Task Force HQ, Berlin, German

Sharon startled out of a light doze as the quinjet touched down on the roof the HQ. Her body clock was screwed up to hell and gone – she'd gone from DC to London to Vienna in less than 36 hours. Not to mention the emotional roller coaster. She was tired, physically and mentally.

Welcome to the glamorous life of a CIA agent, she snorted. Up and at 'em.

She had to shake Ross awake and he scowled at her like it was her fault that he'd fallen asleep. Sharon ignored the scowl and fished out the bottle of ibuprofen that she kept stashed in her work bag, dry swallowing three. She thought about offering some to Ross but decided he could ask if he needed them. He didn't ask.

"When does the team land?" he scrubbed his hair as they deplaned.

"They should have landed fifteen minutes ago. They geared up on the plane and will need forty-five minutes to get to the target address," Sharon explained for fifth time, not bothering to hide her exasperation.

Ross might be a little slow, but he was smart. Well, smart enough. He wasn't asking her for repetitive recitations of the timeline because he'd forgotten it. She didn't know him well enough to know why he did it, but all of the likely options made him an asshole. It could be that his ego liked it when he exercised petty power over his minions. Or over women. It could be that he disliked her, personally, for her second-hand connections to the various players involved. Or because she looked like his first wife. It could just be a nervous habit. Or…

A sudden thought chilled her.

It could be that he was probing her for inconsistencies.

She stared at the back of his head for a second as they walked down the hallways. He was abrasive and a little dull. His pale gray suit was nice enough but not bespoke. His blue tie was silk, sure, but it was cheap silk. She'd never heard of him before today. He wasn't related to Secretary of State Ross, Bob had been clear about that.

How did a boring little man – someone without brilliance or charisma or wealth or connections or reputation - land on top of the team in charge of the most high-profile international clusterfuck the world had seen in ten years? She could think of two options. One, he was a scapegoat. Sec State Ross expected this to go sideways and he wanted someone he could sacrifice. In that case, he was a blessing for her sub rosa mission. The blame was already aimed at him and she just needed to stay out of the way. Two, he was a ringer. A counter-intelligence genius buried in the bureaucracy and brought out in this time of dire need. If that was the case, he was probably probing for inconsistencies and was a bigger danger than she'd imagined. Regardless, her mission parameters stayed the same: stay the hell out of the way.

There was always the terrifying possible third option. Ross was the best man that they could find to head the team.

She tucked the puzzle away in her head, filed under "worry about later", because they'd reached the communications room.

Agent Romanov nodded to them as they entered. Her famously lush lips folded in a tight line, radiating anger. Ross had managed to get authorization for War Machine to back up the Special Forces team, but not Romanov. To be fair, he hadn't tried very hard. Romanov had watched the whole thing, including the bits where he'd declared that she was most likely "emotionally compromised" and then the Italian delegate made a crack about her sleeping with Rogers. She was pissed and wasn't bothering to hide it. Sharon wondered, idly, if Ross cared that he had made an enemy for life.

"Okay, folks, let's do this," Ross announced, clapping his hands and rubbing them together, as if this was a training exercise or futbal scrum. Not watching the balloon go up in a potentially deadly operation more than a thousand kilometers away. If Barnes was there, people were very likely to die.

She hoped, again, that Steve and Sam had gotten there early enough to get Barnes out of sight. That was the best option, not just for Steve, not just for her, but also for the men and women about to head into harm's way.

On the wall of screens, Sharon watched as the German team established a perimeter around a mid-century high rise that managed to combine concrete sterility and seedy despair.

"There are two men inside," the German spotter reported, his voice as clear as if he was in the same room.

No best option, today. Sharon clenched her jaw and leaned forward.

"Operation is go," Ross said in English. "Go now."

"Verschluss! Schnell!" The team breeched. Or rather, it tried to breech.

The battering ram hit the cheap hollow door and… didn't budge. The spotter fired a flash bang through the newspaper-covered windows and… nothing happened.

"What the hell is going on?" Ross turned to her.

"How should I know?" she snapped and looked back at the screens.

Then, suddenly, all hell broke loose.

"There's Barnes!" Ross shouted. "And… is that Rogers? What the fuck?"

Each member of the task force had a camera and a microphone piped right into the communications room and the video wall burst into a kaleidoscope of violent motion and frantic noise. Sharon forced herself to focus on one screen, following the action from the camera of the team leader. There was Barnes, dark hair and dark beard, hollow cheeks and hollow eyes. His fist flashed – literally flashed, a slash of silver – in the dim lighting of the fire stair. And here was Steve, all smooth strength and graceful speed right behind him.

