Chapter 4: A Brief Segue
Summary: It's been a year, since New York

May 2012, Shawarma

Clint balled up his piece of foil. "Okay, I'm pretty sure there's about three months' worth of psych screenings waiting for me, so I'm done for today. Can I borrow someone's phone? I want to call Coulson."

Steve took a bite of his food, hoping that chewing would give him a few seconds to think of what to say but no better way to say it came to him and he didn't shirk his duty. He met Clint's gaze, and the focus there made him distinctly uncomfortable. "I'm sorry. We lost Agent Coulson during the attack on the helicarrier."

"Tasha?" There was a hint of disbelief in Clint's voice, like he thought maybe Steve was lying to him.

"You didn't need a push, you were already standing on the edge. I didn't know what you'd do if I told you." She touched his arm and he jerked away. "I was going to tell you. Just not here."

"Excuse me, then." Clint pushes his chair away from the table. "I have to go take care of some things."

"Clint," Bruce had startled awake in his chair and he was staring at Clint with concern. Steve tried to reframe Clint's reactions. He looked too calm. When a man looked like that, you didn't let them be alone. How long had they known each other, worked together? "Sit back down. Whatever it is, it can wait."

"I was his emergency medical contact. They can't release the body until I go sign." Clint picked up his bow and left without saying another word.

Thor pounded his fist against the table, hard enough to crack the linoleum. His eyes were squeezed shut and he was breathing shallowly. "Stark, I would have words with you. My family owes a great debt to SHIELD, for the lives my brother has taken."

Tony nodded as the door swung shut. "I've got a ton of lawyers, big guy. You want to pay restitution, they can make it happen."

Clint took the cards from Fury and all he could think about was how mad Phil would be that they'd been ruined. "Was this really necessary, sir?"

"For Rogers and Stark, yes, it was." Fury was looking at him, sizing him up. "Are you really back with us?"

"Yes, sir." He couldn't bring himself to ask to see the body, and no one had offered.

"Come back tomorrow after we send our alien friends back home. We'll release the rest of his things to you."

The blood was dry and Clint brushed the cards into a neat pile before he tucked them into his tac vest. There was nothing else he needed here. The only personal item Phil had was his wedding ring and Clint wasn't going to take that, not even over Phil's dead body. "Am I dismissed, sir? It's been a long day."

"Dismissed, Agent." Fury looked just as exhausted as Clint is, so at least there was that. "Come back tomorrow, Barton. It's important."

They were sending Loki back to Asgard in an hour. Clint thought about putting an arrow in his left eye. Thor had promised he was helpless in those chains, but a god could live through an arrow to the eye, Clint was sure of it. He wouldn't use a bow, he would do it up close and personal. The thought made him feel calm, even as the rest of his life felt like it was spinning out of control.

The door to the observation room opened and Thor joined him. They watched Loki through the one-way-glass in silence until Thor couldn't take it anymore. "Heimdall has been watching this world for me. I have some idea of what my brother has done to you."

The arrow was a standard point, designed for target shooting. It was much less dangerous than most of his arrows but Clint was still clenching it hard enough to bleed. "It's been a hell of a week, Thor, and there aren't a whole lot of things your brother hasn't done to me during it. Say what you mean or get the hell out."

"We are making reparations for all your dead, but I have spoken to Jane and she tells me the laws of this country are strange." Out of the corner of his eye Clint could see Thor shift in his chair, obviously uncomfortable. "You cannot inherit from his house."

Clint finally looked away from Loki and saw Thor, saw how miserable he looked. "This is New York, Thor. My name's on the deed to our apartment, and I can collect his life insurance, bury him. I can't get survivor benefits or his Social Security, but I don't think I'll live long enough to worry about that. I'm fine. I don't need any blood money."

"I must do something."

"You can't make it up to me. There's nothing you can do to make it up to me." But Phil was more forgiving than Clint, he'd had to be. "But Phil was really bothered by homeless vets. He was a Ranger, before SHIELD recruited him."

"Stark has given me some of his clerks. They will make arrangements."

"There is one other thing." His hands were getting sticky with blood and Clint made himself let up a little. Is Valhalla a real place?"

"It is."

"Will you visit him? Tell him I'm alright?" Phil had died before he'd known Clint was back, and he could maybe live without Phil but he can't live with Phil thinking the enemy still had him.

"Of course."

