Chapter 4 - Eukaryota

North of Manaus, Brazil

October 28, 2013

0217P

"Gentlemen," Brock Rumlow said loudly over the noise of the quinjet's engines. "We're coming up on the drop site. Let's go over this one more time."

Steve sat in one of the uncomfortably small seats, his elbows on his knees and his head resting on his clasped hands. Unfortunately for all of them, the closest airstrip S.H.I.E.L.D. had an agreement with was in Cayenne, French Guiana—a good three-and-a-half-hour flight from their destination, Manaus. Combined with the fact that he was still jet-lagged and that it was two o'clock in the morning, Steve was surprised he could stay awake at all.

Thank god for Natasha Romanoff, at least. She'd watched over his slumber, glowering at anyone who tried to wake him. He managed to sleep for most of their flight, only for her to rouse him a half an hour before the drop.

Steve stood up, shaking out the stiffness in his limbs, and made his way over to where the rest of the S.T.R.I.K.E. team gathered around a screen on the wall. He naturally gravitated towards Natasha.

It was a week since they'd seen each other. Fury had sent him to extract an agent from a facility in Siberia while Natasha was assigned to work with S.T.R.I.K.E. When it became clear that their assignment would require more muscle, Steve got on a plane to the closest S.H.I.E.L.D. base nearby, in Buenos Aires, where he was informed that he was actually in the wrong place and that they needed him in Cayenne instead. In short, Steve was exhausted and cranky after bouncing all over the world.

Rumlow assessed him as he stared blankly ahead, ruminating on his busy week. "You alright, Cap?" he asked dryly. His call to order was mainly for Steve's benefit; everyone else had already been on the job for weeks and knew all the details.

Steve shook his head vigorously to wake himself up. "I'm great," he replied with a small smile. "The floor's yours."

Rumlow nodded and uncrossed his arms, swiping his hand across the screen. A photo of a man with a severe face appeared.

"Dmitry Fyodorov. Made most of his fortune as one of the Russian oligarchs back in the 90's. This guy had ties to the Russian mafia before he sold out a couple of vory to the authorities—to take some heat off of his own illicit activities, we presume. Since then, he's been keeping a low profile while gathering the largest known private collection of alien tech in the world." With a flick of his wrist, he brought up photos of shards of metal, a few orbs, a staff.

"Our man Cardoso has informed us that Fyodorov has at least twenty-five artifacts in his collection—two of which are fully-functional weapons. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s let him be because thus far, he's been pretty reliable. His vault is impenetrable—it has a retina scanner, a voice command lock, and a personalized eight digit code that he changes every week. If anyone other than Fyodorov even attempts to open it, the whole thing shuts down for twenty-four hours." Rumlow smirked. "He's been our little safety deposit box."

"What changed?" Steve asked. If the artifacts were so secure, something had to have changed for S.H.I.E.L.D. to intervene.

Rumlow sobered. "Fyodorov is low on funds, that's what changed. Cardoso tells us that he's looking to sell one of his weapons. As of his last transmission, the highest bid is 15 million US dollars."

The other agents muttered to each other as Steve raised his eyebrows. The sum seemed impossibly high, especially for one tiny piece of alien technology.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. does not abide by this. We're confiscating his collection and bringing him into custody," Rumlow finished. As an afterthought, he added, "And we're bringing our man Cardoso home."

Steve frowned. It irked him how everyone in S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to think of their agents as collateral damage. Rumlow motioned for Steve to take a closer look at the map of the facility.

"Captain, you're landing here—" he pointed to a section of the Amazon River that was about two klicks west of his compound. "From there, you'll make your way over to Fyodorov's private runway. As soon as you secure it, radio the jet. We'll land and then we move on the compound.

"There are three above-ground floors—most likely, that's where Fyodorov will be. We need him alive—" he drew the word out long and loud, staring down each of his subordinates in turn. "—I'll repeat that: alive. We need him to open the vault.

"Which brings me to my next point—no one is to try to open the vault. We don't want to be here any longer than we have to and if someone punches in the wrong code or accidently scans their retina, we'll be here an additional twenty four hours. Do not attempt to open the vault. Am I clear?"

"Yes, sir," the S.T.R.I.K.E. team returned immediately.

