Savage: The Avengers

by awalkerlifeforme

Seventy years after her best friend's deaths Victoria has gotten Steve Rogers back but his return isn't without complications. Forced to confront her demons Victoria must traverse her tense friendship with Steve. When an old flame attacks New York with an alien army, Victoria and her fellow heroes must put aside their differences to defend the Earth. But it's easier said than done.

2. Chapter 2

The high-pitched screams echoed through my mind as I tried to block them out. Nothing worked. Not putting up a wall and not trying to get into their heads to silence them. They were all present. The sharp scream that had torn from Bucky's throat as he'd fallen to his death. The horrified sobs that Steve had given at the sight of losing his best friend. The deafening cry that had come from the depths of my sternum as my fiancé had lost his life. All because I hadn't been paying enough attention and hadn't moved fast enough.

Suddenly, the screams stopped and I was plunged into an eerie silence. It didn't last long. "Why didn't you help him?" Jessica Barnes asked, appearing a few feet from me, tears building in her blue eyes.

"It was you," Justin Barnes added, his voice trembling with rage.

"You could have saved him," Rebecca Barnes whined, her voice breaking.

All I could hear was their accusations toward me, not long after Bucky's death. They like everyone else had blamed me, just as I had asked them to. "No, I couldn't. I tried but I couldn't," I whispered.

All I had wanted was to save my fiance. I had been so close. A little boy, only eight-years-old stepped forward. His eyes, grey from death, were fixed on me sadly. "But you could have saved me," he said, his squeaky voice shaking.

"It wasn't personal," I whispered.

"Yes, it was," he insisted.

"Monster," the young boy's mother snarled.

"I only became what you always said I was," I defended myself weakly.

"Do you see how correct we were?" the mother asked.

"No..." I whispered. I wasn't the monster. I had only become what they had insisted I was. "No..."

They weren't right about me. I couldn't let them be right about me. I had fought so hard to try and be the good guy. I had spent so many years of my life doing what was right as I had tried to be the hero. Steve and Bucky had been so proud of me. I could have kept moving in that direction, but I hadn't. I had somehow turned into the person others had always said I was. I had proved everyone I had ever hated correct and I had proven my best friends wrong. They would have had every right to be ashamed of me.

Why couldn't people have seen what they were doing to be with their words? I looked at the young boy and frowned. His guts were physically removed from his body, his ribs broken, and turned out at odd angles. I glanced at his mother, whose throat was slit down to the bone of his spine. I could see the holes in her hands and feet that had once held her in place. As I looked in the other direction, I saw my parents staring at me with even looks. My mother's body was burned and blistered; her hair was missing in large chunks.

My father was at her side, his appearance very similar. I swallowed as I looked at them. They were looking at me just as they had when they were alive. The crowd surrounding them grew and grew as more people appeared. Men with their eyes burned out of their sockets. Women who were missing limbs. Children with their bodies torn to shreds. They all stared at me, silent but still blaming me for what had happened to them. As much as I didn't regret what had happened to them, I found my heart rate increasing. It felt like it stopped when I turned and spotted Bucky.

The once-handsome military man looked nothing like he had when he was alive. His eyes were dull and his skin was blue. His right arm had been torn off from the impact of his fall. All that remained was a bloody stump just below his shoulder. His blue-tinged face was bloodied and bruised from the fall. He stared at me with horrified eyes, the only emotion I could read from him. I couldn't stop myself from moving toward him. It felt like he had torn out my heart as he backed away from me with fear in his eyes. I tried to walk toward him again, but he once more backed away.

"What have you done?" Bucky asked, his voice full of disgust.

"What I thought I had to," I replied quietly.

"How could you?" Bucky asked.

"I was hurt!" I gasped, tears building in my eyes as my throat closed.

"Get away from me," Bucky hissed, backing away.

"Bucky -"

"Go!"

It was the angriest I had ever heard him. The man who had once loved me and had once asked me to marry him, now looked somewhere between disgusted and terrified with me. I couldn't handle him hating me. He had to forgive me. I tried to follow Bucky as he turned on his heels and ran from me. I sped up to grab him by the shoulders but he sped up, too. I sprinted after Bucky for a moment before he collapsed to the ground. I slid forward on my knees to his body, but it was too late. His heart had stopped. Once more, I was too late. He was dead, and this time he had died hating me.

The scream from my dream crossed into the real world as I bolted upright in my bed with a sharp scream. The sudden release of pressure that had been building in my chest caused a massive blast of energy to radiate through the room. The windows couldn't stand the pressure from the blast and they cracked into pieces, shooting to the ground below. The lights in the room had all blown out and the mirror was shattered into shards. I stared at the bits of glass and cracked drywall throughout the room as I let out a long breath.

It would take me at least an hour to fix the windows and drywall. Fury would be pissed that I had to buy myself another set of windows for my bedroom. "Shit," I groaned, leaning onto my knees.

"You do that often?"

I jumped, turning to face Logan, having briefly forgotten that Logan had stayed overnight. He had one arm folded behind his head and the other was laid on the bed in between us. Unlike most men, he didn't look that surprised by my reaction. It wasn't the first time I had ever woken him up by doing something destructive on accident. Logan let out a deep breath as he leaned up and looked at me. He looked a little annoyed that I had woken him. Logan wasn't much of a morning person; nor was he an afternoon or evening person, if I was being fair.

"I forgot you were here," I told Logan, running a hand through my knotted hair.

"Thanks," Logan huffed.

"We both know you've said far worse to women," I pointed out.

"And you've said far worse to men," Logan replied.

"Done worse too," I teased.

His lips turned up in a violent grin. We chuckled under our breath as his gaze turned to the broken window. His grin softened at the sight. He knew what had happened. "Nightmare?" Logan asked.

"Of course," I said.

We both got nightmares. I had once been woken up a few decades ago by one of his Adamantium claws through my thigh; an involuntary reaction from a nightmare of his. "I didn't know you still got them like that," Logan said.

"They're not as frequent as they used to be, but I still get them," I admitted.

There had once been a day when I'd gotten the nightmares every night. It had lasted for years after Bucky's death. These days, I now got them once every few weeks. Logan nodded, wrapping an arm over my shoulder. I leaned my head into the crook of his neck. We had been close for a long time and Logan had long been a source of comfort for me. We were always friends, but we would always keep each other at a slight distance; a result of the losses we had both experienced over the years.

This was getting a little too in-touch with my feelings for me. "I have to get moving soon," I said, pulling out of Logan's grip.

"You want breakfast?" Logan offered.

"You don't eat breakfast," I said.

Neither one of us ate breakfast. "I'm trying to not be a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy," Logan said.

There was no doubt in my mind that Logan was a hit-it-and-quit-it kind of guy. But I was that way too. He was the only man I returned to and vice versa for him. I snorted ungracefully. "You'll come back," I insisted.

Logan scowled at me as he grabbed my chin and pressed a hard kiss against my mouth. I giggled softly as he released me and whacked me over the back of the head at the same time. I was still laughing as he jumped out of my bed, buck ass naked. "Only 'cause you'll call me," Logan shot back.

It would only be a matter of time before one of us would come back to the other. "Make a pot of coffee, will you?" I asked, ignoring his knowing smile. "You know where everything is."

"Sure."

I only let out the breath I'd been holding when Logan left my bedroom with his jeans in hand. I stared after him for a few moments as my gaze shifted over to the cracked drywall. I would have to fix that later. Logan and I had always been known to break things whenever we'd had one of our notably loud midnight romps. Neither of us was gentle. We cared for each other but had never been in love. We would always be protective of one another, but there were no true feelings. That was the difference between my relationship with Logan and the one I'd had with Bucky.

When I had been engaged to Bucky we would lay in bed together all night long and chat away about the little things - the things only we knew about each other. When we would be physical with each other, it was sweet and romantic. It was playful. We were always able to laugh and otherwise be completely ourselves. My time with Logan was different. We always bantered and were nasty to each other. Our nights together weren't romantic in the slightest. They were rough and intense. We took out our frustrations on each other.

It wasn't often that Logan decided to stay with me throughout the night, so I usually wasn't confronted with my feelings in the morning. I was able to forget that he had been here. Now I could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. The noises turned my stomach. It had been nearly seventy years since Bucky's death, but I still felt the burning guilt in my stomach after spending the night with someone - especially when I was only doing it to try and get my mind off of something else.

It seemed silly to still feel guilty for being with someone else so long after my fiancé's death, but it would always be there. Bucky was my first love and the only person I had ever felt that way for. I threw the sheets off of myself and grabbed a towel as I walked into the bathroom. I wasn't willing to think about Bucky any longer. He was gone and had been for a long time. I had to understand that and I did, for the most part. But there were days when his memory was like an earworm; I couldn't shake him, no matter how hard I tried.

My reflection in the mirror showed that my eyes were deep blue. I rolled my eyes at myself, forcing them to go back to yellow as I turned to the shower and ran the water so hot that it would scald a normal person. It felt like I needed to boil my skin off. I closed the bathroom door behind me as Bucky's picture that was sitting on my dresser was directly in view. It was a reminder of who I should have been waking up next to. It was a reminder of everything that I had lost all those years ago.

I walked under the water stream and immediately saw the steam coming off of my arms. I stared at my reflection in the glass stall. My eyes were dull yellow as they were most days when I woke up. It usually took me a while to get out of my head and shake the traumatic memories away. I washed through my hair quickly and washed away the memories of the prior night as I jumped out of the shower, wrapping my towel around my chest. As I wiped the fog off the mirror, the door opened and Logan walked in. He was wearing his jeans but no shirt.

Logan fanned the steam out of his face. "Damn it, it's hot in here."

I flashed him a playful smirk. "Sorry."

Logan walked up to my side in the mirror and whacked me over the back of the head. "You're not that hot."

"Neither are you, honey," I shot back.

We gave each other wicked smirks as we prepared ourselves for the day. Logan walked into the far corner of the bathroom to finish getting ready as I walked back into my large closet and started getting changed. I pulled on a pair of torn jeans and a simple black tank top. I stared at myself in the floor-length mirror for a moment before deciding that I was going to put on my leather jacket too. I pulled on a pair of black riding boots and tied back my hair. It was what I usually wore this time of year as it was starting to get chilly in New York.

