Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel, Captain America: Winter Soldier, The Avengers, Daredevil, Fantastic 4, etc. Just Jamie and her story and so on and so forth.

Chapter 4
Reunited

Jamie patted her pockets, checking to make sure her phone and her keys were there. She shifted her backpack into a more comfortable position before turning to Steve to smile. "I think I've got everything," she said. "Keys, phone, clothes...Anything else you can think of?" she muttered.

"You have your head on your shoulder's right?" Steve chuckled with a bright grin.

"Oh, haha," she mocked with a smirk. "Honestly, think of anything I'm forgetting? I checked the stove, I locked the door...the lights are on timers."

"Did you have something to eat?" Steve asked her with furrowed brows. "I know it's not too long of a train ride but it will feel like one when you're hungry." he said. They both had increased metabolisms and thus they ate a lot. So he got her like no other guy would.

"No, but I checked and they have a 24/7 food car," Jamie told him.

"Perfect. Then nope, can't think of anything." Steve shrugged.

"Okay, so just a couple things for house sitting," Jamie said. "I've got the plants in the living room that need to be watered, but the ones in the bedroom have these globes that'll water them by itself, so you don't have to worry about those. Uh, the fish needs to be fed everyday, but if you can't, don't worry about it...I've forgotten for two days once so the things'll be fine.

"Oh, make sure that the fascist vegan doesn't invite you to dinner, and if she does, refuse. Lie if you have to," Jamie told him. The fascist vegan was her neighbor. She was an unbearable young woman who was in college majoring in political science. "She'll eat you alive….which is ironic because she's a vegan, but not the point. She'll sleep with anything with legs, and she'll most definitely like you so watch yourself."

"Uh, I really don't know what to say to that." Steve mumbled face red and also confused.

"Oh, not that I think you'd do anything," Jamie said. I'm not being possessive or anything, she thought to herself. Just...protective..."I just wanted to warn you. Plus, her cooking really stinks and doesn't satisfy our metabolisms, so may as well avoid it, you know?" And it has nothing to do with the fact that her hands would be all over him if he did accept, Jamie thought to herself.

"Uh right, no thanks. Still a steak and potatoes guy." Steve grinned, his hands stuffed deep in his pokes as he gave her that innocent goofy smile of his, shoulders hunched up.

Jamie laughed, nodding her head. "You and me both, hon," she told him. "And I'll owe you a hefty steak and potatoe meal for this," she said. "Thanks again for doing this on short notice, Steve."

"No problem, I'm clear for the week and the rest of our Avenger friends aren't...the most responsible. Except Dr. Banner." Steve chuckled. "I'll hold you to that steak and potatoes promise though!"

"Well, you know how I am on my promises," she told him. "I'm good on my word. And I make a damn good steak too."

"And call me when you get there, and check in with me. In our life you never know what could happen. I worry. I might have grey hairs." Steve smiled a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh, like you'd look horrible with gray hair," Jamie teased, reaching up to ruffle his hair. "But I'll try. It'll be really late when I get in, so I don't want to wake you. If it's really late, I'll just shoot you a text and call in the morning. Deal?"

"Deal." Steve said and gave her a tight hug. "Be careful, okay?"

"I will," she said, hugging him back. "You too? You could be called in at any time and I don't want to hear you got shot out in the field."

"I got my shield," Steve grinned.

"Yeah, like you haven't lost that before," she muttered. "Just be careful, okay? For me?"

"Hey!...I always find it!" Steve rolled his eyes. "But yes, I'll watch it."

"Good, I'll see you in a week then!" Jamie said, pecking him on the cheek before turning and entering the train station, waving over her shoulder to him with a soft smile.

Jamie's train had a layover for about three hours before it left for Syracuse, where she'd get off and ride another hour north to James's house. She planned on getting something to eat, since the train food had sucked, and maybe meet up with Johnny, Matt and Foggy while she was there. She had told them she would be in town and they had said they wanted to meet up with her if she could. All she had to do was shoot them a text.

She was doing the first thing she had promised to do for Steve though. She was sending him a text to let him know she was there. It was around eleven, so it was pretty late and she didn't want to wake him if he was already asleep, so she opted for the less personal form of communication.

Jamie: Just got into the city. Gonna grab something to eat. Note to self: train food sucks...

Steve: I offered to take you to out for a burger. But no.

The phone beeped, causing her to look at the battery. Shit, she thought. She had forgotten to charge her phone up. She'd have to wait until she got to James' place to plug it in. There were some teenagers on a class trip that were hogging all of the plugs on the car she was assigned.

Jamie: Hey, my phone's gonna die, so I'll call you once I get it plugged in at James' house, okay?

Steve: Alright, travel there safe then.

Jamie smirked, looking down at her phone. She shifted her backpack to one shoulder to try and make herself more comfortable, but right after she did so, she lurched forward, a burning pain shooting through her not exposed shoulder. She fell onto the sidewalk, scream out through clenched teeth. The phone was smashed on the ground, having been dropped the second the pain shot through her body.

