"Hey." Barton turned in the doorway of Grogan's cell. He pulled the door closed again, glancing back at Grogan.

"I have my orders, Captain. Don't interfere." Rogers shook his head and folded his arms, advancing on Barton. Barton met his eyes calmly.

"Not this. Never this."

"You're a goddam soldier. You know there comes a point where you just do as your told."

"What, would you shoot a kid dead because someone told you to? You're not a mercenary anymore."

"She's an enemy agent, Rogers. If she won't cooperate, we make her cooperate."

"She doesn't know any more. How does she have to prove it?"

"She's a medic who was in there the whole time. There's stuff she's holding back. There must be." Rogers stood between Barton and Grogan's door. This felt bizarrely real still. He could still believe that Barton would hurt her if he could.

"Rogers, get out of my way."

"You're an Avenger. You come under my command. Stand down."

"Fury's order overrides yours. Get out of my way." Barton raised his voice.

"No. I'm not letting you do this." Out of the corner of his eye, Rogers could see Michaels standing at the front of his cell, watching.

"Look granddad, maybe you didn't do it this way in 1940, but guess what, it's not 1940 any more. We do what we have to now." Rogers stood his ground. "Shift."

"Barton, I am never going to let you do this."

"Get out of my way." Barton shoved him. Rogers usually wouldn't have retaliated. Barton would have had to try very hard to hurt him, but this was for show, so he pushed Barton back. Barton shoved him harder, circling round, carrying his head lower and further forward, picking his weight up to dodge. Barton shoved him again. Rogers pushed him away.

"I don't want to fight you."

"Then get out of my way."

"No." Barton feinted right, then caught Rogers in the side of the chest, not very hard, Rogers caught Barton's retreating wrist and pulled him off balance, then pushed him away. Barton stumbled and stopped himself against the opposite wall. They were both breathing hard now. "You can't take me down, you know that. Walk away." Barton growled and rushed him again. Should he intentionally take a couple of hits? This really wouldn't be a fight otherwise. Rogers let Barton past his guard. Barton rammed his shoulder in to his stomach, but Rogers had braced in time. Barton was trying to tip him over, usually a good move against a taller opponent, but Rogers doubted Barton was strong enough. Barton bunched his legs, grabbed him by the shirt and pushed him round and backwards. Rogers lost his balance, Barton was stronger than he'd thought, but threw an arm around Barton's waist. They landed on top of each other. Rogers threw Barton off and jumped back up. Barton wasn't much slower.

"You can't beat me, you know you can't." Barton started circling again. Rogers got between him and Grogan's door. He felt slightly winded from the fall, but he was OK. This time, Barton's attack was quite different, high, fast punches flew at him, almost as fast as he could block or dodge them, he didn't want to counter attack, not yet. Barton broke pattern and landed a roundhouse kick on the side of Rogers's hip, knocking him off balance. He staggered back, Barton chased him. He let Barton's next blow hit him in the chest, but got a solid hook in behind it. Barton grunted in pain and staggered sideways. Had that been too hard? Rogers straightened up, he was breathing harder than he should have needed to, but he didn't try to steady his breathing. He needed to feign an attack. He let himself breathe faster, shallower. Barton looked back up at him and charged again. Hand to hand, boxing style was probably the way to do this. They engaged again, blocking and counter attacking almost without thinking about it, Rogers was concentrating mostly on breathing badly, letting himself gasp without breathing too deeply. Barton kept coming deep within his range so lots of blows hit, but none hit hard except the hooks. A door banged open over Barton's shoulder. Fury stormed in, two guards behind him. He'd taken his sweet time.

"Get the hell off each other!" He bellowed, stepping up beside them and pulling them apart. "Rogers, you have no reason to be down here, get out." Rogers just shook his head, as though he couldn't spare the breath to speak. Fury nodded to the guards. "If he won't go, remove him." The two guards didn't look happy about being set on him. He stood his ground. In a moment, he would have to go down. The guards laid hands on his shoulders to lead him away. He spun out of their grip, throwing one to the floor, but keeping hold of him so he didn't fall too fast. He let himself fall against the wall. He braced himself with one hand and just stayed there, then fell to his knees. He heard someone cry out behind him, a woman. Grogan. The man he'd thrown down got up and retreated. He stayed where he was, still gasping. This felt so strange.

"Fury-" Barton started.

"It's happened again." Fury said. "The three of you, get him to the infirmary, before he goes in to arrest." Rogers went limp and let the three carry him out. Through the first door, they set him down again.

"That went well." Barton said, slightly breathlessly, straightening up. Rogers sat up and nodded, still breathing hard. "You OK?" Rogers nodded again.

"Think so. You?"

"Fine."

"Surprisingly convincing." Romanoff's voice said from the far doorway. She was still soaking wet. "I was worried, since you're such a bad liar, that you just wouldn't look like you meant it."

"We considered not telling you it was a set up," Barton said, picking up his bow and quiver. "but we were worried about how that might end, if you wouldn't stand down or something, or you'd actually kill me."

"You looked like you were holding back," Romanoff said, "both of you, but especially him." She nodded at Rogers. "You're supposed to be the good guy and you are on the same side, so we might get away with that." She looked at him. He was still not breathing right, that seemed to worry her. "Rogers, can you get up?"

"Yeah."