Once I was satisfied with the way I looked, I walked back into the living room and saw that Logan was already in the kitchen. He had already gotten changed. He was wearing a very typical outfit for Logan; a white t-shirt, brown leather jacket, old pair of jeans, and beat-up biker boots. He was pouring our two cups of coffee. I walked over to the couch and plopped down. Logan met me there, handing off one of the mugs of black coffee. He had his mug in one hand as he threw his other arm over the back of the couch.

We sat together in silence for a moment as I threw my legs over Logan's lap. "So, where are you heading?" I asked, finally shattering the silence. "You normally don't come to see me unless you're planning on vanishing for a while."

"Back to Canada, I think," Logan said.

It was one of the places he had spent the most time over the past few decades. He liked the quiet isolation. "You're going back to being a lumberjack, huh?" I teased.

"It's quiet out there," Logan said, confirming my theory for why he was leaving again. I nodded understandingly. There were plenty of years that I had lived well out of the public eye. "It's not like being here, in the middle of the city."

"It's not my favorite place in the world but if I'm going to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. this is the only place I can live," I admitted.

While I was as heavily involved in S.H.I.E.L.D. as I was, there was nowhere else I could live. "Have you thought about leaving?" Logan asked.

"Sure, plenty of times," I admitted. I hated living in the middle of New York. There were too many people here and very few of them enjoyed having me here. "I came close a few times too, but I don't think I could leave now. Not with Steve back."

"You think he's going to join?" Logan asked.

"At this point, I think this is all Steve knows. He knows how to be a soldier. That's the life he always wanted anyway," I said. It had been the life he wanted and it was the one he had gotten, but I knew that he had been fulfilled in the forties. We had both been ready to settle down and we had both lost that option. "Any chance he had of the simple life was left back in the forties."

"People like us - people like him - we don't get a simple life," Logan said.

"We could. You had it," I pointed out.

"And I lost it, just like you did," Logan replied.

"Yeah," I muttered.

We weren't built to live the simple life. Logan and I exchanged a long look. It was something that had helped us bond so well over the years. We had both lost the loves of our lives. We had taken out our overwhelming anger on others when we had lost our respective true loves. I took a long drink from the coffee mug, partially hiding my face. Part of me wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend that the world didn't exist. But I had to do what I always had; get up and figure out what I was supposed to do next.

"You'll call when you get settled, yeah?" I asked.

"Sure," Logan responded unconvincingly.

I smiled at him. I knew that he wouldn't call and he knew that I wouldn't track him down. We would find the other when we needed it. "Take care of yourself out there," I told him.

"Of course." Logan reached over and tapped me in the chest. "Let those walls down. Your friend loves you."

"How do you start a conversation like that?" I asked guiltily.

We had so much to discuss, so many things that had happened over the years, and I didn't know how to start explaining my life to Steve. "At the beginning... and you go from there," Logan said.

It would be a long story if I was going to start at the beginning, but that was the only place I could start. I had told a complicated story to Steve before; I had once told him that I was a mutant. Now I was going to have to face telling him another complicated story. I smiled again. Logan was right and I knew that. I needed to tell Steve the truth about my past. I just needed to take some time and figure out how to tell my best friend the truth. I knew he wouldn't like it. I let out a deep breath and patted Logan on the knee.

"I guess we both have hard times coming for us," I muttered.

"I'll see you around, Vic," Logan said.

"Bye, Logan."

We exchanged little half-smiles as Logan stood from the couch, knocking my legs off to the side. He leaned down and pressed a kiss against my temple, placing his half-drunk coffee on the table. We stared at each other for a while as Logan nodded once and turned to leave. I turned to face the television, refusing to look at him but listening as Logan walked to the door and gently closed it behind himself. I knew that it would be a few years before I heard from him again. I let out a deep breath as I leaned my head back against the couch.

As the clock on the wall chimed away the new hour, I let out a deep breath. It was time for me to leave. It was already mid-morning and I normally would have been at the Retreat already. I supposed that I could think about what to say to Steve on the ride over. I had to start coming up with an explanation. I would have lots of time to think during the ride. I needed that time to think about what was going on. I needed that time to think if today was the day that I was going to tell Steve the truth or if I needed more time to prepare.

Things had become so difficult over the last few days. I hadn't expected Steve's return to be as tough as it had been so far. I knew that I would have some hard questions shot my way and I knew that I would either have to tell the truth or work extremely high to keep up my lies. Fury had been right from the beginning. Logan was right. I was going to have no choice but to tell Steve the truth. I knew that my only chance at Steve's forgiveness was if the truth came from me. He couldn't find out from someone else.

Though I knew what the right thing was, I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I wasn't sure how a person could broach that subject. I couldn't come right out and admit the truth. There was no easy way to say the truth. I grabbed my wallet, slipping it into my back pocket, and headed out of my apartment and downstairs. I walked through the lobby of the building where the flashing lights started up. The photographers had returned to their usual spots. I slipped my sunglasses down my face as I headed out onto the street.

There was a lot of chattering from the reporters around me that I ignored. They were all asking the same questions they did every morning. How was Steve? Was he going to come out of hiding soon? Was he planning on joining S.H.I.E.L.D.? Today the questions didn't bother me as much as they normally did. Today I was only thinking about what step came next. What was I supposed to say to Steve? How did I begin that conversation? It was an impossible task. I climbed into the car and the engine roared to life. Then, the horrible reality set in.

What if it didn't matter what I said to Steve? What if I tried to make him understand my actions and begged him to realize that I had been under tremendous strain? What if he didn't care? The things that I had done were unforgivable. I had always known Steve to be the person to forgive anything I'd said or done, but this was something more. This wasn't a little thing. I had ruined families and ended lives. What if this was the one thing I couldn't forgive? What if this was the moment I lost my best friend for good?

Having Steve safe and alive but hating or not caring for me would have been even worse than losing him to death. Knowing that he was alive and close to me, close enough that I could speak to him, but I was unable to. Knowing that he wanted nothing to do with me. How would either one of us have been able to take that? We were the only things the other had. My professional life was satisfied but my personal life left much to be desired. We were supposed to be hurting from what had happened but happy to see each other. I didn't know how to now handle the truth.

I'd been so happy to have him back but I hadn't thought ahead to this part. There were very few things in the world that scared me. The only thing that scared me right now was the possibility that I would lose Steve forever. It was one thing to lose someone to death. It was a horrible thing but you knew that there was nothing you could do to change things. Losing someone to years of monstrosities committed at your hand - something the other one could never forgive - would be heart-wrenching.

I knew that I was going to have to tell Steve the truth before he joined S.H.I.E.L.D. If I didn't, there was no doubt in my mind that someone there would eventually let my past slip. Fury had already been nudging me in the direction of telling him the truth. He was probably the person who was the most likely to spill the beans. He would have his reasons but part of it would surely be to force me out of my comfort zone; it would force me to be vulnerable and confront the past I had tried to forget.

It wasn't necessarily that I felt guilty about everything I had done in the last seventy years. I knew that many of my actions were wrong and overstated, but some of them had been justified. What wasn't justified were the innocent lives that I had taken or what I had done after I had exacted my revenge on the people who had wronged me. All the years I had spent with careless fighting and selling my services to the highest bidders. Wreaking havoc on a world that had long since turned its back on me.

My stomach churned as I thought back to all those people I had once known who had begged me to stop hurting them. The constant phone calls from my friends, begging me to come home and quit what I was going. Howard, who had always found out where I was living, appearing out of thin air to tell me the hard truths, hoping he would eventually get through to me. Chester, who had attempted to get through to me with love. Peggy, who had promised that she would protect me as long as I came home.

They had never turned their backs on me, just as they had promised. I tried to blink away my memories of the screams of my victims. Men and women and children. I didn't care enough to save any of them. No matter what they had said to me or what they had looked like. Those who had begged me to forgive what they had once done to me. Those who had tried to convince me that they had never done anything to me. Those who had promised their life's savings if I walked away and spared their lives.

I felt the shortness in my breath as I turned off the main highway and headed down the less-traveled roads that led into the woods. I was in the middle of a long stretch of road that would lead me to the Retreat when my hands started to tremble on the steering wheel. I couldn't continue down the road. I had to stop. I had to take a minute to myself. I slammed on the brakes and steered the car to the edge of the road. I felt myself gasping for breath. I was afraid. I couldn't bring myself to tell the truth, but I knew what I was risking if I didn't tell him the truth.

The sound of the engine was pounding in my head, so I shut the car off and pushed the driver door open. I jumped up, almost shredding the seatbelt in half as I sprang into the grass. I collapsed into the dirt, feeling the tears building in my eyes and the bile forming in my throat. I had lost so much since the prime of my life in the forties. I couldn't lose even more than I already had. I couldn't lose the only person I genuinely trusted that I still had in my life. I didn't know how to bear telling Steve the truth when it meant that I may never speak to him again.

Something had to give. I already knew that I wanted Steve to know the truth. I didn't want to have to spend the next few hundred years hiding such a massive part of my life. I wanted to know that Steve forgave me and that we could start over. After all, I wasn't that person anymore. Maybe he would be able to bring himself to forgive me. He had always been one of the most forgiving people I had known. If I could take the time I needed to explain myself, maybe he could forgive me. I would talk as long as he needed me to.

Just like when I had told Steve that I was a mutant, I tried to plan the conversation out in my head ahead of time. I spent nearly an hour pacing back and forth along the edge of the road, planning the big pieces of the story that I needed to tell him along with my explanations and reasoning for what I had done. It would be a messy story and wouldn't always make perfect sense, but it was all I could think of. I wasn't satisfied with the plan I came up with, but I knew I never would be. All I could do was tell the truth and hope for the best.

Once I was convinced that I wasn't going to get anywhere else with my thoughts on the side of the road, I climbed back in the car and started the engine again, heading back down the road, feeling myself getting more nervous than I had been in many years. Steve was the only person who could still make me nervous. As I drove toward the Retreat, I felt my hands begin to sweat. It was something that never happened to me. Almost half an hour passed before I arrived at the driveway to the Retreat. I swiped my badge at the security gate and drove up to the house.

