Chapter 3: Two dead men walk into a SHIELD Office

Summary: There is nothing but the job. Can you understand that?

He'd been expecting a black sedan. Instead, the guy from Berlin rolled up in a red convertible. "Get in."

James slid into the passenger seat and shut the door. It was a hell of a car and the guy had come through for him twice now. "Alright, this time I'll ask. What's your name?"

"Phil Coulson but I'd prefer if you didn't go around sharing that. There was an incident."

Right, the guy was an SHIELD agent. "No one here but us dead guys?"

"Exactly." Jesus. James had been kidding. "Can you tell me how you woke up?"

James reached into his pocket and pulled out the chip. "My target ripped this out of my head."

When they stopped at a red light, Phil glanced over. "That was buried in the Medulla Oblongata of your brain. Erik Lehnsherr is quoted more than once claiming he couldn't remove it without killing you. Who was your target?"

"He called himself Loki."

Phil seemed like a steady guy. He didn't have any real obvious tells but his hands clenched on the steering wheel and he stared straight forward. "Did he say why?"

"He thought it would be funny." They were winding their way through Time Square now, and there were huge TV screens showing ads. "Was whatever he did to you supposed to be funny?"

"I'm sure he thought so." The man swung the car into an underground garage. "Loki isn't from around here. We don't always understand why he does the things he does but he loves chaos. Bringing back Bucky Barnes and delivering him into the arms of SHIELD? That's going to cause plenty of chaos."

Marcus was wearing an eye patch. "They can't replace that?"

"Not all of us need bionic parts, Barnes." Marcus flicked James' metal arm, tied up in its sling. Without the control chip, it was just dead weight. "Loki doesn't usually do favors for SHIELD."

"It wasn't a favor, exactly." James hadn't snapped a photo but Loki had been right, Marcus' expression had been priceless. "I don't understand why this is such a big deal. Get Erik in here, have him turn my arm back on and put me back to work." He couldn't just sit around. He'd go crazy.

Marcus laughed. James had never heard him laugh before, it was a little disturbing. "Barnes, you have been on ice for twenty years. I can't just give you a PSG1A1 rifle and send you back into the field."

"I don't need to know how Loki's cellphone works to sit in a perch and shoot things." He heard Phil mutter something under his breath about snipers but James plowed ahead. "There is no one that's even going to care I'm alive, unless you've got the Black Widow stashed somewhere. Call Erik, get him up here and by the time he's got my arm fixed I can be up to speed."

"Coulson, sit down before you fall over." Fury shoved a chair in the other man's direction. "Things are complicated right now. Six years ago, I would have teamed you up with Barton and watched the two of you stage a 'World's Deadliest Sniper' competition. But that was before Iron Man, before an alien invasion, before two Norse gods decided to use Earth to settle their childhood traumas. Even if you could get up to speed on the disaster zone that the last two decades have been, I cannot bring Erik Lehnsherr here."

"Why?" Erik had always worked on his arm, whenever he had woken up close enough for Peggy to fetch him.

"As the leader of Genosha, we could argue Lehnsherr has diplomatic immunity." Phil was toying with one of the medical instruments, staring off into space. "Sir, Natasha may have taught Clint how to hide, but the Winter Soldier trained her. Barnes may be our only chance to bring them in before…"

"Before Barton finds out what I did and cuts out my eye?" Fury looked James over. "We'll take the carrier to Madagascar. If Lehnsherr can get your arm working and you can get caught up, we'll talk about putting you back in the field." He turned and walked out of the room before James could get him to clarify on who, exactly, Natasha was.

"Are you… okay?" Phil had gone somewhere else in his head. James had seen guys do it in the prison camps. "I've got questions, if you're up for it."

Phil shook his head, shook away whatever ghosts he'd been seeing. "I'm fine. You should know that we found the Widow, one of our snipers convinced her to come in. She became a SHIELD agent."

"You brought in the Black Widow alive?" James figured the Soldier could have done it, if he'd had to, but a normal guy? "How good is your sniper?"

"She thought it was you." Phil touched his chest, the way Erik used to touch the number on his arm. "Six months ago, during an alien invasion, I was killed in action. I woke up in a hospital a few weeks later. She and Barton had already taken off. We can't bring them in, but you could."