Jamie rolled over onto the backpack, her hand holding her shoulder. She pulled it away and she pushed herself up and over to the alleyway to her left, taking shelter. There was hot blood oozing out of the very clear through-and-through bullet hole in her shoulder.
And from the angle that it was in her back coming out the front, the shooter was using a long range sniper rifle from above. And whoever they were was professional. She knew from her time in her former position in the Marines.

Oh shit, she thought, dropping her backpack, though making sure she still had her gun and ammo on her belt. Gotta move, she told herself, pushing off the brick wall. Gotta...She stumbled a few steps, her world spinning. Gotta….She tripped over something she couldn't see, landing on her shoulder with a scream. "Fuck," she hissed, vision going dark through the pain.

She tried to push herself back up, but she was bleeding out steadily, and it was messing with her big time. She couldn't stand, she couldn't cry out. She was defenseless and useless to protect herself.

The last thing Jamie remembered before losing consciousness was a deep chucking as a person walking up in front of her, kneeling down to poke her in the wound.

Wake up calls were generally requested, though there were exceptions when it came to family and while being in a relationship, or even having an annoying roommate. Having people at the front desk call to make sure you were up for your meeting that your job depended on? Appreciated. An alarm clock? Annoying, but still appreciated.

Searing pain from nowhere?

Not appreciated.

It felt like her arms and legs were being pulled in separate directions, while the life was being sucked right out of her very being. She screamed, biting into the side of her cheek, drawing blood. She tried to pull her limbs in, but they were trapped, plus she had a hard time moving her left arm with the wound anyway.

The pain stopped, and instead of the deafening noise that had been around her to begin with, it slowly died down, as if shutting down. Jamie gasped, desperate to catch her breathe as her body pulses with aftershocks from the pain. The only sounds she heard now were from her pants and from what sounded like a hockey game playing on a cell phone.

She couldn't see anything though. It was as if there was a sliding metal door between her and whatever was outside, cutting her off from everything entirely. She felt like a battery inside a flashlight. Jamie tried to pull her arms and legs free, but in doing so, she felt as if she would tear her hands and feet off their limbs.

The sliding door opened, the light blinding her. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get away from the sudden change. Before she could even try and open her eyes though, whoever opened the door grabbed her chin and forced something into her mouth. She shook her head trying desperately to get away from them when she realized what they were giving her was black coffee.

She sucked it up and drank it. When she struggled she choked on it, and ended up drinking it anyways. She was extremely thirsty anyways. Water would have been preferred, but she was in no position to be picky.

"The caffeine opens the nerve receptors to make them stay awake and so you feel the pain more."

Jamie froze, the voice sending a shiver through her restrained body. She slowly opened her eyes, blue energized eyes making contact with an equally blue pair of eyes.

"No, no," Jamie muttered, shaking her head.

The man was tall, his shoulders broad from his strong muscles that were obtained through hard work. His hair was nearly shaved all the way off, though there was a thin sheet covering his scalp. He smirked at her, a familiar sickening sight. The only thing that was different were the blue energy filled eyes that bore into her.

"What? Not happy to see me?"

"I-I'm hillusicanting," she muttered, shaking her head. "Y-You dead. You're not real!"

"Aw, come on, Jameson. I thought you'd be happy to see I'm alive!" Aaron said, putting the cup of coffee on a lab bench. He leaned back, crossing his hand over his chest while most of his weight was on the table. "Or, maybe you're horrified that this ghost has come back to haunt you for what you did."

"What I did?" Jamie asked. "I don't know what you're talking about, Aaron. What's going on? What are you doing here? How did you get out of the facility?"

"What you did? Seriously? You have to ask that?" Aaron scoffed, his face distorting in disgust. "You abandoned us! You left with those fucking limies!"

"I went back!" Jamie told him.

"Because of your guilt for trying to leave in the first place!"

"No, that's not true!" Jamie protested. "They dragged me out of there! I got them into a truck and I went back! But you were gone, Aaron. I tried to look for you, but the place was going to blow and I had to get James and Amir out of there."

"The only reason I'm alive today is because of Cerberus!" Aaron said.

"The reason you almost died was because of Cerberus!" she argued.

"Cerberus made me stronger than ever!" he protested. "When you left me, you took everything from me! You told my brother I was dead! Dead! How was I supposed to go be with him after that? Huh?"

"Oh, like Cerberus would have let you!"

"They would, they did! Because I agreed to stay on with them! They gave me purpose. Turned me into something powerful! And they're not wrong, you know? Humans are never going to evolve unless we push the limits."

"Over the line into unethical procedures that kill more people than they change," Jamie pointed out.

"Weeding out the weak," he justified.

"Where did all this come from? You never thought that while we were their prisoners!"

"I didn't know why they were doing it, and I didn't want it," he said. "I lost everything and they gave me something when I needed it."

"You still had us! Your brother! Me!" Jamie said. "We would have been overjoyed to see that you were alive!"

"Oh, please, you took all that away when you left me," Aaron said.