Rumlow nodded his approval and brought up yet another grainy photo of heavily armed men patrolling a runway. Steve assumed this was what he was securing.

"His security is made up entirely of private military contractors from a Brazilian security firm called Os Soldados Amazonas. They're very well-trained, but not known for their loyalty. Once we take the facility and Fyodorov, the mercenaries will lay down their arms and negotiate for their release." There were annoyed murmurs at that. Rumlow smiled grimly in response. "So don't feel too bad if your bullets find themselves in their skulls."

The annoyed sounds turned into chuckles. Steve grimaced, glancing at Natasha. She was stone-faced.

Steve hated working with S.T.R.I.K.E. The agents on this team clearly derived too much pleasure from cruelty. But if this is where S.H.I.E.L.D. needed him, then this was where he'd be, even if he felt cold under their blank gazes.

A warning beep sounded from the front of the plane. "Drop in sixty seconds," the pilot called up.

"Cap, you're up," Rumlow said. "Good luck."

Steve nodded sharply. He grabbed his helmet and shield from his seat. As he strapped them on, Natasha sidled up beside him.

"So, what are you doing for Halloween?" she asked, as though they weren't about to storm a Russian oligarch's secret underground museum of alien paraphernalia.

"Nat, I'm jumping out of a plane in thirty seconds."

She apparently didn't think that that was a good excuse to avoid the question. She stayed close behind him as he walked over towards the back of the plane, carefully stepping around the agents strapping themselves back into their seats. The loading door slowly flipped down, brushing the thick clouds beneath them. The early hour combined with the cloud cover made this drop comparable to jumping into black paint.

"You jump out of planes every other week," Natasha pointed out. "At this point, I think the only reason they call you in is because S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn't want to spring for more parachutes."

"Hardy har har."

"Fifteen seconds to drop," Rumlow called from the front of the quinjet. Steve waved to let him know he heard.

Nat followed him to the edge and watched him put his goggles over his eyes with crossed arms. "You and Mal doing anything fun? I heard Jess from accounting is having a party."

He sighed, heavily enough that she could hear him over the jet engines. "You know, I really doubt we're gonna be back by Halloween, so the conversation's moot, don't you think?"

And as always, the only time Steve ever got the last word in a conversation with Natasha was when he jumped out of a plane.

The Triskelion, Washington D.C.

October 31, 2013

9:18 AM EST

"Aw, Ash, you look so cute!" Mal gushed when she came into the lab on Halloween and found the assistant wearing orange cat ears.

She beamed. "Thanks. Uhura?"

Mal did a spin in her red Starfleet dress, her lab coat spinning with her. "You know it."

"Nerd!"

Mal put her hands on her hips and frowned at Colton, across the lab at his desk. He wore a plaid button-down and black slacks with his lab coat on top—the same thing he wore every other day of the year. "What the hell are you supposed to be?"

He threw his legs up onto his desk and leaned back in his chair. "A dude who hates Halloween," he replied, gesturing across his torso. "Did I nail it?"

She ignored the question, and went to his desk. It was a horrible mess, but he seemed to know where everything was, so she hadn't insisted that he clean it. She just pretended not to see it whenever she came into the lab. They'd had no problems yet. "I would've thought you'd love Halloween," she said, shrugging. "You know, 'cause free candy."

"Yeah, for kids," he retorted. "Not for twenty-nine-year-old dudes trolling the neighborhood."

"Oh, really?" She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a box of candy. "So, I guess I should give these Jujubes to my neighbor's kids…"

He sat up so quickly that he kicked a photo off of his desk. "You bought that for me?" he squeaked.

"Apparently, I bought it for my neighbor's kids," she replied with a shrug, slipping it back into her pocket. "And let me tell you—those kids do not need more sugar. I let them play with my newts yesterday and the littler one almost frosted my apartment with Tish's guts."

Despite his excitement, he rolled his eyes at her. "You've got to stop saying that. It makes you sound creepy at best."

"Play with my newts?"

He shivered. "I get the heebies just hearing the words."

"Here are some Jujubes to go with your heebies." She tossed the box to him.

He ripped it open in half a second. Through a mouthful, he asked, "Heebie-jujeebees?"

"Heebie-jujubebees." She shook her head. "Never mind. You like Jujubes, right?"