Steve wasn't waiting for me in the driveway. I stopped in front of the Retreat and shut the engine of the car off. It was already well into the afternoon. Normally, Steve would have been outside doing some yard work; his version of busywork. Not today, which was surprising as the afternoon weather was lovely. It seemed like it should have been a stormy day for what I was preparing to do. I walked up the driveway and toward the front door. There was no sign of Steve. I debated knocking but decided against it. Steve would know that I was on my way.

I walked into the Retreat, still wondering where the hell Steve was. Normally, he met me in the front yard or the living room. He was always happy to see me. I wondered immediately if something was wrong. That was the only reason I could think of that he wouldn't be here. I walked into the living room and noticed an uneaten bowl of cereal. He was around but something was keeping him busy. I turned back to go outside and see if Steve was out there. Maybe I had missed him. As I turned back, I heard something slam on the table.

I whipped around to see Steve standing behind me, his arms folded over his chest, looking very upset. "Hey, sweetie," I chirped, trying to ignore the tenseness in his shoulders. "What's up?"

"What the hell is that?" Steve hissed.

Profanity. That was strange coming from him. I looked down long enough to see a large manila folder that was overflowing with papers and photographs. For a moment, I thought it was his. I wasn't sure how he got it, but I supposed it didn't matter. I was about to explain that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept files on every person of significance when I realized that the file wasn't his. It was mine. Judging by the look on his face, he had read everything in it. Every secret I'd wanted to keep from him. My heart began pounding in my chest as I fought to keep an even look on my face.

This was why he hadn't come out to see me. I knew it. He had been in here all morning, reading my file and wondering how to approach me about it. I figured that Fury was the one to bring the file to Steve, which sent a spike of seething hatred through my chest. It was supposed to be my job to tell Steve the truth on my own time. Now he had seen it without me getting a moment to explain myself. He must have thought horribly of me. There went my plan to tell him the truth first. I smiled tersely as I crossed around the coffee table.

"That is a file, Steve. Come on, they had those in the forties," I said teasingly. The comment didn't sit well with Steve. He looked as unimpressed as I'd ever seen him. "I think they call them manila folders."

"I'm serious," Steve snapped.

"So am I. They did have them," I responded carelessly.

"I'm not talking about the file, Vic. I'm talking about what's in it."

My heart began pounding against my ribcage. There went any hope that he hadn't read it yet. "Come on, Steve. That's paper," I teased, unwilling to broach the subject. "That's been around since Ancient Egypt. It began as papyrus when an unknown man began pounding down two stems put together of the plant -"

"Knock it off," Steve barked. "You know what I'm talking about."

Yes, I did. But I'd had a long habit of shutting down whenever things got tough. I didn't want to talk about my past. Not now and not ever. Not when I knew what the look on his face was. "You read the file. You know what it is," I said shortly.

"They've marked you an international threat," Steve commented.

That didn't sound right. I turned around the table and walked back toward the file. The papers had been shuffled from Steve reading them but I could see that he was right. I had been labeled an international threat. My lips turned up in a bitter smile. "International threat," I repeated, running my hands over the file. "That's offensive, I used to be marked a global threat."

"I'm not kidding," Steve barked.

"Neither am I," I shot back.

There was a day and age that anyone on the planet would have run from me in terror. "Is it true?" Steve asked.

"The truth is subjective; mine could be very different than theirs," I said.

We exchanged a long look; my eyes were glimmering menacingly as Steve's were hardening. Steve met me at the table and laid a hand on my shoulder, almost threateningly. It was a little surprising, coming from him. "Tell me," Steve snarled.

My eyes briefly flicked to Steve's hand as a growl erupted deep in my throat. Steve had never been the kind of person to try and threaten someone else, especially not someone he deemed a friend. I loved Steve to death, but I wasn't going to tolerate anyone trying to stand over me. It had been a long time since I had let someone walk all over me.

"You sure that's the route you want to take?" I asked Steve, my teeth grinding together.

"I want the truth, however I can get it," Steve said.

All of our truths were different. Mine wasn't the same as theirs. I shoved Steve's hand off my shoulder as I walked away. "It's right there in that file, Steve," I said, throwing my gaze over my shoulder.

Steve looked shocked that I was giving up so easily. "You're not going to try and deny it? You don't want to defend yourself?" he asked.

"What would the point be? You've already made up your mind," I said, my throat tightening. He had already decided that the file told the whole truth. I turned sharply on my heels to meet his eyes. "I don't need to read your mind. The disgust is written all over your face." My voice wavered slightly as I tried to fight back the tears. I'd known that he would be horrified at my actions but it didn't stop the bitterness from creeping up in my chest. "Not going to deny it?"

No, of course, he wouldn't. He had every right to be disgusted. "What the hell happened?" Steve asked quietly.

He must have been upset. He didn't use profanity unless he was furious. "I'd lost everything," I said, my throat tightening again. "I was hurt and all I wanted was for others to hurt."

"Do you remember the last thing I said to you before I went into the ice?" Steve asked.

"Sure. You told me that I had nothing to be sorry for," I said, repeating what his last words had been.

It wasn't what he meant and I knew it. I just wanted to throw it back in his face. Steve glared at me as my eyes glittered with malice. "That's not what I meant and you know it," Steve snapped. I nodded carelessly. "I told you to stay with the guys. Peggy, Chester, and Howard. You were supposed to stay with them. You were supposed to be with them -"

"You think I could stay with them?" I hissed, interrupting Steve's rant. "I couldn't. All I would have done was draw military attention to them. I saved them by walking away."

"And damned yourself?" Steve asked, his voice rising in anger.

"What else is new?" I barked. "I've always been the monster in their eyes; I was always going to be the monster."

"You could have -"

"What was I going to do?" I shouted, my voice rising to match Steve's dull roar. "Live in complete solitude for the rest of my life? For the rest of eternity? I was angry. I had pent-up energy that I needed to expel."

"By killing everyone in sight?" Steve asked.

"Not everyone. Just those I deemed deserved it," I replied pompously.

"Is what's in here true?" Steve asked, motioning back to the file.

"In some way or another, I suppose," I said carelessly.

"I want the truth, Vic. I want to know what you did."

"Read the fucking file, Steve. That's what I did."

Even if I came up with an excuse for everything I had done, he wouldn't believe me. "No, I want to hear it from you. I want to know how you brought yourself to kill a child and keep going even after you'd done that," Steve said, the disgust in his voice evident.

I'd known that was the one thing he couldn't forgive. "I didn't want to keep going! When you and Bucky died, it felt like my heart had been ripped out! I felt like I had lost everything. I couldn't be around the only people I loved. All that would have done was damn them. They would have lost their only chances at real lives," I snapped, my voice wavering slightly. I'd loved them but I had to stay away to save them. "So, I went into exile. I didn't try to exact my revenge. Not at first. I'd lost so much and all I wanted was for everything to end."

"So, you decided to end someone else's life?" Steve asked.

"No, Steve, I tried to end mine!" I shouted.

The lights in the room flickered as shock waves from my body blasted through the room. Shards of glass shot from the light bulbs as the walls - lined with Vibranium - cracked. Steve was blown off his feet and shoved back onto the table, which was now cracked from his weight. His eyes were no longer filled with disgust. They were filled with shock and sadness. My stomach churned as a tear slipped from my eyelash, splashing onto my cheek. I turned in the other direction. I hated the tears that were building in Steve's eyes.

It wasn't the way I had meant for that dark part of my life to come out. That was one part that I wished could have remained hidden forever. I hated the look on Steve's face. I hated seeing the pity mixed with disgust. I didn't want to tell Steve how low I had gotten. I didn't want anyone to know that I had gotten to the point where I hadn't seen the light. I hadn't expected this conversation to go well, but it was going far worse than I could have imagined. We sat in silence for a long time as scraped the toe of my boot against the floor.

Steve's voice was much lower when he finally brought himself to speak again. "What happened?"

A bitter smile crept across my lips. "What always happens when someone tries to take their life? They feel like they've gotten as low as they can and don't see the light anymore. That's where I got."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Steve muttered.

As much as I loved Steve, he could be a bit self-centered just as I could be. Unlike me, he didn't realize it. "That doesn't surprise me," I replied.

"Did you, uh, did you ever -"

"Try again?" I asked, knowing where he was going with it. "No, I found another suitable outlet." His eyes hardened again at my brutally honest comment. "It wouldn't have mattered. I couldn't kill myself. Nothing worked and I tried everything I could think of."

"Vic -"

"Whatever I did to those people for all those years, I tried it on myself first. I hated myself. I blamed myself for what had happened to you and Bucky. I took the blame; in the media and my mind. I'd lost everything. I tried to see the light and find a reason to keep fighting but I couldn't. So, I tried to put a bullet in my brain," I said honestly, making him cringe. "I woke up a few seconds later, reconstructed brain and all. I tried to bleed myself like a pig; the Chronicle replenishes itself too quickly. Even if I decapitate myself, it grows back. It takes a lot longer than a hand, though."

Steve cringed. "You did all of that?"

"Sure. It got a little funny after a while, actually," I said, chuckling at the almost silly ways I had tried to end my life.

"That's not funny to me," Steve barked.

We stood in silence for a while as I reached up and brushed away another tear. I hadn't thought about that dark part of my life for so long. I had once tried everything I could think of to kill myself, but nothing had worked, no matter how hard I had tried. Each time I had come back to life, angrier, and angrier. There had been no use in trying to end my life. All it had done was waste energy. I had realized after a few days that it was pointless and had instead focused my energy on hurting the people who had hurt me.

Steve allowed me a brief period of silence to try and recover from the memories of my many suicide attempts. Eventually, though, the conversation came back where I knew it would. "This isn't the end of the conversation," Steve said quietly, much more gently than he had earlier. "I want to know what you did for all those years."

"You read the file. You know what happened," I insisted.

"I need to hear it from you," Steve said.

"Why? What difference will it make? Do you want me to start crying because I feel bad about killing a child? I don't, Steve," I said honestly. It wasn't my proudest moment, but I didn't feel bad for what I had done. I had promised his death and I had lived up to that promise. "I warned you years ago that this is who I am."

"No. Not this," Steve said, pointing to me. "The girl I grew up with would have never done this."

"Want to bet? The girl you grew up with killed her parents," I said.

"That was an accident," Steve said.

"You saw what I did at the Hydra bases."

"What you did out there wasn't for personal gain. You were keeping people safe by taking out the bad guys."

