. "Then let me help! For all those years that you were stuck in that ice, Steve, I was living in hell. Now that I'm finally free...I think it's time for a little payback, don't you?"
Steve warily studied the man he had almost always thought of as family. While he wanted desperately to trust in his old friend, his gut was telling him that no one could change decades of life in just a couple of days. "Buck..."
"I need this, Steve," Bucky inisisted, his voice plaintive as he almost started to beg for the opportunity. "*Please.*"
Steve sighed, relenting as decades of loyalty finally won out over the growing know in the pit of his stomach. "All right," he conceded, "but I'm coming too."
Bucky, for the first time in their conversation, smiled broadly. "Us? Fighting side by side? About damn time."
#
"Are you sure about this?"
Esposito nodded once he followed his partner's line of sight and understood who Ryan was talking about...and why he was asking the question. "I'm just following the line," he admitted with a shrug. "They're both supposed to be there."
Ryan's eyes continued to follow Ward and Bucky's movements in wary disbelief. "Both of them? Even with that mess going on in Ward and Bucky's heads?"
Esposito nodded again. "Both of them. Every bone in my body is insisting that we can't pull off this op without them. I can't explain it..."
Ryan accepted his partner's comment without further argument. "Rule number one?"
"Yeah," Esposito agreed. But if you can keep an 'ear' on their thoughts...
Already on it, Ryan agreed, nodding without saying a word to his partner.
Esposito nodded his own acknowledgement, then called for the group's attention and encouraged everyone to gather around him. He pulled up an image on the nearest flatscreen monitor. It was an image that cause Bucky to gasp almost immediately. "I take it you know what this place is?" asked Esposito.
Face falling into a mask of grim determination, Bucky nodded. "It's HYDRA's original lab in Germany," he explained.
"I thought I took out that place," Steve countered, confused.
"Not all of it," added Bucky. "The more secret labs were fireproofed. They were back up and running by the time they...recovered me after the train. It's where..."
"I get the picture," Steve declared, waving off the rest of Bucky's explanation.
Esposito brought the group back to the reason for their meeting. "As Mr. Barnes here is already well aware, this is still where HYDRA takes their most high level assets."
"Loki's scepter," added Castle.
Esposito nodded. "And since Loki's scepter is there..."
"So are Erik and Darcy," Jane concluded.
Esposito nodded again, focusing his attention solely on the woman who had just spoken. "We'll get them back," Esposito declared with absolute confidence. "I promise you, you will see them again. Soon."
Jane drew in a deep breath and let it out to control her conflicting emotions. "Thank you," she whispered.
"But...that lab has cameras and perimeter sensors around it for fifty miles in every direction," Bucky argued. "We can't just teleport in without exposing all of you..."
"Especially if they're aware of the abilities of your predecessors," added Ward.
Bucky nodded in agreement. "And it's not like you can just walk up to HYDRA's top research lab without an appointment."
"You can't," suggested Ryan, "unless you just happen to have something that HYDRA wants more than anything..."
Steve caught on immediately. "Something like me."
Ryan and Esposito both nodded. "As far as we know, HYDRA just thinks Bucky's in the wind," Ryan told Steve. "They don't know you saved Steve's life. Hell, they think you killed him. So if you walk up with Steve as your prisoner..."
"They'd jump at the chance to brainwash the original Avenger into working for HYDRA," added Bucky, finally understanding the plan.
"And we'll come in right behind you," Alexis declared.
Bucky turned to Alexis, staring at the young wizard in disbelief. "How?!" he exclaimed. "I can get in with Steve, but there's no way they'll buy any sort of group..."
Castle's responded to Bucky's concerns with a sly, enigmatic smile. "Not to worry, Mr. Barnes. I have a plan."