"They're my favorite!" he chirped, looking nothing like his usually snippy self. It was worth two bucks and an extra trip to the candy store. "I can't believe you remembered!"

"When we first met, you told me your name and your favorite candy, so I assumed it was an important factoid," she reminded him, picking up his fallen photo. When she curiously turned it over, she yelped and nearly threw it at the window in surprise.

"Colton, why is there a framed photo of Director Fury on your desk?"

He snatched it out of her hands and set it gently back onto his desk, beside his framed memo from Fury. "We all fight for someone, Mal," he said defensively.

She groaned. "You are the weirdest person I've ever met."

"Oh, so a grown man can't have a photo of another grown man on his desk without it being weird?" He threw his index finger in Ashley's direction. "Ash's had a picture of a little boy on her desk for years and nobody's said anything about that!"

"That's my nephew," Ash snapped before faltering. "He has CF…"

"Oh, god, I'm so sorry."

Mal rubbed her forehead. "Jesus Christ." She regretted asking. "Look, I need you to check on TS-M 7's stem cells. Make sure they're ready for testing with TS-H control, okay?"

"Right, which one's that? Is that Salamander or Blue Man Group reject?"

Internally, she bristled. She answered coolly, "It's Salamander, but from now on, you need to refer to the samples by their proper titles."

He popped another jujube into his mouth and shrugged. "Or we could just call them by their actual names," he suggested. He meant the names of the people who donated their blood for her project, of course.

She gave him a small smile and walked away from his desk. He knew that she meant for him to follow her, though, and did so accordingly. She started setting up the materials they needed as he removed the stem cells from the freezer.

"These samples are anonymous donations, Colt," she said softly to him as he carefully laid out the petri dishes on the table. "Even I don't know their names."

"Yeah, yeah," he said dismissively.

She didn't like to lie. Yet it seemed like her primary mode of communication nowadays. As he tinkered around, she thought back to her brief trip to New York in July, where she collected every single blood sample with her own hands. How reluctant Logan had been to stick out his arm, how Hank had excitedly chatted with her about her project, and of course how many refused to take part at all.

She understood. Mal herself was terrified that their genetic material would fall into unsavory hands, or even simply curious ones. So she put together a system that Colton deemed "paranoid" and "unnecessary": she was the only one who had access to the blood samples, which she kept locked in her specially ordered silver briefcase that required a four-digit passcode and her fingerprint. If anyone other than her even tried to open it, the tubes would be crushed and doused in sodium hydroxide, degrading the DNA molecules into unusable wrecks. At work, she kept it in a safe under her desk; when she brought it home, it went into a safe behind one of her paintings.

Was it paranoid? Maybe. But nothing had happened to her samples yet, so she would continue to be paranoid.

"You ready, Dr. Cohen?" Colton's voice shook her from her thoughts. She smiled at him.

"Absolutely, Dr. Ford."

He rubbed his hands together eagerly and said to the petri dish of mutant stem cells, "Salamander, prepare to meet normal human."

Her smile disappeared. She had always hated the name Salamander, but it was hers nonetheless.

Fyodorov Compound, north of Manaus, Brazil

October 28, 2013

0545P

Fyodorov was wearing pajamas when the S.T.R.I.K.E. team dragged him from his bed. As he shivered in his enormous sitting room—the most opulent room Steve had ever seen in his life, which was saying something because he'd been inside Stark Tower—in a matching baby blue silk shirt and pants pajama set, his hands cuffed in front of his body and his mouth humming with non-stop Russian, Steve found it hard to imagine the man within ten feet of a mobster, let alone being good friends with one.

But no matter what they said to him, he refused to divulge the vault code. He had determination going for him.

Leaning towards Rumlow, Steve asked quietly, "What's he saying?"

The S.T.R.I.K.E. team leader rolled his eyes. "He wants his lawyer."

Fair enough.

He motioned to Steve to follow him out into the hall, quickly ordering two more agents inside to keep him guarded. Natasha met them outside, looking completely unruffled. But after a few months of working with her, Steve was beginning to decipher certain looks. She was very annoyed.

"Someone punched in the wrong code," she informed them crisply. "Vault's locked down. We can't try again until 0245 tomorrow."

"Was it one of ours?" he asked dangerously.

