Rogers gasped awake. He rolled over. If a dream had woken him, he couldn't remember it now. His heart was racing, so it was probably better that he couldn't remember. It probably hadn't been good. He lay still, letting his heart settle. He didn't have to get up, he didn't have to work, there was no work he could do, he was blind. He shivered. He didn't try to move, he didn't try to think, he let himself slip back towards sleep.
He was riding fast along a road in the desert, he hadn't seen another human or evidence of one for miles. The sun was beating down, he had a long way to go, but he wasn't really hurrying. Something on the skyline caught his eye, something dark, rising. Smoke. A column of smoke was rising somewhere ahead. What was burning? He sped up. Someone might need help. Something lay down off the side of the road, belching black smoke, a man ran up towards the road as he approached, waving to flag him down. He took the gas off and slowed down. That man was asking for help.
Bang! Rogers sat up, his head span.
"Abe, you gonna be the one to pick that up." A man's voice, he didn't sound happy.
"You saw that, didn't y'all?"
"What?"
"Something moved up there."
"It was a bird or your own stupid brain. Quit making excuses, pick that up." A man in the corridor had spooked at something and dropped something heavy. That explained the bang. Rogers sighed. His heart was racing again, but his head had settled. He shivered.
What had he just seen? A dream? He couldn't place it if it was a memory, but it didn't feel like a dream, but they often didn't, which was why they could be so terrifying. That… whatever it was felt recent. Which made sense if he'd just dreamed it. Did it really matter? Hang on, maybe it did. The last thing he remembered before he'd woken up here had been setting off from the training camp he'd been at for a month, in the desert, on his motorbike. Maybe it had been that. Maybe if not for the clumsy guy in the corridor, he might have remembered what had happened to him, he might have remembered how he'd lost Barton, how Barton had managed to get anywhere near the main fighting. He owed it to any man he lost to try to understand why and how they'd been killed, for the sake of anyone else he ever commanded, though that felt unlikely to ever happen now. He got out of bed, he stood up more easily than he had yesterday, but he was still glad to kneel down again to tie the fifth knot in the piece of string. Eight days in total then. And still no one he knew wanted to talk to him. Rogers shivered. Had they found Romanova yet? If she didn't want to be found, probably not. It would be good to hear her voice, or Fury's, just someone he could recognise. It might force him to accept that this was actually happening to him, he was actually blind and he was going to have to learn to live with it. Unless they got his sight back. If they knew how likely he was to see again, they weren't telling him. He shuffled round to lean against the bed, clasping his hands. It was unusual for him to be left this long once he was awake. Anyway.
"Lord Jesus, thank you that I still have food and shelter, and people to look after me, and that I don't feel so bad today. Thank you for not letting me give up on life until you say I'm done, just… God, I don't know what to do right now. I don't know what you want me to do. Show me." He took a long breath. "And God, I want to see." It was scary to pray that, because every day he prayed it and woke up blind he felt abandoned. Every day, it was hard to trust that God knew what he was doing. He felt like there was more he should pray, but he couldn't think of it. He wanted to get up and move, but where on earth was he going?
"As I went down in the river to pray,
Studying about that good old way,
And who shall wear the robe and crown
Good Lord, show me the way." He went through four or five verses; brothers, sisters, sinners, whatever he could think of, keeping his voice as steady as he could through the shivers. He only stopped when someone knocked on the door.
"Come in." Rogers got to his feet as the door opened. His head span, but it was bearable.
"Thought you were probably up." Grogan's voice. "How long have you been awake?" He shook his head.
"I have no idea."
"How are you doing?"
"Better than yesterday I think."
"How so?"
"I'm not as dizzy." He stepped round the foot of the bed towards her.
"Figures. You could barely get up yesterday. You said not as dizzy. Headache?" She stepped closer to him and took him by the wrist for a pulse.
"A little. It feels like water would help."
"I'll get you some in a minute. If I'd had any sense I'd have brought it, I didn't get a lot of sleep."
"Why was that?"
"One of the guys on guard duty had a seizure. They roped a few off-duty medics to deal with him, we think he's OK, he's under observation now. Are you still shivery?" He nodded. "Anything else?"
"Not really."
"OK, I'll go get water." She left. Rogers didn't want to sit down, he started pacing the perimeter of the room, though it didn't improve his headache. He'd just got the confidence to start running when the door opened again.
"Hey." Still Grogan. He walked towards her, wary of walking in to her. She put a cup in his hand.
"Thanks." He sat down on the edge of the bed, he felt her weight further along the bed a moment later.