Bruce was doing something with a pair of tongs and some very ornate chamber, giving the Tesseract back to Thor. Clint just felt numb. He didn't want to go back to the helicarrier, doesn't want to debrief. He wanted to go somewhere quiet and be drunk for a very long time.

Natasha leaned over. "Let's run away." He couldn't help but smile, because he knew she meant it.

When they all went their separate ways, Steve on his bike, Bruce and Tony going back to Manhattan, he and Natasha got a car and just drove. Wherever they went, Natasha spoke with a heavy accent and played the mail order bride, telling everyone her husband had just gotten back from Afghanistan. No one said a word about his weird twitches and Clint was pretty sure she was the best friend anyone had ever had.

When Barton didn't come back, the decisions regarding Phil's medical care ended up Marcus' responsibility. He went down to the secure room where they were keeping him, hooked up to machines. This was not a long term solution and it should have been Clint in here, making these calls. He pulled up a chair and sat next to the bed. "Not that I'm admitting a mistake, but I may have slightly misjudged Barton. I don't think he's coming back until the world starts to fall apart again." Phil, of course, didn't answer. His chest roses and fell in an even rhythm from the respirator. "Phil, I really need you to wake up. That's an order."

Marcus may or may not have punched the wall, but there was no one there to see. When he left the room, he grabbed the first doctor he saw. "We need to talk."

Spring 2013 (Post IM3)

There was a tiny phone tucked into one of the saddlebags of Steve's bike. It had a little keyboard and Steve understood, on a basic level, how it worked. He had a hard time typing on the tiny keys but Tony sent him messages every once in a while. He was apparently on some kind of quest on his way back from California.

'In Portland. There are too many musicians here.'

'Found 3 cellists. None of them from NY.'

'Wild goose chase. Pepper says there is no cellist.' That was a little unexpected. Steve pressed the button on the side of the phone and asked it politely, "Call Tony."

The phone dialed Tony's New York number, ringing through to his pocket in Washington State through some miracle every single person he'd met thought was normal. "Steve, did you know Pepper has developed the ability to lie to my face?"

"No?" He'd met Miss Potts for all of ten minutes.

"There is no cellist in Portland, there has never been a cellist."

Tony sounded grumpy and it made Steve smile, just a little. "So, who are you really looking for?"

There was a moment of hesitation and Tony said, "Turns out, cellists have bows."

This was something they should have known before Clint and Natasha took off because the world confused him but this? This was something he could understand. If there was anything Steve understood, it was secrets and cover stories. He'd lost the secret he loved very much over the side of a train. "We shouldn't have let him go identify the body alone. No wonder he vanished."

There was another moment of silence, the kind that used to mean you'd lost the connection and Steve was about to hang up when Tony started laughing. "You really are perfect, aren't you?"

"No." No, he's certainly not and Tony must know it, as Howard's son. Howard had known all of Steve's secrets.

"I'm on my way back to New York, with the kids in the back of the car. We're going to go bother Bruce. You should come hang out with us."

The 'kids' had to be his robots and Steve wasn't going to miss out on a chance to hang out with robots. "Not yet. But soon." He's not ready to come home, not yet.

"See you soon, Cap."

When Phil came back from Tahiti, after a year on lockdown, his scar was mostly healed and he was fit for duty. He was alive, and alone. It was only Marcus waiting for him when he came into HQ. "Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty."

A few months in a coma followed by rehab wasn't funny, no matter how happy Marcus was to see him up and around. "Spare me the fairy tales, sir."

"Just the facts then." Marcus handed him a tablet with a video of the Battle for New York queued up. "We won. They avenged you, sent Loki packing."

That was good to hear, Phil was glad to know Loki wasn't sleeping in the presidential quarter in DC but the room was still empty. He didn't need to ask who had taken Clint out, because Natasha wasn't here either. If it had been anyone else, she would have been here, she wouldn't have left him alone. "Is there a body?"

"No." It felt like getting stabbed again, until Marcus grabbed his arm. "Phil. He's alive. We got him back."

It's not a lie, he could tell when Marcus lied but there was something he wasn't saying, some other reason Clint wasn't here. "Then why isn't he here?"

"I may have given Stark and Rogers a little push, told them you were dead."

"A little push." It had been a long flight and he still didn't feel right, didn't feel quite himself. He didn't have time for Marcus' bullshit. "And would you have given Clint a similar push?"

"He wouldn't come in for debrief. He rabbited." The Nick Fury persona Marcus wore like a suit didn't do defensive but that was pretty damn close."