Mercifully, she shook her head. "Couldn't have been. The team wasn't down there until 0250. One of Fyodorov's men must have done it to delay us."

"Doesn't matter, anyway," Steve said, jabbing his thumb over his shoulder towards the sitting room, "Fyodorov's not cooperating." He shook his head, smiling wryly at Natasha. "Guess we're not gonna get back before Halloween," he added quietly.

He didn't intend it as a challenge, just a mere statement of fact. But Natasha narrowed her eyes at him, as though he was responsible for the delay himself. "Let me talk to him."

"Be my guest."

She opened the door, never taking her eyes off of Steve as she entered the room. He crossed his arms, suddenly feeling like she could see through his skin. Even when she was out of the hallway, the feeling didn't disappear.

Rumlow eyed him suspiciously. "You two have a bet going or something?" he asked.

Steve didn't feel like explaining. "No. She's just…odd."

He shrugged. "Whatever. She's our kind of odd." He nodded at the door. The four agents that had been guarding Fyodorov came out of it, looking thoroughly shellacked. The lock clicked ominously behind them. He smirked to Steve. "She'll have him begging us to take away his alien toys in half an hour, tops."

There was a little too much sadistic joy in his voice for Steve to respond honestly. Instead, he shifted the conversation towards the alien tech. "How did he even get all of this stuff anyway? I mean, how many alien invasions have there been besides New York?"

Rumlow motioned for Steve to follow him down the stairs. "Technically, New Mexico is considered an alien invasion," he corrected him. He couldn't see Steve frown at his back. The Asgardians were their allies—their crown prince was an Avenger, for god's sake.

Before Steve could object, Rumlow continued, "But that's beside the point. You have to realize that the Asgardians and the Chitauri are only two of hundreds or thousands more species within spitting distance of Earth."

Steve did not realize that. "Hundreds," he repeated faintly.

"Or thousands." He shrugged and they went down the stairs. In the darkness, he continued to speak, "Thankfully, they're only interested in using our planet as a dumping ground for all their broken shit."

The basement was decidedly less glamorous than the top floors, but the vault door looked like it cost more than everything else combined.

Rumlow had the same thought. "No wonder he was looking to sell," he scoffed. "Tony Stark would think this was too much."

A smile crept onto his face despite himself. Even if the man wasn't here to defend himself, Steve couldn't help but enjoy a joke at Tony Stark's expense. "It's doing its job, though," he said, shrugging. It kept them out.

"Hm."

Steve changed the subject. "What are we going to do if he doesn't cooperate?"

"Black Widow is raking him over the coals. He's going to cooperate."

"But what if he doesn't? Are we going to destroy the vault?"

"Destroy the largest private collection of alien tech on the planet?" Rumlow raised an eyebrow. "That'll go over great with Fury. Besides there's nothing short of a nuclear bomb that can destroy this vault. The walls are reinforced with adamantium—it's a metal alloy that's stronger than vibranium," he explained, pointing at the shield strapped to Steve's back. "It doesn't matter. We'll get the codes out of Fyodorov one way or another."

It was a threat if Steve had ever heard one. He frowned again. He really hoped Natasha could charm the codes out of him, but there were no guarantees. Steve had never known someone who could be honey and vinegar simultaneously until he'd met the Black Widow.

"Agent Romanoff," Rumlow said when she appeared before them. He checked his watch. "Half an hour," he muttered to Steve before asking her, "Fyodorov?"

"He's going to cooperate," Natasha answered.

Rumlow smiled grimly. "Any catch?"

Dead serious, she replied, "We have to let him change out of his pajamas before we bring him in."

The Triskelion, Washington D.C.

October 31, 2013

8:24 PM EST

"Damn it," Mal hissed as she looked over the results of her experiment. "Damn it. Damn."

She was wrong. Again.

Her head fell into her hands, her eyes closing as she sighed. "What the hell were you expecting, Cohen?" she muttered to herself.

When she started this project in June, she knew she wouldn't be completing her life's work in three months, but she'd hoped that she would be making more progress than she had thus far. She was just glad that no one else was here to see her holding back tears, especially not Esposito. She was sure Jen would be ecstatic to see her failure.