"Did it never occur to you that I enjoyed it?" I asked him.

Killing someone had always brought me some form of joy. It was a release of the energy that I could always feel building. It was building now, too. "Vic, I've always known that you had a dark side," Steve said. I rolled my eyes. That was the understatement of the century. "I've always known that you're quick to get a temper and violent, but you're also the kind of person who will never hurt someone she loves."

"And I never did," I told him. I never would have hurt any of the people I loved. "When the occasion called, I always came back to the people I loved."

"What brought you back to S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Steve asked.

"It wasn't me feeling shame, I'll tell you that," I said pointedly.

"Vic -"

"You're looking for an apology and you're not going to get one," I said.

Steve wasn't getting an apology. Those I had hurt never got one and he wasn't going to get one. "No, I don't want an apology," Steve said. I raised an eyebrow. I didn't think he would forgive me without seeing some remorse. "I want you to tell me the truth. I don't want to hear it from other people and I don't want to read about it in a file."

It would be an exhausting conversation, even more so than it was now. "It's been seventy years, Steve. I meant what I told you yesterday. I'm not going over everything that's happened," I said.

"Give me the highlights, then," Steve prompted.

"No."

"Why?"

"Because you don't need to know," I snapped.

It was because I didn't want to face the truth with Steve. "That's not a good enough reason," Steve snapped.

"It's the only reason I need," I hissed. It was my past and my life. If I didn't want to tell him, I wasn't going to. We stared at each other, intensity blazing in both of our eyes for a few moments. "I'm going home. I need some time to think."

"No, you're not walking away from this conversation," Steve called as I turned away.

"I've had it with this conversation," I snapped.

"You don't get to walk away just because things are getting tough -"

"I'm not walking away because the conversation is tough!" My voice rattled the walls of the Retreat as I turned back to Steve. "You think I've never had to deal with a tough conversation? I have, Steve. Hell, how do you think I felt telling you the truth about what I was? I'm walking away because of that, right there!" I shouted, motioning to his eyes. The look in his eyes was the one I prayed I would never see from him. "It's that look, right there. That's the look I can't bear. That look of... hatred."

Steve's eyes turned down, watering slightly. He shook his head, obviously swallowing a lump in his throat. "I don't hate you, Vic. I won't ever hate you," Steve insisted.

"You will," I said, my voice cracking. "If I tell you everything... you will."

Steve shook his head. "No, I won't. I love you. Always have, always will."

He had been able to forgive so much but I didn't know if he could forgive this. I struggled to breathe as my throat seemed to close up on me. I couldn't bring myself to tell him just how low I had gotten at the lowest point of my life. I wanted to pretend that that period of my life had never existed. It was over, after all. Steve did love me and I knew that, but I wasn't sure if he would look at me the same way he used to once he had seen everything I had done. It wasn't fair. He didn't understand just how much I went through after their deaths.

Steve walked up to me, hesitating to touch me at first. We didn't speak or make a move to do anything. Long minutes passed before Steve leaned forward and placed his hands on the back of my shoulders, pulling me into him. I didn't move toward him at first. My body was too tense and I couldn't relax. But my emotions quickly got the best of me and I gave in. I was too weak. I began crying softly as my body relaxed slightly. I leaned down and rested my head in his shoulder, my body trembling with dry sobs as Steve's arms tightened around me.

A long time passed where we didn't speak or move. There was nothing to say. All we needed was to be near each other and remember that we loved each other, no matter what. We remained wrapped together forever, Steve keeping his arms wrapped protectively around me as I sobbed into his shoulder. I wondered if we would ever move past this or if our relationship would remain tense and strained forever. Steve leaned down and pressed a kiss onto the top of my head as the clock chimed four o'clock. We had spent a lot longer arguing than I had expected.

We didn't speak during the hours that passed. That seemed to lead to arguments. Instead, Steve led me into the kitchen and we sat down at the stools. He got up a little while later to make a pot of tea for us to share. Steve and I sat at the barstools as we sipped our drinks. We didn't speak and I was glad for it. I had nothing to say to him. I didn't know what I could say to make things better. My plan to tell him the truth and do it slowly was shot to hell. Now, I had to suffer the awkward conversation to try and get our relationship back to normal.

During the silence, I listened to the wall-mounted clock slowly tick away the minutes. I didn't know what I was supposed to say to Steve to make things better. I loved him and wanted him to understand what I had done, but the more I thought about my actions, the more I realized I'd had no excuse. My actions were monstrous and the only reason I had done what I had was that I was angry and I had enjoyed it. Fighting was what I did best and my anger was always overwhelming, but it wasn't a good enough excuse for me to have done what I had.

It was closing in on six o'clock when Steve finally spoke again. His voice was slow and cautious. "It doesn't have to come out all at once, but let's start talking about things, Vic."

"Steve, please, I thought we were done with this conversation," I begged.

"We're not going to be done with it until I get the truth," Steve said, not unkindly.

"You have it -"

"Out of you."

"This is never going to end," I said breathlessly, placing my head in my hands.

Steve shook his head, placing a hand on my arm. "It will, once you tell me the truth. You know that we have to talk about it," Steve said. Of course, but that didn't make the conversation any easier. "Come on, can't we just get it over with?"

"No!" I barked. "I can't -" I stopped myself short. I knew what to do. If I couldn't bring myself to say it, I could show him. If he wanted to know the truth of what I had done for all those years, I knew the perfect way to get it out. I wouldn't have to say a single word. "Okay, you want the truth, I'll give you the truth."

"Okay," Steve said, looking relieved.

"Get up," I snapped, hopping up from the stool.

"What?" Steve asked, surprised.

"Get up," I repeated. "We're going somewhere."

"Where are we -?"

"Don't talk. Get up and come with me," I ordered.

Steve didn't understand what I was planning. I sent him a heated glare so that he knew I wasn't joking around. Steve rose from the stool and I motioned him to follow me out of the kitchen, through the living room, and onto the front yard of the Retreat. Steve headed toward my car but I held out my arm to stop him. I didn't want to stomach a nearly four-hour car ride with him. We could be where we needed to go within seconds if I flew us there. I took Steve by the arm and gave him a slightly angry but still reassuring nod.

"Where are we going?" Steve asked.

"To get your answers," I said. "Hold on."

We exchanged a quick look as Steve nodded at me. I built up the pressure under my feet and waited a moment before taking off. We looked at each other as I launched us into the clouds. Steve gasped but didn't scream like Bucky had whenever we'd flown together. I shot us through the trees and over large and small cities alike as we flew toward Washington, D.C. A few minutes passed before we arrived at our final destination. Steve clearly didn't understand what we were doing as I lowered us into Central Washington, D.C.

We landed carefully on the steps of the Smithsonian Institution. Steve looked around, obviously confused, as I led him into the museum. It was closed to the public as it was after five-thirty, but I could get in without issue. I took Steve's arm and yanked him forward. We headed into the museum and I walked toward the escalator. The Captain America exhibit was undergoing a renovation now that Steve had returned, but my portion of the exhibit was still intact. We were almost to the escalator when a security guard stepped out.

"Hey!" the guard, a heavy-set man in his early fifties shouted. "You two can't be here."

Without looking at the man, I held up my hand and flicked my wrist gently to the side. The man collapsed to the floor as Steve stared at him in shock. "Relax. He's asleep, not dead," I said tonelessly.

Steve nodded blankly as we stepped onto the escalator. He looked around curiously as we passed the banners with his face plastered all over them. "What are we doing here?" he asked.

"You wanted answers, that's what you're going to get," I said coldly.

Though Steve was looking around, I faced dead ahead of me as we walked into the Captain America exhibit. Steve looked shocked to see the pictures and paintings of himself lining the walls, both before and after his transformation. We walked past the plaques that explained his life and the memorial for Bucky. I hesitated for a moment to look at it. I sucked in a deep breath as we kept moving, passing the painting of our team and heading into the darkened room at the back of the exhibit, passing a content warning sign that Steve stared at.

"Enjoy the exhibit," I snarled, taking Steve by the arm and shoving him into the darkened room.

Steve's P.O.V.

Steve stumbled forward from Vic's shove. He tripped over his feet for a moment before steadying himself and turning back to her to ask what she was showing him. It was too late. He could already see her long white-blonde hair swishing around the corner as she vanished. He figured that she was going to let him look around himself as she kept to her thoughts. Steve let out a deep breath as he turned back. She wasn't going to talk. She wanted him to figure out her past on his own.

Steve was angry with her for all she had done, but more than anything, he felt terrible for Vic. Part of him wanted to be angry with her, but he loved her. She was his best friend and he could see the conflict in her eyes - she was angry but she was hurting, too. More than he had initially thought. The lights in the room Steve was standing in came up, illuminating the exhibit and he nearly fled the room in horror. He understood now why there was an age restriction sign outside of this portion of the exhibit. It was... horrifying to put things nicely.

It almost made Steve wish that he hadn't asked her about her past. He wished that he hadn't opened her file. He wished that he could have just enjoyed having her back. But he was here and getting the answers he'd wanted. He looked at the exhibit; black lettering printed on a blood-red glass background. Splatters of fake blood lined the back walls as decoration. Steve realized why there were very few pictures of Victoria in the main hall. This was the portion of the exhibit that was dedicated to her. His eyes tracked up to the title: A Traitor to Her Nation.

A large image of Victoria's silhouette filled the background of the main wall of the exhibit. Her figure was wearing the same black S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform he had seen her in the day he'd come back. Her hair was floating around her body. The only color on her silhouette was her blazing red eyes. There were weapons hooked onto different parts of her body; each to serve someone a different brutal death. Steve placed a hand on the edge of the glass. Was this the person she had turned into? Was the file he had read about her true?

There were photographs posted along the walls. Many of them were of crime scenes. Each photograph was more and more graphic than the next. They went through her life. Some he had seen before; school photographs, the remains of her childhood home, her parents' bones having been uncovered from the rubble, and the ruins of Stryker's laboratory. Each had a caption describing what someone was looking at. Steve scowled at the caption that described Vic as a monster who had murdered her parents; those same people who had tried so hard to kill her.