"I'll find them." He owed the Widow, owed Natasha, for having the Soldier's back. "Can you catch me up on what I've missed? Did Gorbachev resign?"

Phil loosened his tie, put his feet up on the second visitor's chair. He looked like he was settling in for a long story. "On Christmas day. We thought the powder keg was going to finally blow up, but mostly things quietly fell apart."

When they got to Madagascar, Erik came on board wearing a cape and armor. James didn't laugh but only because Erik hated being laughed at. He couldn't believe Charles had let him leave the house like that.

"Welcome back." Erik untied the sling and James' mechanical arm should have dropped limply to his side but Erik caught it with his powers. "I was told you had been killed. I would have come looking for you if I'd known. It's likely Mystique could have woken you up."

"Too much invested in me, I guess." He didn't like waking up and finding everyone around him older. James got the feeling that in a few more years, Erik would have been gone too and then James would have been out of luck with the whole mechanical arm thing. "It's good to see you."

"You'd be surprised how infrequently I hear that these days." He pulled a pen, pencil and a notepad out and set them where James could see them. The pen was metal and it wrote out, 'Are you a prisoner?'

"No, Erik." James caught the pen as it was writing out 'We can go out the window'. It looked bad, he was sure, Coulson sitting in the corner and the guard standing outside. "I'm safe now but I need your help. Never could stand medical leave but the whole one armed sniper thing doesn't really work."

"Medical leave." Erik was looking at James like he was crazy and the pen twitched again. 'I can fly now. The window is right there.'

"There is nothing but the job. Can you understand that? No family, most of my friends are dead. So I need you to fix my arm, put a new chip in my brain and get me back to work." James couldn't just sit here while SHIELD tried to work it out. It was too much time to think, he'd die, he knew he would.

Erik sat down beside the bed, apparently giving into the madness. "Alright. I understand duty quite well." He made a gesture and the metal shell on James' arm slid back. "The mission continues."

"Thank you." James let his head fall back against the pillow. It always felt weird when Erik was rummaging around in there and the man did have twenty years of upgrades to catalogue so they were probably going to be here for a while. It was just small talk to ask, "So, what's Charles up to?"

He could feel the metal in his arm shudder and Erik wouldn't look up. Damn it. "I'm sorry. No one told me. I thought you guys had decided to retire somewhere warm, I didn't know he was gone."

Erik regained his composure and the metal stopped vibrating. "No, Charles is alive, he's fine. We've parted ways."

"Parted ways." He'd last seen them a long time ago but there had been children at the school. They'd been happy, he was sure of it. "That's a hell of a euphemism, Erik."

"We had a disagreement. He got the house and the children, I have Genosha." James thought disagreement was a euphemism too, because they were powerful men, even with Charles in a wheelchair, even this old.

James didn't say he was sorry, because Erik doesn't appreciate things like that. "Can you remake the chip?"

"I can make drawings. There's an advanced chip fab in New York that can produce it." Erik sealed the arm back up. "I need to return to the island for the evening, but before I go, there's something you should know."

Computers had changed a lot in twenty years but the basics remained the same and James could type because the Soldier could. YouTube had hours of the video showing the Avengers and the internet was full of theories. The guy in the metal suit was definitely Howard's son and James tried to shove the guilt aside. Howard had made himself crazy, looking for Steve and James was willing to bet it gave the kid a complex but if the guy decided he wanted to play Batman that was his own choice.

There was the Widow, still young thanks to the Infinity Serum. A sniper, an incredible shot, who had to be the man Coulson had talked about, the one who had brought in the Widow. A very large green man, the Hulk. A big blond, supposedly the actual Norse god Thor. And there is a man dressed like Captain America, wearing the American flag and carrying Steve's shield and James had never been so angry.

Howard had wasted his entire life looking for Steve while Peggy had been traipsing around the globe after him long after any sane woman would have given up. It was wrong, using Steve's memory like this, no matter how bad things were.

Phil came by after breakfast, coffee cups in hand and files tucked under one arm. There was a small smile on his face until he saw the laptop and James' expression. "I take it you have more questions?"