When things got to be too much for Clint, he ran. He'd spent a long time positioning himself as the person Clint ran to, even before they got involved. It wasn't a surprise he'd run, if Marcus had lied to him. "I'll find him." He knew Clint well enough, knew some aliases not on SHIELD's lists. It would take some time but he didn't need to sleep as much as he used to.

"He took Romanoff with him."

Phil swallowed a groan because Clint? Clint could be predicted, with enough familiarity. Natasha couldn't. She had aliases for her aliases and contacts she'd never shared. Natasha had trusted her partners, not SHIELD. "You shouldn't have let them out drop off the radar. It's going to take years to find them."

"I'm doing my best, Coulson, but my best man's been laid up in the hospital for the better part of a year."

Maria had offered Phil a jet and a team of his own. He took her up on, but only so he could have access to SHIELD's resources.

A year after the battle, Steve came back to New York. It was still home, even if it was bigger, brighter and louder.

Tony had given him a crash course on 21st century superheroes, about vigilantes, mutants and metahumans and then he'd disappeared into his lab with Bruce to try and fix Ms. Potts before she burnt out.

It meant Steve spent a lot of time alone and once Pepper was better he'd instituted Movie Night. Every Wednesday, provided no one was out of the country, they got together at eight o'clock. Of course, no one else that lived here was anything close to punctual. Steve was always in the movie room first and tonight was no exception. He took up at least three quarter of the available space on the couch and decided to give them fifteen minutes. "JARVIS, can I see the guide, please? Standard scroll speed." He watched the scroll, amazed as always by how many channels there were and how little he actually wanted to watch. "Do you have any recommendations for tonight?"

"The Avengers preference range too widely for me to give an accurate recommendation, Captain." JARVIS' disembodied voice didn't bother him anymore. The world outside of the Tower was off putting, not at all how he'd imagined the future, but Tony had created the future the Stark Expo had promised him, full of robots and sleek metal design. It was reassuring.

Something on the list caught his eye. "Halt scroll." There was a special on the History Channel,

Steve finds the outside world sort of off-putting, not at all how he'd imagined the future, but this Tower, full of robots and sleek smooth m ietal, reminds him of the movies he and Bucky had watched, of the Stark Expo. It's reassuring.

Something on the screen catches his eye. "Halt scroll." There is a special on the History channel, called 'The Howling Commandos and HYDRA: The Third Front.' "JARVIS, let's watch this until everyone else gets here."

The show was more than half over and it was mostly old news reel footage and people being interviewed who were too young to have been there. They showed a few of Bucky's photos, the ones they'd put in Stars and Stripes and Steve had JARVIS pause the show, suddenly curious. "Do you know what happened to our things? My sketchbook, Bucky's negatives?"

"According to Howard Stark's journals, he and Ms. Carter burned them shortly after your death."

"I gotta say, Steve, I was pretty bad with women before Pepper, but none of them ever burned my stuff." Steve turned and Tony was standing in the doorway of the room, a bottle of scotch dangling from one hand and a glass in the other. "Although, now that I think of it, that was probably Pepper's doing." He dropped onto the couch next to Steve and held out the bottle. "I've seen this one. The next bit is an interview with Dugan. I recommend you chug."

Steve took the bottle, not that it was going to help if it was upsetting. Dum Dum was old and it made Steve happy, that he'd lived to be old. The banner running across the bottom of the screen said the interview as shot in 1990 and that Dum Dum had been the last of the Commandos. That didn't seem to include Peggy, who was still hanging on by her fingernails but history didn't seem to understand her very well.

"Captain America has become a legend, Mr. Dugan. History strips it's legends of their humanity. Is there anything you'd like the people to know, about Captain Rogers?"

Dum Dum smiled for the camera. He was wearing that stupid bowler hat and a chestful of medals. He'd been the head of SHIELD when he'd died. It was his words Steve read whenever he dug into old cases and Steve missed him, missed all of them. "Yeah, there is. I want you to know that he was a person, that he wasn't some saint. I've got a story I never told anyone, but I'm the last one. Everyone else is dead now, so I guess it's okay."

Steve chugged. If Dum Dum had told the world Captain America was gay, this was the first Steve was hearing about it. Was everyone being polite? Did they think Dum Dum had been lying, or joking? But the story Dum Dum told wasn't about Bucky at all.