Picking out a narrative in the action was tricky, especially with Ross shouting commands and the confused voices over the microphones. The only thing that was clear was that Barnes was running. Sharon had seen him in action in D.C., watched all the video. She knew he could be racking up a body count like it was HALO night, but he wasn't. All of his actions were defensive; he never threw the first punch, just reacted when someone else did. He was just running.

Steve had been right.

Steve was pretty much always right.

The cameras were most consistently on Barnes, who stayed in front of the action. In her brief glimpses of Steve, she saw him punching Barnes and shielding Barnes, kicking soldiers and catching them as they plummeted down the stairwell. He was fighting a two-front battle against two warring sides, all while pulling his punches.

And he looked beautiful while doing it.

Damn, Peg. You had excellent taste in men.

Then Barnes went out the goddamned window.

In Berlin, a chorus of gasps rose around the C&C room, open mouthed in wonder as Barnes jumped fifteen stories to a lower roof. Even Ross shut the hell up for a few seconds to watch the feat of –

"Scheiße! Es gibt eine dritte Mann!" the helicopter pilot squawked, forgetting herself and speaking in German. There was a third person on the roof!

"Get me a camera on that roof!" bellowed Ross. A tech was already on it, scrabbling frantically at the keyboard, all the while muttering that he was trying, he was almost there, he hadn't had this one queued up already, who would imagine that Barnes would jump two hundred feet down…

"You should have known, damnit!" Ross was starting to get a little red around the face and Sharon had a minute to wish a heart attack on him before a distant camera with a crappy angle popped up on the central screen.

"Who the fuck is that?" Ross rounded on Sharon, his voice sounded strangled by his mounting fury.

"I have no idea," she gaped.

The figure on the roof was wearing all black and going punch for punch with Barnes, moving in a graceful but… weirdly acrobatic way. Sharon glanced over to ensure herself that Romanov was still in the room then squinted back at the poor-quality video. No, the figure was definitely male. The man had the shoulders-to-waist-ratio of a Dorito, but moved like a dancer. Or like a …

"Is he dressed like a cat?" she asked, straightening back up.

"Is that Wilson?"

"That's not Sam," Romanov said from the corner.

"Great, another freak in a leotard, just what this situation needs," Ross snarled. "Open fire! Shoot Barnes! Shoot them both! Now!"

The helicopter's gunner opened up as Sharon and Romanov both rounded on Ross.

"Tell them to stop shooting!" Romanov demanded, her voice like a whip that cut across Sharon's outraged gasp. "You can not do that, sir!"

Rearing back, Ross glanced away from Romanov to glare at Sharon. "The hell I can't, Agent Carter."

"Sir, we don't know who that is. You do not have the authorization to just murder random people."

"I have shoot-to-kill orders on Barnes. If some whack job gets in the way, that is not my—"

"Scheiße!" the helicopter pilot shouted on her microphone and all debate stopped for a second as they looked up and watched as the video feed from the chopped began to wheel wildly, flashing sky and then skyscraper and then ground and then sky again, in rapid, dizzying succession.

"That's Sam," Natasha said, as the camera careened past a small dark figure in the sky. She stalked across the room, getting very close to Ross's face. "And you will not shoot at Sam Wilson. Or at Steve Rogers. Or at random people who you cannot identify. Do you understand me?"

Ross's face shifted from red to purple and for a second Sharon thought he'd spit defiance. But his own personal sense of safety suddenly kicked in. He glanced away from Romanov, looking around the room for support. He got back stares that ranged from blankly neutral to actively hostile. Then he looked back down at Romanov, who was regarding him with a cool half-smile that somehow conveyed a threat.

He may have had the legal high ground, but he was outmuscled here and now. And he knew it.

Sharon reached out and thumbed on the microphone.

"Do not shoot except at Barnes," she said, in German and then in English, to be sure. "Repeat, we do not have kill authorization for anyone but Barnes."

Romanov shot her a hard glare.

"Those are our orders from the U.N.," Sharon apologized, making her regret apparent.

Romanov opened her mouth to say something and then her head whipped around to stare at the monitors.

"Holy crap, Rogers," she gasped, watching Steve repeat Barnes's insane jump. He flew out the window and seemed to hang in the air at the same time that he plummeted to the roof, barely landing on the ledge. One foot shorter and he would have fallen to the ground.

"They are killing me," Sharon muttered in agreement.

Ross, behind them, made a strangled noise and stomped around so that he could see.

"It's going to wind up in the streets," Sharon realized. "What's Barnes's most probable route out of the city?"

"He won't take the most probable route," Romanov murmured, sotto voce.