"Can I check a rumour with you?"
"Depends."
"OK, someone said that the Hulk, Banner, killed his wife. I just… I couldn't get that out of my head." Rogers shook his head.
"Not that I know of, I don't think he's ever been married."
"Is he… is he dangerous?" It took Rogers a moment to come up with a sensible answer.
"As soon as anything is strong, it's dangerous. All the Avengers are dangerous, we're meant to be. The difference with Banner is that he's more likely to kill you by accident."
"There were, what? Six of you in the Avengers, and you were an army."
"Four of us now, five if you still count me." Barton was dead.
"Two super soldiers from opposite sides of the cold war, a perfect archer, a literal knight in shining armour, the Hulk and a Norse god." Rogers shook his head.
"He is not a god. I will give you that he's powerful, he's powerful in ways I can't even begin to understand, but he is not a god."
"Didn't he have a thing with a human woman?"
"Where did you hear that?"
"Around."
"I know there are humans he cares about, that he wants to keep safe."
"Who?"
"Scientists I think."
"What sort of scientists? Physicists?"
"I don't know. People he met who were kind to him when he got stranded here."
"Was one of them a guy called Erik Selvig?"
"Not that I know of. Maybe. Was he one of the guys Loki got control of?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I don't know. The name sounds kind of familiar."
"What about Stark?"
"What?"
"He has a girlfriend, doesn't he? A bunch of nurses were upset about that."
"Yeah, Stark has a girlfriend."
"One of them said she had him wrapped around her little finger," Rogers laughed. "that he'd do anything for her."
"I don't know about 'anything', but Coulson said we had her to thank for Stark agreeing to help us with Loki."
"So she has a lot of sway with him." Something beeped loudly, something near Grogan. He felt her weight shift. "Oh." She jumped up. "I need to go and deal with this."
"What?"
"The guy who had a seizure, it could be nothing, or it could be very bad. You're OK here." She hurried out. 'You're OK here'. What had she meant by that? It hadn't been a question. Where else would he be? Or more to the point, where else would he be and not be OK? In fairness, she'd said she was tired, she wasn't herself today. She'd been pretty nosy about Stark and the others just then. Rogers got to his feet and started pacing again, in the opposite direction.
,
He'd been running maybe ten minutes, he was warm and tiring faster than he'd have liked, when the door opened without warning. He started.
"Ah, Captain? You need to come with us." This was not a voice he knew. He turned to face the speaker, a man, southern sounding, probably about forty.
"Why?" Rogers asked. "Where are we going?"
"The perimeter may have been breached Sir. We need to get you to a safer location."
"When did this happen, the breach?" Rogers took a few paces towards the speaker.
"I don't know. Why?"
"Have you got the men to seal the perimeter again and flush inwards?"
"I don't know, Sir. There are people taking care of it. You just need to come with us." Rogers hesitated. He felt a man's hand on his shoulder. "Come on. We need to get you out of here." There were two of them, one in front of him, one at his shoulder, leading him, and he could hear another man breathing to the left, so three of them. He crossed the threshold and heard the door close behind him. The hand on his shoulder changed to a vice grip on his upper arm. Something in him wanted to pull away. Something here felt wrong.
A muffled, crackly hiss. A silenced gunshot. The thud of something heavy, about as heavy as a man, falling to the ground. Rogers started and turned to look for cover, forgetting for a heartbeat that he couldn't see. Time slowed down. Two gasps, shock not pain. Whoever had been shot hadn't cried out. They were dead, they had to be. He couldn't get to cover if he couldn't see it. Another shot, one of the men close by him gave what might have been the start of a shout for help or a bellowed order, but cut off. Someone else hit the floor. Rogers threw himself down and covered his head with his arms. Someone was attacking a SHIELD base, the perimeter had been breached and the intruder was picking people off. As Rogers hit the ground, the last man alive in his guard started to bellow a curse, but that too was cut short in his throat. Rogers felt a limp, warm arm fall across him as the man fell down. He was alone and blind under enemy fire.
"Help me." He thought, heart hammering, trying to keep his breathing shallow enough that he might look dead from a distance. "God, help me." He hadn't been shot yet. The first three shots had been a second apart each, if that. The gunman either wanted him alive or thought he was dead. Light footsteps maybe ten paces away. The gunman. He was about to find out which.
The dead arm was pulled off his back.
First cliffhanger of the fic.
A couple of questions: Who's the gunman?
My chapter names almost always have a pattern of some sort. What is it?