Two Hours later - Task Force HQ, Berlin, German

"The quinjet lands in fifteen minutes. Novak, tell me you've got the air hookups ready, please?"

"Yes, ma'am. Tech just finished them."

"And why weren't they hooked up in the first place?" Ross said, rounding on poor Novak.

Sharon stood up from her desk, putting herself between her boss and her subordinate. She clenched her fist and then released it, an old spy's trick for managing a calm that seemed sincere.

"Because we had shoot-to-kill orders and no one anticipated a need for the prison box," she said, emphasizing "no one" slightly. After all, he was in charge of the task force. Then, with deliberate delay, she added, "Sir."

Ross went back to muttering into his chins. He was furious and unstable, ready to lash out at the least provocation. Not only had she and Romanov humiliated him in front of his subordinates, he'd gotten reamed out by Secretary of State Ross.

It had been, putatively, a private reaming. But the whole damned HQ was made of glass walls and everyone could see their faces, if not hear the screaming. There was some unkind commentary among the staff that Sharon had been very careful not to hear. Dubois, in particular, had offered a Don Dunphy-style fight commentary, replacing her usual Irish lilt with a dead-pan 1940s Brooklyn accent.

"It's the Battle of the Rosses here today in Berlin, folks, and we're seeing two of the most entitled asses America has ever offered slug it out. The Greater Ross has just taken a swing, a swing I say, and ooh, the Lesser Ross looks like he bit into a rotten lemon, that was a palpable hit, ladies and gentlemen! One must assume that was directed specifically at the fact that he just ordered his troops to fire on the absolute ruler of a sovereign nation. A really really rich one, too, folks! Oooh, and here we have a mean uppercut that has got to be about shooting at Captain America with cameras everywhere! Look at the Lesser Ross stagger! This is not a fair fight! Look at him stumble around the ring!"

It was both hilarious and devastating and finally Sharon had had to invent a chore for Dubois because she wasn't sure she could keep her face straight any more.

Since he'd emerged from the reaming, Ross had been spoiling for a fight and Sharon had spent her time defusing him while trying to manage the team's preparations for holding a super soldier with a vibranium arm.

She turned to the monitor again, where the techs were cleaning up their tools with slightly undue haste. Careful not to gnaw her lip, she stared at the various air hookups for The Box.

That what they were calling it, apparently without irony. The Box. A cube about the size of a crappy service elevator with clear aluminum sides and a chair that had specially re-enforced straps – clamps, actually – for holding Barnes into place. Ross had explained that they could administer a painful, "but non-lethal," shock. It looked like something from a futuristic BDSM porn shoot, frankly. Sharon had grave and complicated doubts about it.

There was no way it would hold Barnes if he wanted to get out. Like everyone in the CIA's Enhanced Humans Division, she'd read all the files on Barnes and she was pretty sure that he could bust out without too much trouble. So far, he was sitting quietly in it on the quinjet, but he was also flying at 60,000 feet and surrounded by a SWAT team with shoot-to-kill orders, not to mention Steve Rogers. (Sam and the King of Wakanda were there, too, but without their gear, and thus she discounted them in a bad fight.) He was going to be docile in that company.

What's more, the thing violated the Geneva Convention six ways to Sunday. She was willing to give it a reluctant pass as a temporary measure in place for the trip from Bucharest to Berlin, but the fact that Ross ordered those air hookups seemed to suggest a something more long-term.

She looked around the room. Her team were all working hard, but looking very uncomfortable. The ubiquitous cameras were all recording. Weighting her choices, she didn't like any of the options. But, by God, Peg wouldn't have put up with this and neither would she.

"Sir, about the box?"

Ross turned his scowl towards her.

Sharon waited. The tense silence drew attention and slowly the clicking of keyboards slowed.

Finally, Ross snapped, "What about it, Agent Carter?"

"How long do we expect Barnes to be held inside?"

"The rest of his mangy life," Ross snapped. Mangy?

"No, sir."

"What did you say, Carter?"

"I said no, sir. Long term incarceration in that violates the Geneva Convention, sir."

"He's an animal," Ross didn't quite shout. "Who cares?"

"I do, sir."

Ross just stared at her, the color rising from his collar, his jowls starting to shiver just a little. Sharon though, for a second, that she'd pushed him too far. But again, she could practically watch as his political instincts kicked in and he looked around the room. The room full of witnesses, E.U. citizens, one and all, staring at him with hard eyes. She could see the moment that he remembered he wasn't in a back room in D.C., where Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and waterboarding got casually rubberstamped. No, they were sitting in the heart of Berlin. You had to walk by a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Shoah to get to this building.

The Geneva Conventions had teeth here.

And Bucky is a blue-eyed handsome man, Sharon thought, uncharitably. Eventually, he'll realize that putting a pretty white boy from Brooklyn, a WWII vet even, won't play well on the evening news back in the U.S.

"Your objections have been noted, Cater," he said, though the words nearly strangled him.

"Thank you, sir," Sharon paused and then… "I'll make a note of it in my memo to the Director and to the Secretary of State."

The color in Ross's face spiked again, the purple nearly reaching the tips of his ears, and Sharon reminded herself that the emergency code in Berlin was 112, not 911. But he took some deep breaths and ground his teeth, audibly, and Sharon wondered if she'd just killed her own career.

Like a tree, she reminded herself.

Lulić signaled and Sharon sighed, grateful for the change of subject.

"They have landed, sir," she gestured and together, they went to meet Captain America, criminal.