"It's about Peggy, Agent Carter. The woman was a professional, an intelligence agent and a hell of a shot with a pistol. When Bucky told us they were having some grand romance, we laughed it off. The Captain was the perfect soldier, but it didn't make him less awkward with women. Apparently, she liked that. I saw her one morning, sneaking out of his room, wearing yesterday's clothes. Bucky showed up for breakfast late, said he'd been sleeping in the barn. It was the only scandalous thing I ever saw them do, but I don't think the Cap liked sneaking around. I found a ring, in his footlocker, when I cleaned it out."

The screen cuts away to a photo of the Commandos and Steve said, "JARVIS, enough, please." His voice sounded strange to his own ears, he couldn't imagine what Tony was thinking.

"I've got Everclear. Incredibly awful tasting, but strong."

Of all the lies Bucky had strung together to protect him, this had to be the most incredible. "Tony, did your dad ever talk about this? The ring, I mean."

"Yeah." Tony held out his hand for the bottle and Steve gave it back. It was hard for Tony to talk about Howard. "He told me about how he had it snuck in from London. I don't know what happened to it. Dugan's family gave most of his stuff to your museum, but the ring wasn't there. Dad said he'd probably given it to Peggy."

There was a lot he could have said but it all died in his throat. The world had changed but he hadn't, he was still hiding. All that came out was a confused sounding, "I never bought a ring."

"Okay." Tony offered him the bottle back. "So where did it come from?"

"I don't know." He'd known Bucky for almost their entire lives and the man never did anything half way but this was absurd. "One night, I went to sleep and when I woke up, Peggy's picture was in my compass and the Commandos were telling the troops how Cap was in love with a British spy. I wouldn't have put it past Bucky to have bought a ring and snuck it into my stuff."

Tony glanced at the tv. "JARVIS, let's have some sea animals or something? Before we get Commandos burned into the screen." The view switched to giant sea turtles swimming placidly and Tony pasted on the expression he thought was reassuring. It wasn't. "People fall in love, Steve. If your friends decided to be pains in the asses about it, it was just practice for living with me and Bruce."

"It wasn't a push. It was a conspiracy." The word isn't exactly right, but he can't think of a better one. Steve had thought Tony, at least, knew the truth. What he'd told Steve about Coulson would have been a closely held secret, before the ice. "They took it to their graves? All of them?"

"Took what?"

"I parachuted behind enemy lines to get Bucky back. I went on a crazed rampage after he died and then I crashed a plane into an ocean. Then, our friends burned all our belongings even though Howard never believed I was dead. What do you think they were hiding?" There had been things, once, to show what they'd been to each other. Letters he'd written to Bucky, signed only with his initials. Sketches he'd made, photos Bucky had taken and developed in secret. It was all gone now, Peggy and Howard had made sure of it. "I loved him and they erased us."

"Huh." Tony paused the sea turtles and stared at the frozen screen like what Steve had said was a revelation. "You know, that actually explains a lot? Stark Industries was one of the first companies to offer domestic partner benefits. Dad was really adamant about it, he gave interviews ridiculing our competitors, he even endowed a charity. They paid for a chunk of the lobbying to get marriage passed in NY." He looks over at Steve and he had switched to that fake smile he always wore when he talked about Howard to the press. "He tried to change the world for you."

"Did you guys start without me?" Bruce had a giant bowl of popcorn and a smile. The smile slipped away quickly into a nervous expression. Steve had seen that look before, on the faces of men who had wandered into a mine field. "Did I miss something?"

"Sea Turtles." Tony gestured at the screen with his bottle.

"I'm gay and Howard was a terrible father." It was better to get it over with, really. Who was Bruce going to tell?

"Is the media outside, circling the Tower?" He looked a little green just thinking about it.

"No?" Anything's possible, but they haven't done anything that attention gathering in a while.

Bruce flopped into a recliner. "Then let's watch a movie."

"That's all you have to say?" Steve had been on ice a long time but he watched the news. He'd seen the terrible things people still said.

"Unless you two have recorded a sex tape and it's about to break on CNN, I'm really not interested." Bruce held out the bowl of popcorn. "JARVIS, find us something with lots of explosions."

JARVIS started 'Independence Day' and no one talked. Steve missed home with a physical pain some days but he was learning how to live here. His friends had his back.

About the time Will Smith shouted that he could have been at a barbeque, Bruce looked away from the screen and asked, apparently totally serious, "There isn't a sex tape, is there?"