"Right. I need every street cam for a half mile radius queued up and ready to go, please" Sharon said to the technicians as the combatants all leapt directly into traffic. "Damnit, don't these people have any respect for gravity? Marconi, your team is in charge of tracking him and coordinating with the other teams. Make sure that we have eyes on him for every step. Lulić, I want you to talk to the Bucharest P.D., make sure they know what's going on. This is a street-level chase now and I want everyone to know everything. Holy crap! Did you see that?"

Sharon boggled as Steve bodychecked a moving car, pulling the driver out and flinging his body across the asphalt like a rag doll.

"Ambulances!" she pointed. "Weber, your team runs dispatch for the emergency response. Coordinate with Lulić."

Beside her, Romanov said in low voice, "Rhodey."

"Hell yes," Sharon turned to order War Machine onto the field and then caught sight of Ross. He looked apoplectic – she guessed he was torn between purpling outrage that she'd taken over the C&C room, thwarted fury at having his kill command belayed, and, under it all, relief that she had stepped in to take control just as the whole thing went pear shaped. She had just made herself the scapegoat.

Well, hell.

She took a breath, realized she'd already stepped in it, and decided to just embrace it.

"Sir, while you call the authorities to get on-the-ground clearance for War Machine, I can handle this operational trivia," she gave him a direct stare. "You're going to want to coordinate the P.R. efforts, too."

He could break one of two ways. He could stomp and fume about her insubordination or he could be grateful for the chance to shift the blame to her, with the face-saving bonus that he'd be dealing with the big boys at the U.N. and far away from this room, with all the people who had just watched him be humiliated.

For a heartbeat, she thought he'd scream at her but she could watch him think it through.

"Thank you, Agent Carter. Carry on," he waved his hand with a flip.

As he rushed out of the C&C, Romanov shot her a smile and Sharon found herself grinning back.

"Any idea who the guy in the black suit is?" Sharon asked Romanov, quietly.

"Maybe."

Sharon glanced over but Romanov merely continued to stare at the screens.

She's Fury's left hand, Sharon reminded herself. Don't trust her.

The chase was insane, especially coming in fragmented snatches from jouncing video cameras mounted on vests and cars. There was the dangling foot of Cat Dude hanging off of Wilson. But the central image, on most of the screens, was Barnes's upright figure, running. Just running, brutally fast, while passing cars, dodging attacks. Even when he grabbed a moving motorcycle out from under its driver, he was alone in the lead. The dark solitary figure, indistinct in the dim tunnel, looked small and resolute. Sharon had never seen such a lonely thing in her life.

Everyone in the universe was in pursuit, it seemed. The screens strobed with flashing lights and she could hear SRI, Bucharest PD, and her own special forces team all shouting in a cacophony of languages over the various lines. She didn't speak Romanian but the tone was certainly clear enough.

Then, finally, it broke out from under the tunnel. Steve's stolen car flipped and he launched himself out of it, outrunning the tumbling SUV and emerging from the rising dust in time to pile drive his shield into Cat Dude. The black-clad figure skidded away and even over the poor microphone quality, she could hear his claws scraping down the asphalt.

Colonel Rhodes landed with a whine and thump, holding up his hands. And, like Peg's goddamned tree, Steve planted himself between Bucky and… everyone. He was going to protect Bucky from War Machine, from Cat Dude, and from every cop, soldier, special forces fighter, and fucking meter maid in Bucharest, who were all converging on the scene at once in a howl of sirens.

Everyone in the C&C room held their breath, waiting to see if the fight would resume again. Then Steve holstered his shield and the Cat Dude took off his mask and the silence broke out in shocked gasps and whispers.

Sharon looked over at Romanov.

Romanov looked utterly unsurprised.

Don't trust Romanov, Sharon reminded herselfbefore she took a deep breath and refocused on the situation.

"Well, that's a shocker, folks, but I need you to concentrate on your jobs. Weber, I want a report every ten minutes on how many ambulances we have on site and how many more you're pulling in and from where? Make sure you're pulling in help from the Stark Foundation if you need to pay for them. Lulić, get the local U.N. representative to make sure that the SRI and police forces don't feel too left out of the loop. We're going to want Barnes all to ourselves, however. Novak, you and Dubois go brief Ross… don't look at me like that, I'll be in to relieve you in fifteen minutes. Let's focus, please. We have work to do."

She still had work to do, too. Barnes was in custody but not dead. That gave a short leash on Steve, but at least he hadn't lost his best friend. Now to see what sort of damage control she could manage from here.

"You're very good at this," Romanov said.

"Thank you," Sharon glanced over and caught the spy staring at her with cool distant eyes.

"You're welcome. I've got to go call Tony," Romanov turned left and Sharon watched her go with deep and growing sense of unease.