At least a small portion of the exhibit was a lie. Steve already knew that. Many of the photographs on the wall were ones he had never seen before. There were bodies torn to shreds of men, women, and, to his horror, children. It was just as Vic had said before; it didn't matter how old someone was or their gender. She would come after them. The mutilated body of one little boy almost made Steve puke. Crying families were mourning the deaths of their loved ones. Piles of bodies in damaged buildings. Woods burned to a crisp.

Some of the men in the photographs Steve recognized. He spotted the corpse of William Stryker in one of the photographs. Steve walked toward it. She had gone after him. His chest was ripped open and it appeared that his heart was missing. She had taken his heart... There were memorials in photographs near the one of Stryker's corpse; fellow military men, friends and family, and even President Roosevelt had recognized Stryker as a good military man with a passion for science. Steve knew the monster he had been.

A few videos were running in separate corners of the room. He recognized a video of Johnathan Harper. Steve's former classmate looked like he was in his late forties as he spoke to an interviewer, recounting the violent tendencies she had always experienced. Johnathan told the story of Vic breaking his knee, explaining that the attack had been unprompted. Johnathan was sure to place his cane in the center of the frame. Steve growled at the video. He had seen the memory. Steve knew that Johnathan's friends had attacked her first and that was why she had reacted.

Many of the videos were of people who had known Vic as a child. There were a few interviews filled with people they had gone to school with - many of them told the interviewers that she had been an outsider with no friends. Other former classmates said that they had always known there was something wrong with her. All of them said that she was known to snap at people with no prompting. Steve knew that everything they were saying was lies. This exhibit was specifically built to make Vic look like the bad guy.

Steve was surprised when he turned to see a video containing three people he knew very well. Jessica, Rebecca, and Justin Barnes. Bucky's siblings. The video looked like it was taken shortly after Bucky's death. All three were crying in the grainy video as they remembered their brother. Steve was shocked as they began talking about Vic and Bucky, saying they had been concerned about her at first but had eventually warmed up to her. He didn't understand when they said that they couldn't believe she would have killed the fiancé she claimed to love.

The words echoed in his head. Killed him? Steve stared at the video as he tried to think of anything they could have meant other than the obvious. Vic hadn't killed Bucky. It had been an accident caused by a blast from a Hydra gun. If nothing else, Steve was the one who should have been faulted for his death. Steve's head was pounding as he turned to the mini-biography painted on the main wall. Vic had wanted him to see this. Steve imagined that this was the part of the exhibit that she had wanted him to see.

Steve's eyes scanned the wall as he read. The beginning he had heard before. Vic was born a mutant and her parents had tried to keep her safe from the world and teach her to hone her powers. As Vic had said, they were always desperate to protect their reputation, even if it was a blatant lie. The biography claimed that she had hated her parents and burned them alive as they were trying to help her, leaving on foot and befriending two young families from whom she had hidden the truth about herself. That part was true.

The biography claimed that she had used her powers to hold the families hostage; that she had forced both his and Bucky's families to believe that she was good. Steve shook his head. Bucky had fallen in love with her from the moment he had laid eyes on her. Steve had warmed up to her instantly. They had formed a bond with each other almost immediately and their families had liked her too. Vic had done nothing to make them believe her. She had been too scared out of her mind to force them to believe anything.

So much of the biography was a lie. It made her out to be a villain from the time she was a young child. It continued with claims that she was a horrible classmate, injuring and belittling her fellow students. Steve scowled. That was the way they had treated her. It then mentioned Stryker coming to take her away to hone her powers and learn to be a hero. It didn't mention that torture she had gone through at his hand. It made Stryker out to be a hero and it took pity on him when it said that Vic had eventually turned on him and killed his men.

Most of the next few paragraphs told the truth of the years that had followed. She had made friends with Colonel Phillips, she had joined the Army and eventually met their friends. It did mention that she had taken care of them and had helped in the fight against Hydra, though it insisted that she had attacked the United States at any chance she got and that she had been forced to not cause complete devastation during their missions. But she had been so careful to not injure innocent people. The real confusion came when he reached Bucky's death.

The wall claimed that she had thrown Bucky to his death from the train, with no inclination as to why she had done it, other than her enjoyment of hurting people. What genuinely confused Steve was that the wall claimed that their friends had all backed up the story, insisting that she had killed him. It even said that she had been the one to kill Steve. It said that she had been the one to rewire the Valkyrie and send it into the ice. She had wanted the world to go without a savior... Steve shook his head. She had been desperate to save him.

He then came to the rest of her life that he had been clueless about. Vic had reportedly vanished for a few months after Steve's death as the 'truth' of her actions had circulated the globe. People had almost forgotten about her, but then things had changed. They'd begun finding violent crime scenes around the world. Each death was able to be linked back to Victoria - some were men from Stryker's lab while others were scientists who had once worked with or for her parents. Some had even been former classmates.

Sometimes it was the person who had hurt her who had been killed. Other times it was their families and loved ones. It hadn't taken long for the world to discover that it was Victoria who was now coming after the people who had once hurt her. Steve remembered seeing and hearing about the list of people she had wanted to kill before nature had taken them. It seemed that she had been striking through the names one at a time until she had wiped her list clean.

Victoria had then reportedly joined a gang of other mutants. There were still debates over whether those mutants were good or bad, but there was a consensus that many of them were dangerous. The mutants had tried to remain in hiding though sometimes they were spotted in public, usually leaving massive casualties and damage in their wake. There followed a nearly ten-year gap that Victoria hadn't been seen much in the public eye, though many deaths and attacks had been attributed to her.

Then, in the sixties, there was another emergence from her. It seemed that Victoria had lost all allegiance to anyone and had instead begun offering her services to the highest bidder. She had become emotionless, according to the few people who had interacted with her and survived. They claimed that she had nothing left besides her skills, so that was what she had relied on. That was what she had done until the late eighties when she began working as a shadow recruit for S.H.I.E.L.D. The timeline fit just as Colonel Fury had said.

Victoria had started by faking an alliance with a foreign entity to gain information for S.H.I.E.L.D. before taking them down. She was able to do that for two years before committing fully to working for S.H.I.E.L.D. They had then taken her in and gave her a second chance at life. S.H.I.E.L.D. began shooting down the long-believed lies about her killing Steve and Bucky. The warrant for her arrest was eradicated due to her service in recent years, though trust in her was still nonexistent. Many people still believed she would one day snap.

Steve's body felt about fifty pounds heavier than it had when he had first entered the Smithsonian as he turned to leave. He had read enough. Now he needed to hear it from Victoria as he knew that at least some of what he had read was a lie. He wandered out of her section of the Captain America exhibit and saw her standing in front of Bucky's memorial. Steve let out a deep breath as he looked at his best friend with a new light. He shouldn't have pushed her so hard. Underneath all of that hatred and rage and humor, there was a woman who was still hurting.

Vic's eyes were deep blue as she stared at Bucky's memorial. Steve walked up behind her, his footsteps silent and not speaking, though he knew that she was aware he was there. Steve stepped up and looked at the video she was watching. It was what appeared to be a video from the war. Steve was standing with Bucky and Victoria in the video. Bucky's arm was around her shoulders as Steve stood on his other side. All three were laughing at something Bucky had said; Vic's hand with the engagement ring was placed on Bucky's stomach. Steve smiled at the video.

"I don't even remember what we were laughing about," Steve said quietly.

"I do," she replied slowly, not looking away from the monitor. "He told us that he didn't know why he liked either one of us; we were so pompous toward him."

Steve smiled. He did remember that day. He finally looked away from the video and back at Vic, who suddenly seemed much smaller. "How much of it is true?" Steve asked.

"In its entirety? None of it," Vic said. Steve nodded. He had figured that much. "In some capacity? Seventy percent, give or take. There are lies and truths in each part of the biography."

Seventy percent. That meant that there was a chance that she hadn't done some of the worst of what had been written about her. "The biography in there said that you were the one to kill us," Steve said. Vic nodded blankly. "It - It said that S.H.I.E.L.D. has denied those rumors for years but that it was still the generally accepted theory. How did that even start?"

"It was me."

"What?"

"I started that rumor."

Steve couldn't think of a good reason she would have had to start that rumor. "Why would you do that?"

"The world was determined to make me the villain. When I lost you two, it meant that I had lost my two greatest protectors. You were the only people the world would have listened to. Any future I'd had was gone. Any chance of having a family or retiring was gone. I couldn't hide forever. I couldn't let the people who loved me give up their lives to try and give me a chance to have one. I knew that word would get out about your deaths and there was one common link in them. Me. President Roosevelt would use it as his leverage to keep me as the villain."

It suddenly made sense. She had allowed herself to take the blame to ensure that the rest of their friends could live their lives. "So, you took matters into your own hands," Steve said.

"Yes," Vic whispered. "If it meant that they could have their lives back, it was worth it."

"They wanted the best for you. I can't believe they would allow you to take the blame," Steve said, shaking his head.

There was no way that Peggy or Howard would have ever allowed her to take the blame for Bucky and his death. Colonel Phillips would have defended her to the death. "They didn't do it without persuasion," Vic said, her eyes flashing white.

"You forced them to lie," Steve said, the truth dawning on him. She nodded. "That must have broken their hearts."

"It did, but it was the right thing to do," Vic said.

"They never tried to convince you otherwise?" Steve asked.

A bitter smile crept across her lips. "Plenty of times," she explained. Steve knew that there was no way they would have allowed her to lie without trying to fight her on it. "They came to visit me each time I was around and they could track me down."

"You never let them go back on their word?" Steve asked.

"What would have been the point? The world had already gotten their version of the truth and was never going to believe anything else. I let them tell the truth eventually, but it was in the nineties when I was working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and most people thought it was us trying to convince the people to believe that I was on their side now. Some people thought they were just becoming senile too, considering they were in their seventies and eighties."

He had almost forgotten that their friends were no longer in their twenties and thirties. It had barely dawned on him that they were likely no longer around. He hadn't brought himself to be able to ask her what had happened to them. Steve's head was spinning with the truth. There were so many things he didn't understand. He didn't understand how the world could have been so quick to condemn her. He didn't understand how her life had spun out of control so quickly after he had gone into the ice.

The one thing Steve genuinely didn't understand was how so many lies could still be surrounding her. This was a museum. It was the museum that most people thought of when they heard about history. He couldn't believe that they would publish so many things that were blatant lies. Did they genuinely believe the lies or were they trying to promote the government's agenda about Vic? Steve couldn't tell if he was angry with her or if his heart hurt for her. It seemed to be both. She had done some horrible things but she had been treated like a walking plague, too.