"Bruce," Tony sounded totally scandalized. "My father grew him in a lab. Even I have limits. Also, Pepper is scary."

"And there goes the moment." Steve stole the popcorn from Bruce.

They'd come north at the beginning of summer, when the anniversary had rolled around and Clint had started to fray at the edges again. The cabin was on a lake and the neighbors were friend enough. Clint was teaching some of the kids from next door how to shoot his sixth best bow when Natasha came out to bring him a beer. To the neighbors, he was sure she looked happy and smiling but he could see the tension on her frame, the way she was coiling to bolt. She gave him the beer and pressed a kiss to his temple, her voice a bare whisper. "Someone is watching us. From the trees."

He smiled at her, glancing over her shoulder at the trees. "Thanks." She was right, there was a shape watching them from the woods. He'd slipped up, forgotten to keep watching. It was starting to get dark, he sent the kids home and went inside. Natasha was throwing things into a laundry bag. "Do you know who it is?"

"No. Yes." She paused, a nine millimeter clip in her hands. "I think it's the Winter Soldier."

Clint would put himself toe to toe with any any human sniper in the world and a few of Xavier's guys who were somewhat more than human but the Winter Soldier? He'd thought the Winter Soldier was an assassin boogeyman until he'd met Natasha. Even if her stories were exaggerations, the Winter Soldier was a Red Room creation and the Black Widow's mentor. Clint wasn't exactly at the top of his game lately. "We need to bolt. Go back to New York, go to Stark. The Tower-"

She dropped the clip into the bag and jammed shirts on top of it, covering the guns. "Oh, I'm going to New York. But you're not. It's not safe for you to come with me."

"Is it safe to leave me alone?" He'd gotten the impression that even a year later, Nat still thought he was a psych case. Clint couldn't remember the last time she'd left him alone for more than an hour or two.

"Safer than letting you go up against the Soldier." She was shaking. He'd never seen her like this, the only thing she'd ever been afraid of was the Hulk. "Don't tell me where you're going. I don't want to be able to give you up."

He grabbed her by the wrist, pulled her in close, held onto her because he didn't have anything else left. "You told me you turned him into someone else, once. Could you do it again?"

"He would have to be this close. I don't think that's going to happen." She pressed a kiss to his forehead and pulled away, picked up her bag. "I'm going to tell the neighbors I'm going into town to do laundry, ask them if they need anything. Wait one day, then go."

He watched her drive away and whispered, "Don't die."

Steve wasn't actually a morning person. His metabolism was a bear and the doctors had been very adamant he eat every four hours. He always woke up hungry, he needed to eat right away even though most of the time he could barely keep his eyes open. When the stumbled into the kitchen, he didn't even notice anyone until he'd eaten an apple to the core. "Natasha?" She was sitting in the dark, her guns set neatly on the table. When he turned on one of the small lights, she was staring hat her guns. She was pale and her hands were gripping the edge of the table. "Natasha, are you alright?"

"We were in the Adirondacks, and someone was watching us. I believed it was a Red Room operative, the Winter Soldier." Her eyes were wide, because she was sitting in the dark, but he was also pretty sure she was afraid and that made Steve a bit nervous. He got the impression Natasha was sort of unflappable. "I thought he was after me, so I left Clint in the cabin and took off. I wasn't followed."

Steve sat down at the table, trying to figure out what was going on. "Isn't that good? That he didn't follow you?"

Her eyes darted up from the gun. "He was supposed to follow me, Rogers. He was supposed to follow me all the way back to New York, all the way back to this building, and down to Bruce's lab."

Right, she was afraid of this guy. Why not unleash the Hulk against him? Bruce's floor, as well as the labs and common spaces were designed to contain the Hulk, so she wouldn't even be risking anyone else. But this man she's been willing to set the Hulk on wasn't here. "If he didn't follow you…"

"I made an assumption that he was there for me. It was reasonable, given our past association." She sounded like she was trying to convince herself. "He is a master sniper."

"So is Clint."

"Clint is the best humanity can offer, but he is just that, human. The Winter Soldier is not." Natasha took a deep breath. "I think I've killed him."

"Natasha." He took one of her hands, carefully. He doesn't need an electric shock, not at six am. "You don't know what for sure. Give me five minutes, we'll wake up Bruce and Tony, and we'll figure this out."

She nodded and Steve did his best to get it done in less than five minutes.

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