"I told you I went back!"

"That doesn't change the fact that you left in the first place!"

The large door in the corner of the lab opened and Jamie could hear footsteps, but she couldn't make out who it was that walked in. Aaron turned and nodded to whoever it was. He looked back at Jamie and smirked, adding, "Well, if you're not happy to see me, then you're really not going to like him…"

Jamie shouldn't have been as surprised as she was to see Dr. Hull step out in front of her, but she supposed she was too focused on Aaron to really realize anything else. "Hello," he told her, his Estonian accent percent, though less prominent than it had been. He held out his hand towards Aaron, and Aaron picked up a clipboard for him.

"Fuck you," Jamie spat.

He scanned over it for a moment, muttering to himself. "Subject F-1-17," he muttered. "Blood pressure is elevated, though that was expected. More bleeding than expected from the wound on her left shoulder then anticipated, though nothing to worry about or to waste supplies on. She won't be alive long enough for it to make a difference anyway." He turned back and handed the clipboard back to Aaron.

"You have caused us a great deal of trouble," he told her. "You have provided us with a great deal of information for our experiments, proving most useful, but far more trouble than I am willing to justify."

"You talk about me as if I'm not human," Jamie growled. "I'm alive. I have feelings! I'm not just some plaything for you to toss around and manipulate until you get bored!"

"We shall see," he said. "You are perhaps more than just a toy, though. A bit more useful than that. It is what I made of you, after all."

"You know I'm only human, right? No matter how much you poke and test, I'm still going to be only human. I'm still me and you can't change that!"

"That is what you say now," Hull said, tilting his head to as he watched the woman. "But perhaps you have forgotten the last we were together. You were a substantially different individual upon your arrival than you were when you left, than you are now."

"I've grown," Jamie said. "I'm stronger than I was."

"And who is that thanks to?" Hull said. "I have made you who you are! You are powerful because of me."

"You might have given me these powers, but you're not what makes me strong," Jamie spat.

"Believe what you like," he said. "But now I have use for you. And by the end of that, you will be broken. I will break you, girl. And if I can't, it doesn't not matter. I will still get what I want. You see, this machine is designed to extract your energy. A sustainable, clean energy source." He pulled a hand out of his lab coat and eld up something mall, only about two inches long. "You are creating batteries to help sustain our whole facility. Completely off the grid, disconnected from the rest of the world. In a way, you are making it possible for us to continue our research!"

"Go suck a fucking fat one, you psych-"

Aaron acted quickly and pressed his thumb into the wound on her shoulder, causing her to scream out in pain. "I gave you the coffee so this would hurt more," Aaron added, shutting the chamber door again.

The machine started up again, the sucking pain of the drawing of her energy overtook her once more, even more painful than it had been the first time. Her screams were barely audible over the loud whirring of the machine.

I hope everybody had a nice Holiday! I keep breaking my one chapter a week schedule because I'm so excited about this story and everything that's going on. I can't wait for the movie to start, and even before that with everything in-between. Anyway, I hope everybody liked the chapter!

Thanks go to the following for their reviews:

dleshae- Dude, Steamie is PERFECT. I absolutely love it. They shall now be known as either Blue Soldier or Steamie!

mimi12349876- I'm so glad you like Taylor. We were nervous about having her in, StillDoll13 and I, but I knew she'd be a hit. And Jamie needs a female friend other than Natasha.

Jedi Jelsa777- Name change I see! I like it! It's really cool that you make your presents even though it's a lot of work. It's a very personal thing. Good for you!...I'm too lazy to do that...And I'm in art school...You'll be seeing more of Skye and Jemma soon...Very soon... ;) I'm glad you like Taylor too. She'll be a bigger part of the story later on. I almost cry every time I see the trailer for Cap 3. It's just fkajgnlkj;agkj. Anyway, hope you have a lovely Christmas!

CJ/OddBall- I love Jemma and Skye too! There will be a great deal of Agents of SHIELD in this part of the story...Don't know what you think about that, seeing as Jamie is in the Avengers and then lives in the Tower...Kind of hard being both places at once, don;t you think? Something's gotta happen to make her relocate...(Can you see I'm trying to work you up?) Taylor is a lot like Meg. She's also a pain in the ass that Jamie's learned to tolerate because of dealing with both Johnny and Tony! It also means she has a hard time admitting when she needs help.
*Jamie's waling around with a tablet in the tower, until she hears the ball moving..."What the hell?" she muttered, picking you up. "Holy Fuck, you're not a hamster..."*

Jo- I hope you had a very merry Christmas as well! I'm glad you liked the chapter, and I hope you like this one as well.

seasidewriter1- Lol, I've done that before! Simple mistake. I love Skye and Jemma, and I just couldn't resist that little scene. I'm so glad you get excited and happy with this story...Hope you were happy even with this sad little chapter...I'm so mean to Jamie. Winter Soldier's coming sooner than I think too. I have more than half the movie written, even before all the chapters before the movie are complete. I'm just so excited!