"I don't get it, half of what they said is a lie," Steve told her.

"Yes, it is. But history is written by the victor," Vic explained. They stared at each other for a moment. "You look like you have a million things to say."

"I do and I don't know where to start," Steve said honestly.

"Start at the beginning," she suggested.

There was one question weighing on his mind. "Who was the kid?" Steve asked.

Vic let out a humorless laugh. "How did I know that you would ask about him?"

"He's a kid, Vic."

"I'm aware he was a kid," she snapped. "I've always told you that I don't care who someone is. I don't care if it's a man or woman. Child or adult. If I have any reason to go after you, I will."

Steve was a little disturbed by the angry tone of her voice. "What was your reason?"

"Do you remember when I showed you the memories of my time in Stryker's lab?" Vic asked. Steve nodded slowly. It would have been hard to forget those memories she had shown him. "Do you remember the warning I gave Joshua, one of my trainers?" Steve nodded again. "That was his grandson."

Bile rose in Steve's throat as he thought about the memory she had shown him. He remembered when she had taken him and Bucky through her memories and shown him, Joshua. Steve remembered the chill that had settled over his bones when he had heard her warning. She would hang his daughter's corpse over his bed and paint his home in his grandson's blood. She had wanted to leave him alive to watch his family die because she refused to let him be at peace. She had done exactly what she had told him she would.

"You lived up to your promise," Steve said.

A tear ran down her face; he knew it was from the tone of his voice. "Yes," Vic said. Steve stared at her with some pity in his eyes. He wiped the tear away as she pulled back. Her face hardened a moment later. "I won't apologize for what I did."

"I'm not asking you to," Steve said honestly.

He knew that he could never imagine what she had gone through. He would never know what it had felt like to be her. He would never know what the past seventy years or her life was like. He didn't know what it was like to be raised and grow up around people who hated you. He would never know what it was like to be tortured beyond human endurance. He loved Vic to death. She meant the world to him. He wanted to forgive her and knew that he would, eventually, but he needed to understand what her past had been like first.

"Tell me what happened," Steve prompted.

Vic's tanned face turned pale. "I don't -"

"You want me to forgive you," Steve interrupted. She hesitated a moment before nodding. "I can't do that unless I know what happened. I've seen the best of you and I've promised you that I will still love the worst. I need to see it."

She hesitated for another moment before nodding. "Okay."

"What are you so afraid of?" Steve asked her.

Her gaze softened as she looked Steve in the eyes. "That look in your eyes. The look in Bucky's eyes. Our friends. All of you always looked at me like you had me on a pedestal," Vic said. Steve nodded. He had always looked up to her. She had been the one to show him what he was capable of. "But I've seen that look in people's eyes fade when they realize what I've done. I've gotten used to it, but there are a few people in the world that I can't stand seeing that look from. You're one of them."

The guilt hit Steve hard. She wasn't sorry for what she had done but she didn't want to and felt like she couldn't lose him. She was just afraid of how he would react. "Is this why you didn't tell me earlier?" Steve asked her. "You thought I would walk away from you."

"Of course."

"You're not losing me. You're not," Steve promised.

He would never walk away from her. He couldn't. "If you see it -"

"I'll at least know the truth. You don't have to hide anything from me, Vic," Steve said. This time she allowed him to brush the hair back from her forehead. "I love you. I always will."

"Even with everything I've done?" she asked.

Steve nodded his confirmation. "Even with everything you've done." He wasn't thrilled with what she had done, but he couldn't bring himself to throw away their friendship. "I just want to know. I don't want you to have to feel like you have to keep things from me."

Vic took a few deep breaths. "Do you want to see it?" she asked him.

Steve hesitated for a moment. He knew it would be a disgusting memory, but he wanted to see it. "Yes."

She must have seen the hesitation in his eyes as she hesitated herself for a moment before offering her hand. Steve took it as they met each other's eyes. He nodded his confirmation that he was ready to see this part of her past. "Take a deep breath," she instructed.

It felt like the air had been sucked from Steve's lungs as he was plunged back into her memory. Steve hated traveling into the past with her. It made him feel like he was going to suffocate. Once he had recovered, he saw that Vic was at his side, her now-gray eyes fixed on the large house in the distance with a dull stare. The house ahead of them was beautiful but he felt the sense of unease in the air around them. A car door slammed behind them and Steve turned back. Vic remained focused on the house.

An older man ran forward in horror away from his car. Steve saw an early-model car phone hanging off the receiver. Steve realized that the man was one of Vic's old trainers, Joshua. "Dottie! Martin!" the man cried.

Steve felt his throat tightening with nerves. He knew what he was about to see; the threat that Vic had once given Joshua. Steve was glad he hadn't eaten yet today. The older man ran forward, screaming for his daughter and grandson to come to him. As Joshua ran past them, Vic began walking after him. Something in her movements was almost robotic. He figured that this was a hard memory for her to relive. Steve followed Vic at a slight distance and took a huge breath before walking into the home.

He was almost blown back to his knees by the metallic smell in the air. Steve recognized it immediately; blood. It would have been hard to mistake it. The home was soaked in it. Blood was coating the walls and floors. It looked worse than any battlefield Steve had ever set foot on. Vic gave no hint of emotion as she walked through the blood. Steve began moving forward with bile rising in his throat as they walked into a bedroom in the rear of the house. Steve gasped, his knees nearly giving out as Joshua began screaming.

It would have been hard to mistake what he was screaming about. The room was red; blood was splattered against the floor, furniture, and walls. Joshua was on his knees, too stunned to say or do anything. The memory version of Victoria was sitting on the blood-soaked bed, staring at the floor. She almost looked like she had gone swimming in it. Her eyes were completely black with red cracks forming on her face. She did not move to indicate that she had seen Joshua walk into the room, but Steve knew that she was acutely aware of what was going on.

Steve's gaze moved to his Vic - almost unable to believe that they were the same person - who had still not indicated any emotion. Steve looked up to the rest of the room. A woman who appeared to be in her early thirties was crucified over the bed. Shards of metal ran through her hands and feet, nailing her to the wall. Her throat was slit to the bone. A boy who looked about eight was on the floor. He had been opened from his gut to his groin, his ribs broken, and turned up to the ceiling, leaving his internal organs open to the world.

Steve jumped in surprise as the old Victoria spoke. "They begged for you."

She only looked up to meet Joshua's eyes at that moment. Joshua was hyperventilating as he pulled himself toward his grandson. "Mar - Martin. Buddy, come on. Look at me. P - Please," Joshua begged.

"It's too late, Joshua," Victoria said.

"No! No!" Joshua sobbed, looking up at his daughter's corpse. "Baby..."

"You know, you see a person's true colors in their last moments. Your daughter was a coward. She sobbed and cried and screamed. It was very aggravating," Victoria said, no trace of emotion in her voice. "Your grandson had the potential to be a good man. He didn't cry and tried to comfort your daughter, the pathetic mess she was. Your daughter was no loss to anyone. You won't be either."

"You - You..." Joshua gasped.

"You all like to pretend that you're special. I bet you believed that your daughter was magnificent and that your son was going to be a gift to the world. The truth is, when opened up, you're all the same. Red," Victoria growled.

"You evil..." Joshua began.

But his voice died as he tried to come up with an insult. Nothing was good enough for what she had done. Joshua's mouth dropped open in a deafening scream of both mental and physical pain. Steve blinked back tears as the old Victoria stared at him without the slightest trace of emotion on her face. "I know how you feel. I've known loss in more ways than you can imagine," she told him.

They finally met each other's eyes. Joshua dragged himself toward his grandson's body, puking up bits of bile. The old Victoria watched him with mild interest. She reached into the pocket of her uniform and chuckled a small handgun at Joshua, who stared down at it. It took Steve a moment to realize that she wasn't giving it to Joshua to try and kill her. She was giving it to him so he could kill himself. Joshua looked at the gun and took it, rolling it over in his hands. He met Victoria's eyes as she watched.

The old Victoria nodded at him, her way of telling him that death was the only way out of this situation. He had already lost the only family he had left. She watched as Joshua raised the gun to his temple. Steve gulped nervously as Joshua placed his finger on the trigger and swallowed, closing his eyes, forcing tears down his cheek. Joshua pulled the trigger and the gun made a loud clicking noise, but no bullet deployed. Of course. That was the final part of her warning. She wouldn't let him die.

Joshua dropped the gun into his lap, sobbing. "What you're feeling right now, it's only a fraction of what I've felt my entire life," Victoria told him. She stood from the bed, stepping over Joshua's crumpled body. She stopped a few inches from him and spoke with her back still turned to him. "My pain is constant and sharp and I don't hope for a better world for anyone. I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. You're just the beginning."

"How could you?" Joshua sobbed.

Victoria stopped walking, turning back to look at him. "I don't break promises," she said, turning back. "Goodbye, Joshua."

The old Victoria walked past the modern-day Vic and Steve without any trace of emotion on her face. Steve and his Vic followed her out of the house. Steve sent one look back at Joshua. He was laying at his grandson's side, grasping for his body. It was no use. Both of his family members were turning grey in death. Joshua looked up, screaming like a banshee at the top of his lungs. Steve grimaced as he walked out with Vic. They watched as the old Victoria stopped outside and turned back to the house for a moment, smiling at the sound of Joshua's scream.

They were shot back to reality without warning as Steve stumbled back from his Victoria. Like in the memory, there was no emotion on her face. "How did it feel?" Steve asked her.

"Hollow," she answered honestly. "I thought it would bring me some joy. Some sense of relief, at least."

"Did it?"

"No. But I didn't know what else to do."

"So, you kept doing it," Steve said.

"What else was I going to do?" Vic asked, her voice taking on a defensive tone again. "I didn't have friends or a family anymore. I couldn't put the few people I had left that I loved in danger. I couldn't kill myself. I had to keep moving on doing something. So, I went back to the only thing I had ever known how to do."

The only thing she had known how to do. That thought kept repeating itself in Steve's head. He had never realized just how useless Vic felt. She was one of the strongest people he had ever met. She knew how to do everything. The problem was that, without Steve and Bucky in her life, made out to be the villain of the world, she couldn't motivate herself to do those things. She had felt backed into a corner. Steve looked up at the glass panel behind them that showed a small picture of William Stryker.