All her coworkers had left on time that day. Mal had considered leaving as well, if only to cuddle up on her couch and polish off her pint of Chunky Monkey but decided to work overtime to correlate some new data. But that didn't stop her from living vicariously through her more social coworkers.

"I'm going trick-or-treating with my brother and his family in Bethesda," Ashley had said when Mal asked what she was doing that night. "Kyle loves Iron Man, so my brother made him a tiny Iron Man costume out of cardboard."

"Aw," Mal had gushed, laying a hand over her heart. "That's so sweet. Take lots of pictures, okay?"

"Oh my god, of course. I bought a new 32 gig memory chip specifically for Halloween; I'm so prepared."

They laughed together. As Colton passed them to leave, Ashley stopped him. "What are you up to tonight?"

"Not trick-or-treating," he replied briskly. "Marley and me are hitting the Blue Door. It's a club," he clarified when Mal looked confused. "She's super into Halloween. It's a nightmare."

"Aw, poor Colton," Mal teased. "In a relationship with a fun person."

He ignored her. "At least she's dieting. Maybe she'll give me all of her candy."

"At least." Mal rolled her eyes. They said their goodbyes and then he was gone.

Before Ashley could take her leave as well, Mal nodded towards a silent Esposito gathering up her purse and asked Ash quietly, "What's she doing? Ripping a bat's head off with her teeth to scare off the neighborhood kids?"

Ashley, being Esposito's assistant, pursed her lips at Mal. "I think you're confusing her with Ozzy Osbourne."

"I know, that was mean." She shook her head. "Seriously, though, I'm curious."

Ash narrowed her eyes in thought. "I think she's taking her daughter trick-or-treating," she said. "I don't remember. She told me a few weeks ago."

Mal's eyebrows met her hairline. "She has a kid?"

"On the weekends and occasional holidays," Ash replied. "She and her husband split up a year ago."

"I didn't know that," Mal said faintly. "She's so young."

As if she knew they were gossiping about her private life, Esposito's head snapped towards them, fury burning in her dark eyes. Ash squeaked in surprise while Mal smiled and waved. She scrutinized them for a second before storming out without a word.

"I've stared into the abyss," Mal said ominously, laughing when Ash playfully shoved her shoulder. "Have fun tonight, okay?"

Ashley frowned at her. "You're not staying at work, are you?" she asked.

She tried to smile reassuringly but it came out as more of a grimace. "I am. But really, it's fine," she rushed to reassure Ash. "I have to monitor the TS-M/H dishes and I'm anxious to know how it turned out."

Mal never got more specific than that with anyone other than Colton. The research division of SHIELD was competitive—people were always looking to steal projects from under each other's noses—so she kept her results to herself. Thankfully, Ashley knew this and didn't pry further.

Instead, she offered, "Why don't you come trick-or-treating with us? I know that sounds kind of lame, but it'll be fun. And Kyle likes sharing so you might get some candy."

She smiled. "That's adorable…but I'm going to stay here."

Ashley's frown deepened. But she easily conceded, "Fine." Mal nodded. Ashley pointed at her. "But one of these days, we're going to have a girl's night and watch movies and eat chocolate, alright? I promise."

"You're a sweet kid, Ash."

"I'm older than you."

"Get out of here, kiddo." And then Mal was alone in the lab.

Mal didn't like working alone, or being alone, or thinking about being alone, or even the movie Home Alone. She was averse to the whole concept. And yet she found herself alone so often nowadays that she wondered if she didn't enjoy the solitude. Because no sane person would put themselves in a situation so many times unless they secretly enjoyed it.

"It's better this way," she told herself, to reassure herself and to hear something other than silence.

It was safer, at least. Half of her research she didn't want on the record—at least not on S.H.I.E.L.D. record—so it was better that no one was here to document her findings. Colton usually did all of the documenting. She trusted him, but not enough.

She didn't trust anyone with her secret, not even her best friend of eight years, Jemma Simmons. Though that had more to do with the fact that she was the worst liar she'd ever met. And she might've trusted Fitz with it, but he couldn't keep secrets from Jemma.

Only her family knew that she was a mutant. Her parents and the X-Men made up her family, even if they shared no blood.

"Speaking of blood…" she murmured, standing from her stool to examine the petri dishes with a mixture of mutant and human stem cells. The mutant stem cells she produced from her own blood, while the human's came from an actual anonymous donor.