"You put someone in the suit." It wasn't just that. Whoever it was had been a careful study. If he hadn't known better… "You've got someone walking around, dressed up like Steve Rogers. Did you think that wouldn't upset me?" They were lucky his arm wasn't working. He'd spent part of the night thinking about punching walls, about punching Fury. "Are you people crazy? Who do you have running around in that thing? Please tell me you didn't put some normal guy in that suit, carrying around that shield like the fucking target it is. Tell me he's a metahuman or a mutant, something."

Phil set his files down and put one of the coffee cups in front of James. He pulled up a chair and took a sip from his own cup. "After 1963, Howard Stark started taking a team of doctors on the expeditions with him. Their specialties varied, but always a cellular biologist and always a doctor from Canada, preferable someone who had worked above the Arctic Circle. He had to pay those guys a fortune, but he wanted them because they were experts in treating frost bite, on saving limbs and fingers and toes. He brought psychologists, people who specialized in treating veterans, people who specialized in treating torture victims. It was all pointless."

James half-wished the Soldier was still with him. If he had been, James could have gone to sleep and never have to hear the truth.

"Stark died in 1991 without ever finding him. But that was before the world really started heating up. Stark Industries was still sending out the expeditions every year, under some kind of maritime research grant. The winter of 2012 was the warmest winter on record. They found him," There was something bright in Phil's eyes. "I brought him home, supervised his thaw out. He was alive."

James' whole world slides a bit sideways. "That's him?"

"It's him." Phil swung the monitor around and his smile was back. "He led the team against the aliens. I was in a coma for it, but I got to see the video when I work up."

"He's okay?" James looked closer at the screen, and yes, he could believe it was Steve. It couldn't really be anyone else, not the way he was swinging the shield. It was too perfect. "Is he still…" Was he still Steve, but how would Phil know?

"Fine. A bit disoriented by the future, but fine. He's here, in the city, if you want to see him."

"No." The word slipped out before James even knew he wanted to say them. In his years undercover, his body had done terrible things, the kind of things you never forgot, could never go home from. He couldn't see Steve. "No, I can't."

"Okay." Phil looked confused but he didn't ask any questions. "The carrier is heading back to the US so we can get the chip you need fabricated. By the time we get home, I want to get you up to speed on the current political climate. Things are a bit complicated right now."

Complicated was also a euphemism.

Phil wore a ring on a chain around his neck, right over the still healing scar on his chest. He rubbed at it, absently, while he talked. "When Barton caught up with her, she'd been running for three weeks. She never said from who, I'm not sure she knew. She was exhausted, injured and out of ammo. She was still dangerous. He was supposed to take her out from a distance."

"Smart plan." The Widow was at her deadliest when she was lying in your arms, but being in the same room as her wasn't much better.

"She made him. She knew someone was there, watching, but she thought it was you. She started talking, about how she'd always known you would find her, that you would be the one to kill her. She said she was tired of running, that she was ready. He wouldn't pull the trigger."

"When was that?" James had seen her in the video clips, she hadn't aged since he'd last saw her. As far as he knew, she hadn't aged a day since her twenty fifth birthday.

"Twelve years ago."

Phil was rubbing the ring again and it suddenly occurred to James that it was a wedding ring. "She's your wife?"

"No." Phil shook his head, like it was funny.

"I'm not jealous. She was the Soldier's girlfriend, not mine." Girlfriend was the wrong word but James couldn't think of the right one, if it existed in English. "I'll find her for you, Phil. It's alright."

Phil reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wallet. He took a picture out of a plastic sleeve and slid it across the table to James. "SHIELD is a place a man goes where there isn't anywhere else. The normal rules of a military or intelligence operation don't apply, because everyone that works here is a little off. If you're going to work for us, you need to understand that."

The picture was of the sniper. Natasha had taken it, he could tell by how it was framed. Even when they'd been pretending to be tourists, her snapshots always looked like surveillance photos. Barton was watching TV, his head pillowed on Phil's shoulder. It was an intimate photo, the kind of thing James had one staged between Peggy and Steve.

James glanced between the photo and the ring, swallowing his questions. There used to be questions you didn't ask and the world had changed since then but he wasn't sure how much. "I'll bring him back to you." When that was done, he could think about Steve.

Notes: For my random ramblings, reblogs, and ficlets please find me on tumblr as roguewrld