"You killed Stryker," Steve said.

"I did," Vic replied.

"I always figured you would," Steve said honestly.

He meant what he had said. He'd always figured that she would eventually kill Stryker. She was the only person who deserved to take his life. "That was the one death that may have brought me some joy," Vic admitted.

"What happened?" Steve asked.

"Do you want to see?" she asked.

"Yeah, I do," Steve said.

Vic placed a hand on his shoulder and shot them through time again. According to her, they were now in early nineteen forty-seven. They had landed on Alcatraz Island and were now entering Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Steve shrank back slightly at the storm that was rattling the stone walls of the prison. Steve had never been inside a prison before. He had never been to a place like Alcatraz, that held some of the most notorious criminals in history, and apparently, William Stryker.

Steve and Vic were following the old version of Victoria as she entered the supermax prison. The old Victoria raised her hand and sent out a signal to the brains of the guards and soldiers were looking over the prisoners in Alcatraz. All three of them watched as the bodies of the guards fell to the ground or drooped back in their chairs, all in a dazed state. Victoria walked into the prison, Steve and his Vic at her heels, and he heard the howling of the prisoners, wondering what had happened. The prisoners fell silent at the sight of Victoria entered the cell block.

Steve knew that some of the men in the cell block likely had no idea who she was as they would have been imprisoned for most of their lives. They were audibly wondering who the woman was and what she had done to the men. Some vile comments were thrown her way as she passed the cells, but she acted as though she hadn't heard them. Eventually, Steve began hearing her name echoed across the cells. The men did know who she was. Steve could hear them muttering among themselves. Vic passed a man Steve recognized as Robert Stroud.

He had seen the murderer's photograph in newspapers growing up. Stroud tipped his hat to her. "Miss," Stroud greeted.

"William Stryker," Victoria growled, turning to meet Stroud's eyes. "Where is he?"

"Cell seventy-two," Stroud answered.

Victoria strutted through the prison, ignoring the stares and occasional jeers from the male prisoners. A chill went up Steve's spine as they passed Alvin Karpis, another infamous killer. A broad smile split his mouth as Victoria walked past him, not even sparing a glance. Steve couldn't understand how she wasn't freaked out by it. But Victoria was determined to get to her old instructor. She reached a cell at the end of the path and stopped, looking in. Steve saw William Stryker rise and walk to the bars. The prisoners fell silent as they watched the exchange.

William Stryker stared at Victoria like he had seen a ghost. "Victoria," Stryker breathed.

"Hello, William. It's been a long time," Victoria said tonelessly.

"What are you doing here?" Stryker asked.

"Coming to see an old friend," she replied.

The prison had fallen completely silent. No one was speaking. They all wanted to see what was about to happen. Victoria reached out to the iron-wrought gates and wrenched it open. There were some gasps and screams as the gate pulled free from the cell walls. Victoria threw it to the other end of the cellblock and entered Stryker's cell. The prisoners pressed themselves as far against the bars as they could to see what was going on. Victoria entered the cell with Stryker, her eyes lowering to his bare feet, which were disfigured with scars.

"You look afraid," Victoria said, her eyes rising to his trembling jaw.

"You have a life," Stryker said. "Don't -"

"Don't throw it away," Victoria said, her lips turning up in a bitter smile. "Funny, Jefferson said the same thing when I saw him. Right before I broke his wife's arm, made her forget about their marriage, and disfigured him. He was one of your cronies. You were the ringleader."

"People like you are the reason my family is dead," Stryker said angrily.

"That's not my concern. People like you are the reason my family is dead," Victoria replied. Stryker stared at her, likely trying to find a way out of the violent death he knew was coming his way. "I've lost everything. I have nothing to throw away."

She truly had been torn apart by their deaths. Victoria wrapped a hand around Stryker's collar as she advanced on him. She took the fabric between her fingers and reared back, throwing Stryker over her head and out of the cell. He crumpled against the ground as there were loud jeers and chattering from the prisoners who were watching. Stryker groaned in pain, trying to pull himself away from her. Victoria followed him slowly. The fear had crept into Stryker's eyes. He backed into the wall, unable to go anywhere else. Victoria kneeled in front of him.

Her hand nudged the bottom of his chin upward to meet her eyes. "You made a fatal mistake all those years ago. You trained me. You taught me to be a living weapon and for that, I thank you," Victoria said coldly. "If there was one thing you ever taught me, it was that I'm not weak."

"You've proven that. You don't need to do anything else," Stryker tried to reason with her.

"I have to do something, William. I can't just sit still for the rest of eternity. I don't know what I'll do forever, but I know how I'll start. I'm going to kill you and everyone else who had a hand in tearing my life apart," Victoria told him.

"Victoria -"

"Do you want to know what it felt like when I watched my fiancé fall to his death? Or how it felt when I stood with my best friend as he took his final breaths?" she interrupted.

"Please -"

But he never got a chance to finish. He was in the middle of pleading with her to spare his life when Victoria reached out and slammed her fist through William Stryker's chest. A horrible cracking and squelching noise echoed through the prison as Victoria's hand went through his ribcage. Stryker fell back against the stone wall of the prison, still alive with his eyes as wide as saucer plates. He looked shocked. Even Steve was surprised. He had expected her to toy with him for a little while, not just kill him outright.

In a few moments, Stryker would be dead. Victoria smiled nastily as the screams and jeers echoed through the prison. Many of the prisoners were jumping up and down and banging against the bars of their cells. Victoria pulled her hand from Stryker's chest, taking his heart with her. She unfolded her fingers from around his heart and turned the organ over in her hand. The blood was still dripping from it as it twitched weakly, trying to pump blood through the body it was no longer attached to. Stryker was still alive. There was still some blood pumping oxygen to his brain.

"It felt like that. The only difference is that I have to keep living with it," Victoria snarled. She tightened her grip around the organ as she crushed his heart in her hand and dropped it to the ground. At that same moment, the light began to leave Stryker's eyes. He never even got the chance to scream. "Goodbye, William."

They stared at each other for a moment as Victoria rose from her crouched position and walked off. The prisoners were staring at her with both shock and amusement on their faces. There was no screaming this time. Victoria walked through the hall and headed out of the prison. Steve and his Vic watched Stryker as he sat on the ground, the life fading quickly from his eyes. The guards began waking up as Victoria left the prison. They rose to their feet and stared at the body of William Stryker, obviously wondering what the hell had just happened.

Without warning, the pair were sucked back into the real world. Vic took a step back and threw her hands out to the side. "There you have it," she said quietly.

"He deserved it," Steve said determinedly.

Vic's light eyebrows furrowed. "You believe that?" she asked.

"He had nothing to live for," Steve growled.

"That wasn't the response that I was expecting," Vic said.

They exchanged another quick look as Steve gave her a weak smile. "You don't disgust me, Vic," Steve said. Her gaze moved to meet his eyes. She didn't look happy but she did look relieved. "I'm not exactly proud of everything you've done since I went in the ice but I know that you had your reasons and I know that you didn't see an end to your suffering."

"That's true." Steve wondered if she would stop there, but she continued. "Steve, since I found out that you were still alive, I've been terrified that you would find out the truth. I wanted you to know and I was trying to find a way to tell you. I was just so afraid that the moment the truth came out you would hate me. I had already lost Bucky and I'd lost you once before, I didn't think I could tolerate losing you again."

They were best friends. They couldn't lose each other. "You're not losing me. Not now and not ever," Steve promised.

He'd meant every word. She was never going to lose him. Vic's eyes watered as Steve grabbed her arms and pulled her into him. They stood pressed against each other for a long time as Vic cried into his shoulder. It was a release of emotion and who knew how long she had been holding all her emotions in? Judging by the look on her face, she hadn't let anyone see her this way in a long time. Maybe she hadn't let anyone see her this way since the nineteen forties. Steve pressed a comforting kiss into her hair.

Steve wanted her to know that, no matter what they had done, they were still best friends. She still cared about him and he still cared about her. Steve tapped her playfully against the spine as he shook her back and forth. Vic chuckled through her tears, hiding her face in his arms. Steve laughed too as he felt her begin to relax. Steve wasn't happy with what she had done for all the years he had been gone, but more than anything, he was happy to have her in his life. Just as she couldn't stand to lose him, he couldn't stand to lose her.

They were the one thing that the other had always had. No matter what, they had always been at each other's side. When they were the outcasts they could always rely on one another to talk through a bad day. When he had joined the Army training, she had been the one to watch over him and ensure that his transformation to Captain America would be safe. She had trained him. She had protected him. She had been there to cry with him after Bucky's death. Now, even in this new life, she was still here for him.

A long time passed before Steve and Vic pulled apart. "The conversation isn't over," Steve said as gently as possible. "You know that, right?"

"It's been seventy years. We have a lot to go over," Vic admitted.

Steve smiled at her. He was looking forward to the conversation that needed to happen at its own pace. He didn't mind having to wait to hear the whole story. "I'm not asking you to tell me everything at once. I know that's too much for either one of us, but I want to know what happened. The good and the bad," Steve told her.

Vic let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "The good," she chuckled.

"There had to be some good," Steve said hopefully.

She smiled for the first time that evening. "There was." Steve smiled at her. He was eager to know what the good was, but he knew she was done talking for tonight. "I will tell you everything when the time is right."

"That's all I'm asking," Steve said. He wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she melted into his side. "I think it's time to get out of here."

"Please," Vic said.

"Let's go home," Steve said.

"Do you want me to take you back to the Retreat?" Vic asked.

For a moment, Steve almost considered going back to the Retreat, but it was so lonely being there. No one was around and he missed her. He didn't want to walk away from her again. "No. I don't want to be alone tonight and I don't want to leave you either," Steve said. Vic smiled. Neither one of them wanted to be alone after the day's events. "I was thinking that this might be my last day at the Retreat."

Vic's face turned up in the brightest smile he had seen in a long time. "Really?" she asked.

"It's time for me to come back to the real world," Steve said.

"I've been hoping you would say that," Vic said.

"Come on," Steve said.