And found that once again, her hypotheses were wrong.

"Damn it."

The human stem cells were rejecting the mutant ones. "If that ain't poetic, then I don't know what is," she muttered. "Even on a cellular level, you hate us."

She immediately regretted saying it, even if there was no one around to hear her. She knew not all humans hated mutants. Her parents didn't hate them. Her old professors at Columbia didn't hate them. And, even without knowing that Mal was one of them, Jemma had often proclaimed her support for mutant rights. It was unfair of her to think that humans were all the same.

"After all, we all need to be on board for there to be peaceful coexistence, right?" she said, smiling weakly at the petri dishes. Predictably, the stem cells didn't offer their opinions on the matter.

She sighed, resting her head on her arms. "My stem cells could save your life," she said into the sleeve of her lab coat. "But I guess you only want the specific gene, right? You can't make this easy for anyone."

She'd been fearful of trying to isolate the X-gene in her DNA. Several genome-wide association studies had been conducted specifically to locate said gene, with very little success. Unlike most genes, which could be found on the same chromosome of every person with that gene, the X-gene was elusive; it shifted from person to person.

Calling them 'mutants' implied that they had all something in common, but the truth seemed to be the opposite. Mutants were more diverse with one another than they were different from wild type humans. If she wanted to isolate the gene in her own genome, she could only use her genome. No comparisons. That at least tripled the amount of time it would take to find it.

After going through it all, she only had one thought.

"I'm going to be here forever."

The Triskelion, Washington D.C.

October 31, 2013

23:47 EST

"It's still Halloween," Natasha said to him as they stood on the roof of the Triskelion, watching the quinjet that had dropped them off fly away.

He glanced at his watch. "For another ten minutes, yes. You were technically right; we made it back for Halloween."

Her face didn't change. "So, what are you going to do?"

"Go home…?" By the look on her face, this was not the correct answer. He sighed. "It's late, Nat. And we've been in the air for twelve hours."

"Yeah, and it's not like you slept for eight of those," she remarked wryly. "Whatever. It'd be better to go out on Saturday, anyway."

He silently decided against that as well. "Sure."

They stopped in front of the elevator. Natasha glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "Mal's office number is 18-C," she said suddenly. "Apparently, she works late most nights."

He didn't need to ask her how she knew this. "That's great."

They stepped into the elevator. But just as he reached to press the button for Fury's office, Natasha's hand darted forward and hit the eighteenth. "Fury's not in," she said in explanation.

He sighed. "Natasha…"

She ignored him and continued, "She doesn't have a car and the buses stop running at eleven."

"I don't have a car either."

Her keys smacked him in the chest. Rubbing the sore spot, he glared at her. She gestured to his pocket. "Give me yours."

Reluctantly, he pulled motorcycle keys out. Before she could close her fingers around them, he lifted them out of her grasp and said, "My helmet is in the gym. Wear it."

She made a noncommittal sound of agreement. But before he could ensure that she wouldn't go speeding off into the night without the proper safety precautions, the elevator opened up onto the eighteenth floor and she was hustling him out.

"Don't crash my car—it's new and expensive," she warned him.

He stuck his foot in the door before it closed. "What if she's not even here?" he asked. "She probably went out. Who works late on Halloween?" Besides us, I mean.

"If she's not here, then you still get to drive my car," she replied dryly. "It's a no-lose scenario." She brought her foot down onto his, just hard enough to startle him out of the threshold. "Bye, Steve."

"Nat—" But the doors were already closing on his face.

Steve had not been on many of the Triskelion's floors, but the ones that he did frequent weren't research floors, so the layout was completely foreign to him. Across from the elevator, there was a laboratory labeled 18-L1; next to it, another laboratory labeled 18-L2. A quick jog down the hall revealed to him that they were all laboratories.

At the end of the hall, he heard something strange. Curiously, he followed the noise—hard, shaking beats that shook his ribcage more and more the closer he got to the source.

Of course the source was 18-C. The glass door was flung wide open, so Steve poked his head in without knocking. Mal stood in front of a holographic screen in the middle of her office, absently bobbing her head to the beeping sound of her music. It was probably the worst thing Steve had ever heard.

"Hey," he shouted over the sound.

She whirled around. When she saw him, she grinned hugely. "Hey! I didn't think you'd be back so soon!"

"Neither did I," he said. "Could you turn this down?" He gestured around the room. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere.

She pressed a button on the screen. Blissfully, the music stopped, but his ears were still ringing. "Sorry," she apologized sheepishly. "I don't play my music out loud unless I know everyone is gone."

Only partly joking, he asked, "That was music?"

Her mouth fell open in playful indignation. "Wow, okay," she said, unable to keep out a hint of laughter in her voice. "You come to my place of work and say these negative things..."

He smiled at her growing one. "I know, that was rude."

She waved him off. "Nah, it's okay. The older generations just don't get trip-hop, man."

Sometimes, people said the most bizarre things that Steve didn't even know what to ask for clarification. "I don't want to get it."

Mal laughed. When her giggles subsided, she noted his disheveled appearance from sleeping on the plane. "Did you just get back?" she asked.

"Yeah, about ten minutes ago," he said, shifting his shield on his back.

"You missed Halloween!" she cried. She sounded far more devastated than he felt.

"I did, but I think I'll live. Besides, you're still here at—" he checked his watch, "—five to midnight. You didn't want to go out?"

"I did, but everyone I know is doing their own thing. I didn't want to be a third wheel." She shrugged. "But I dressed up!" She waved her hands over her dress in a manner that he was clearly supposed to understand.

When his blank expression didn't change, she said, "Uhura? From Star Trek?"

"Is that related to Star Wars?"

"No and try not to get them confused. People get pretty crazy about it."

Noted.

She snapped her fingers and pointed at his confused face. "That reminds me."

"My ignorance reminds you."

Mal went behind her desk and started throwing open drawers, rummaging through a few and making annoyed sounds under her breath. After a few moments of this, she cried out triumphantly.

"I got you something," she said and handed him a small package, wrapped in red and green paper, sporting reindeer wearing Christmas sweaters.

"You know Christmas is in December, right?" he asked with a smirk, turning the present over in his hands.

She shrugged. "It's a really late birthday present, but that's the only wrapping paper I have."

His smile became a frown. It wasn't like she'd missed his birthday; they didn't even know each other when it passed him by with little fanfare. "You didn't have to…" he started to say.

Mal rolled her eyes. "It's a gift, Cap. That's the point."

"But seriously—"

"Steve," she interrupted him with a hand on his arm. "It's not a diamond watch; it cost me, like, ten bucks." When he only stared at it, she raised her eyebrows expectantly. "Are you gonna open it or what?"

"Right." He carefully peeled the tape off the edges, taking extra care not to rip the paper. Even with more money than he knew what to do with, Steve couldn't shake his Depression-grown thriftiness.

Mal huffed impatiently. "Are you kidding me right now?"

"I'm going to reuse this paper," he said defensively, carefully folding it and placing in his inner coat pocket. He made a mental note to take it out before he put it in the washing machine.

It was a small, pocket-sized notebook. Silently, he flipped through the mostly empty pages. The first few pages had a list written in a careful hand; at the top, it read The Addams Family (1964 TV show and 1990 movie).

"I thought you'd like something to write stuff down in," she said anxiously when he was quiet for a long time, perusing the titles. "I added a few things I thought you should see or read."

"Thank you," he said finally, knowing that he should've said something sooner. But he'd been so touched by her gesture that he didn't know what to say. "Thank you. This is…so thoughtful of you."

She preened under his gratitude. "Don't forget to add Star Trek on there."

He plucked a pen out of the mug on her desk and scribbled the title at the bottom of the list. "Got it." When he replaced it, he caught a glimpse of the name on the mug. He asked, "You went to Columbia?"

"For grad school, yeah."

At least colleges were the same. "That's very impressive."

"Thanks. Did you go to college?"

"Art school," he replied absently, more interested at the photographs on her desk. There were only two: one of Mal hugging a young man and a young woman, all three of them wearing lab coats, and one of an elderly couple in front of a small, brightly painted house.

He picked this one up. "Oh, are these your…" He froze; he couldn't tell if they were her grandparents or parents. He had a fifty-fifty chance of being offensive and he didn't really want to gamble.

"Unclench, Rogers," she said with a laugh. "They're my parents and yeah, they adopted me pretty late in their lives."