It had been hours since they had arrived at the Smithsonian. It was time to leave. Vic smiled up at Steve as he linked their fingers together, pulling her out toward the exit of the Smithsonian. She had one hand wrapped around his arm as they walked past the guard she had knocked out earlier, both now chuckling at the funny moment. As they headed out onto the front steps of the museum, Vic lowered one hand around Steve's waist. She glanced up at him before they took off. Steve raised an eyebrow, wondering what she was thinking.

"How about we take the scenic route?" Vic offered.

Steve smiled. "The scenic route it is."

Vic smiled back at him. "Hold on, soldier."

And so, Vic blasted off the concrete sidewalk without warning. Steve shrunk against Vic's side as she burst out with a belly-deep laugh. The laugh made Steve erupt into fits of chuckles. He hadn't sure if she was capable of laughing like that anymore. He was glad to know that they were one step closer to being back to their old friendship. He couldn't imagine what his life would be like without her, especially not a life in a world that he didn't know in the slightest.

Even though flying made Steve slightly nervous, Vic had always enjoyed scaring people with her flight, especially as she didn't take it easy. She did eventually slow down as she reached high into the sky. They soared over Washington, D.C., and looked down at the lights that were sparkling over the city. Steve, unlike Bucky, had no fear of heights since undergoing the super-soldier serum. Steve let out a breath as they soared slowly over the city. Their relationship may have had a new tenseness in it, but he would always love her and always be glad to have her in his life.

Victoria's P.O.V.

It felt as though a thousand pounds had been lifted off of my chest. I knew that things weren't over with the conversation surrounding my past. There were still a thousand things I had to talk to him about. There were still so many things about my past that I needed to divulge. Some were difficult and others were little things. All I could do right now was enjoy that he was grateful that I had told him the truth. Though, someone had forced me into it. The conversation surrounding who had told Steve the truth would come later.

We smiled at each other as I swooped through the beautiful landscape. It had been a long time since I had realized just how much I loved flying. There was something about it that could erase the worst concerns. There was the occasional time that I went flying just to get up into the clouds and enjoy the peace up there but I had long forgotten how much I loved it. Up here there were no horrible comments that I had to endure. Up here, I was able to clear my mind and be myself. The real me.

Not the version of me the media had created. Not the nightmarish mutant that took out her anger on perfectly innocent private citizens. That wasn't me. Whatever I had done, I'd always had my reasons. I looked at Steve as we flew over the tops of large trees. He looked like he was having a good time. Maybe I wasn't the only one who wanted to distract themselves. Up here, maybe he was able to briefly forget that we lived in the modern world now. This might have been some comfort for him. His heart felt lighter than air.

We took our time flying over Maryland and Delaware. We even briefly shot over to Pennsylvania to look at Philadelphia. We had a good time looking at the sights as we soared both low and high. Sometimes we dipped so low that we could reach down and touch the pavement below us. Other times we shot over lakes low enough to dip our hands into the water below us. When we moved into civilization I moved us up so high in the air that we flew through the clouds. That was when Steve seemed the most at peace.

It was a shame that it had taken me so long to learn to fly. I had always loved it. It was the one time that I felt like I could truly enjoy myself and be lighter than air. All good things must come to an end though, as I eventually warped us toward New York. I didn't rush the ride to my home and Steve didn't ask me to speed up. We enjoyed the peaceful air as we moved slowly through the night sky. It was late but it was also a perfect time for us to be in our heads as we started to figure out ways to clear the air between us.

Eventually, I had to admit to myself that it was time to go home. The sun had set long before we had even entered the Smithsonian. So, I moved us to the east and my apartment complex. The two of us smiled at each other as I landed as gently as possible; Steve still stumbled back a few steps. He looked up to the apartment building as I nodded. I was even more thrilled than I had expected to be that my friend had decided to come back to the real world. Maybe this was the way that we could get ourselves back on the path to being the best friends we used to be.

It was well past three o'clock in the morning as we walked into the apartment complex. This was the only time of day that the reporters weren't here, though they would likely return around six o'clock to ensure that they didn't miss me leaving for an early-morning assignment. I took Steve's hand and led him into the apartment building and toward the staircase. We headed upstairs to the fifteenth floor with his arm around my waist and my head leaned on his arm. The fight had taken a lot out of us both, even though it was all verbal.

Steve had never set foot in my apartment before. We had stayed together at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility the night he had woken up from the ice before we had sent him to the Retreat the next day. Steve wandered into the foyer of my apartment and looked around. He must have liked it as there was a broad smile on his face. I figured that I would give him some time to look around. We had both always been nosy when it came to the other. I watched as Steve expectedly went to my fireplace mantle and began looking through my pictures.

There were lots of them that crowded the small mantle. I watched Steve with my arms crossed over my chest, smiling as his hands traveled over the pictures. Some were taken with the men during the war. Others were on the farm with Chester. There were sweet ones of me laughing with Peggy. Many contained me whacking Howard. A large portion of them was of myself, Steve, and Bucky throughout our lives. Steve smiled as he picked up a picture of me getting a piggy-back ride from Bucky. I was laughing, pressing my lips against his throat.

Steve was smiling as he held the picture in his hand. "This is cute."

"Yeah. That was a fun day," I said. Steve placed the picture back on the mantle as his gaze traveled over to one of the pictures of the two of us. We were locked in the middle of a sparring match. Even though the picture was in black and white I could tell that he had a black and blue mark over his eye. "I hit you way harder than I'd meant to."

Steve chuckled uncomfortably, running his hands over his eyes. "Yeah. I remember how hard you hit."

Anyone who had been hit by me would attest to how uncomfortable my punches were. We smiled at each other as Steve continued looking over some of the other pictures I had sitting on the mantle. A few of them were of my newer friends. Some were of the X-Men; Kurt and Logan and Charles. Steve stared at them curiously as his eyes shifted over to the newest ones; I wondered if he would comment on Tony Stark, but he didn't. His eyes traveled right over that picture. He must not have seen the resemblance between the father and son.

"New friends?" Steve asked, motioning to a picture of myself and Nat.

"Yeah," I said, smiling at the large collection. It reminded me that I wasn't alone, even when it felt like I was. "I'm sure you'll meet most of them soon."

Natasha was perhaps the most eager of my friends from S.H.I.E.L.D. to meet Steve. She had grown up hearing stories about him. I had been one of the first people to tell her about him when she was a teenager. She had grown up a strong woman and I looked forward to seeing how she interacted with Steve. He looked over the pictures for a few more moments before eventually looking back at me. We stared at each other for a long time. It was late and I was tired, but I knew I couldn't go to bed without saying anything to him.

It was finally time for me to say what I knew I should have said a long time ago. "I'm sorry, Steve, for everything," I whispered.

"It's not me that needs the apology," Steve said. I swallowed thickly. He was right. "Vic, I don't know if I understand what was going through your head. I don't think I can ever understand what you were thinking, but there was something selfless in your actions. You forced our friends away from you to ensure they would live their lives uninterrupted and spent your life alone and miserable because of it."

He was perhaps the only person in the world who could still believe that I was a good person after everything I had shown him. "Good to know that even seventy years in the ice can't defeat that belief that everyone has some good in them," I said, laughing.

"I know you. I know that, whatever you do, there's always good in you," Steve said.

"There wasn't always," I insisted.

Steve smiled as he shook his head. "Then maybe it's time to admit that someone knows you better than you know yourself," Steve replied. I looked to the ground bashfully. Maybe he was right. Maybe there had always been some good in me, no matter how deep it was buried. "I wasn't the only one who believed that."

Of course. Bucky had believed it too. "Do you hate me?" I asked cautiously.

Steve shook his head. "No. I could never hate you." I let out a breath of relief. "I just wanted the truth."

"Well, you probably got more than you were hoping for," I said.

Steve smiled at me. His smile was real, but it wasn't completely there. It would take some time to get us back completely to where we had been before he had gone in the ice. "You're here now, doing the right thing. You've tried to make up for your actions and that's what matters to me," Steve told me.

"Thank you," I said quietly.

"We're okay, Vic," Steve promised. "I'll always be glad to have you."

"You have no idea what you coming back means to me," I said.

Steve shook his head. "Trust me, I do. I love you."

"I love you too," I said.

We exchanged another long hug before pulling apart. It felt like we had taken a major step in the right direction today. Steve walked into the living room of my apartment as I yawned. I wasn't normally tired but I was feeling it now. Steve smiled at me as I wrapped an arm around his waist. I was glad that he had decided that he didn't want to go back to the Retreat. Until we could find him a more permanent place, he could stay with me. I was about to walk Steve back to the spare bedroom before I stopped and looked up at him.

It was a longshot, but I didn't want to be alone. Not after today. "Will you stay with me tonight?" I asked, motioning over to the large couch. "Like we did when we were little?"

Steve smiled. "Yeah."

We pulled the blankets and comforters off my bed and the guestroom bed and walked them into the living room, sprawling out on the couch with our heads next to each other. We chatted quietly about the modern world for a while before Steve became the first to drift off to sleep. I smiled at his sleeping form. For the first time in a long time, I felt some peace as I prepared to go to sleep. The man next to me may not have been a friendly hookup or significant other, but he meant more to me than all of them combined. Something in my life finally felt right.

A/N: Here's a quick question, do you guys want to read a few chapters about Steve getting used to the modern world or do we want to jump right into The Avengers storyline? Also, I want to make sure that everyone knows that this is a very small portion of Victoria's backstory! We're going to get a lot more through flashbacks and explanations probably all the way through Endgame. Thank you to everyone who read the first chapter of the next part of Victoria's story! Thank you for all the follows and favorites! Please review! Until next time -A

KEZZ 1: Thank you! Here's hoping you've enjoyed this one too!

SomebodyWhoCares: I promise that Bucky will come back eventually! Unfortunately, The Avengers is Victoria's story. This is her chance to really shine. But The Winter Soldier will bring him back and I promise he'll get plenty of mentions here!

Crazy Devil Girl: Wow, that's a positive review! Thank you so much! I'm going to have a ton of fun with this story. It's going to be more violent and profane with more adult themes as we move the story into modern day. Of course the truth came out! Though it is important to remember that there's still a lot of truth to come out as time goes on.

.2020: Thank you! I hope you liked this one!

A: I'm not sure what your review was supposed to say (I think you may have pressed the submit button too soon) but I hope you liked it!