"Adopted?" He was full of stupid questions today.

"Yeah," she said. She gestured to her face and then to the photo. "We don't look too related. And I know I've gotten pretty pale from spending all my time indoors, but if I spent, like, five minutes in the sun, I'd be the color of this desk."

He glanced down at her desk. It was jet black, almost blue.

"A bit of an exaggeration," she amended when he raised an incredulous eyebrow. "My point is that I'm very clearly Hawaiian and they're not. Hawaiian, Japanese, Norwegian, and Irish," she added; rapid-fire, like she was testing herself. "I know you didn't ask, but as a geneticist, I felt like I was missing a huge part of my personal biology before I knew what race I was. Of course, the word 'race' is totally inaccurate from a biological standpoint; we're all the same species. But then sociologists say that an ethnicity is an entirely social construct, so that doesn't work so well in a scientific setting. Most accurately, 'races' are 'breeds', but of course that makes us sound like dogs—"

"Okay," he interrupted, sensing that she was only winding herself up with no point.

She took off her glasses, sighing as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, I'm a little tired."

"How long have you been here?"

She thought about it. "Since eight."

"So, you've been working for sixteen hours."

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to refute him. "I took a long lunch," she said lamely.

He shook his head. "I'll give you a ride home," he said.

She clasped her hands together gratefully. "That would be amazing, thank you. You are a life saver." She started packing up her things but continued to babble. "But not the candy. I have the candy; do you want any?"

Steve smiled. "They still make Lifesavers?" Soldiers used to get them with their rations back during the war.

"Of course, they're delicious," she said matter-of-factly, tossing aside some candy wrappers on her desk in her search. "Here." She tossed the roll to him.

"I haven't had these in seventy years," he mused to himself, popping one into his mouth. They were sweeter than he remembered, but familiar enough.

Suddenly he was back in Italy, Bucky sitting beside him under a canopy tent, sharing their meager rations of candy as they talked about what they were going to do when they got home.

They'd had big plans and they only ever confided in one another. But even then, Steve knew that Bucky never expected to make it out alive. At the time, Steve brushed off his morbid thoughts with the comforting reminder that Bucky was a pessimist. Of course he was bound to assume the worst. Steve hated that he'd been right.

Yet despite having low expectations for his own life, Bucky had never seemed to doubt that Steve would come home and live the life he'd planned—marry a pretty girl, have a gaggle of kids, publish comics, grow old. But Steve only got old—the growing was yet to come.

They were both wrong, in the end.

He didn't realize that he had frozen in place, staring at the roll of candy, until Mal cleared her throat. "You okay?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, I'm alright," he said, shaking his head to shake away the memory. "It's strange, though. Sometimes, all I want is for things to be the way they were, but then when they are, I realize that it's harder to move on, you know?"

She twisted her lips, furrowing her brow in worry. "I take it you're not talking about the candy?"

She couldn't possibly know. It was difficult to find anyone who understood what he was saying. Sometimes, Steve didn't understand what he was saying, but then he barely understood what he was feeling, either.

"Sorry," he apologized before she could say another word. "There isn't anything to say to that."

Mal sighed, slung her messenger bag over her shoulder, and circled around her desk to stand beside him. "Don't apologize," she ordered, but it was gentle. "I can't possibly understand everything you're going through, but if it helps you to talk about it, then by all means, do it." She smirked wryly. "I'm a pretty good listener when you get me to stop talking."

Despite himself, he laughed. They left her office. She locked the door behind them, turning to him with a gleam in her eye. "Hey, you know what I just realized?"

"What's that?"

"You have seventy years of candy to make up for."

He laughed again and was glad she was there, as sleep deprived as she was. "That is the sole reason I get up in the morning," he replied cheekily.

She grinned and so did he.

This one got away from me. I'm really trying to write shorter chapters, especially because this one is mostly filler. And it weirdly became a Halloween episode, so yay, Halloween in July!

Sorry this one was later than usual; I was hoping to get it out on the 4th (you know, 'cause America), but obviously that did not happen.

Anyway, please review! even if it's just to tell me how underwhelmed you were by this chapter because, trust me, I'm with you on that front. I might come back and rewrite this one sometime.

Edited Sept 2021