"Hey, shut up." Barton pointed at one of the monitor screens. Fury was standing face to face with Michaels, through the glass. "He's going to bring him out, he's going to talk. We need to be out of the way."

Romanoff led the three of them to an observation room, a room for people to watch the legal interrogations.

"Are you not cold?" Barton asked her as they sat down. "You're soaked."

"Clint, I'm Russian. That's cold." Rogers smiled. He was breathing pretty normally now. Romanoff looked at him. "Shut up Rogers. Russia is way colder than New York."

"I wasn't going to say where I grew up. I got frozen solid." Romanoff smiled.

"Touché." The door in to the room opened. Michaels walked in, Fury right behind him. Michaels head was down, he looked exhausted. He sat down in one chair, Fury took the other.

"So," Fury started. He was completely calm. He wasn't trying to scare Michaels now. He'd won, but he wasn't gloating, he didn't need to. "you're ready to talk to us." Michaels nodded.

"But I want immunity." He looked up at Fury. "I want immunity from the government and for nobody to know I talked. I don't know how big this thing is, I suspect my life will be in danger if I'm known to have talked." Fury nodded.

"Tell me what I want to know, we can protect you, hide you, and your family if you need that." Michaels nodded.

"OK."

"Who was running the show?"

"Ryman. I don't know if that's really his name, but the buck stopped with him, always, whether it was arguments between the guards, procedures… anything."

"Who hired Ryman?"

"I don't know. I don't know if he was hired or if he was acting alone."

"What was your aim?"

"So far as I know, Ryman was telling the truth. We were looking for a way to disable a super-soldier." Fury sat back and picked up his radio.

"Hawkeye." Barton jumped up and got as far away from the mirror as he could.

"Receiving."

"How's Rogers doing?" Barton glanced back at him.

"We got him to the medics before it got too bad. He's recovering."

"Tell them to give him atenolol." Michaels put in. "That'll stop the cardiac symptoms."

"Barton, pass that on with a warning that it does not come from a man we trust. When you can, send Rogers and a medic down here."

"Copy." Rogers got up. Barton and Romanoff shook their heads at him.

"You're meant to be in the infirmary. Go and get a doctor and brief them on the way down, don't hurry." Romanoff said. "That should get the time about right."

By the time Rogers got back, with Doctor O'Malley, he felt pretty normal again. Doctor O'Malley knew it had all been a set up, and that Michaels had been involved with whatever they'd doing to him. Fury nodded to the spare chair.

"You sit." O'Malley said. Rogers hesitated. "I'll make it an order if you don't." He sat down. Michaels looked up at him. He looked beaten, sad. He opened his mouth as though to say something, then changed his mind and looked back at Fury.

"Tell this Doctor how you intended to disable the Captain."

"We spent the first few days examining him, you. Ultrasound, X-ray, every kind of blood assay under the sun, MRI… We had some SHIELD records, I don't know how they were obtained, but not a lot. We talked about a lot of different ways, eventually we went for the autonomic nervous system." Doctor O'Malley frowned.

"Did you know that his autonomic nervous system is completely bizarre?" She asked. Michaels nodded. "So had it occurred to you that you were messing with a system you didn't understand?"

"We had some idea. Ryman didn't really seem to care that we might kill him." It was surprisingly hard not to glance left at Romanoff and Barton through the mirror.

"So what did you do?" Fury asked.

"Modified Methamphetamines, made to favour the adrenergic receptors and not cross the blood-brain barrier so much."

"That might actually work." O'Malley said. Everyone looked at her. "Part of the reason he's so physically capable is how far up his CVRS output can go from resting, the amphetamines push his heart rate up from-" She seemed to notice that neither Fury nor Rogers had the faintest idea what she was on about. She sighed. "It nearly killed him, you know that?" She said to Michaels. He looked down. "When he first came in, I though he must be bleeding out in to his pleural space or mediastinum, that's how bad he looked. Pale as a ghost, barely conscious, gasping for breath. Were you intentionally starving him?" Michaels hesitated.

"We knew if he realised what was going on, he'd be very difficult to control. We thought that if he was hypoglycaemic, he'd be weaker."

"And of course the amphetamines made that worse." Michaels nodded.

"So you think this is true." Fury asked O'Malley. She nodded.

"It explains what we couldn't explain before, but they usually have a half life of hours, not days."

"If given orally." Michaels said. "We stuck a load of it in the biggest fat deposits we could find, that dose would have been lethal IV, but we thought the slow release would keep him alive."

"Is there a way you can test this?" Fury asked.

"Now we know what we're testing for, yes, easily."

"Can it be reversed?"

"Yes." Both doctors said at once. Rogers sighed with relief. He'd be alright. They could fix this. Thank God they could fix this. Michaels looked up at him, opened his mouth again, then closed it. He looked ashamed.

"Won't it just wear off in the end?" O'Malley asked.

"Yes," Michaels said. "But I don't know how long that would take. You'd speed it up if you aspirated it. Atenolol will control the effects in the short term too." Fury breathed in slowly.

"OK, you," He looked at O'Malley. "Take Rogers and do whatever tests you need to to confirm this, and tell the guard to get me a bucket of water." Rogers got up. Michaels looked worried. "We're going to make it look like you didn't give anything up willingly." Fury said. "I'm only going to throw it over your head." Michaels nodded.

"Thank you." Rogers said as he passed him. He looked up at Rogers.

"For what?"

"For talking, for letting me know I'm not going to die or end up invalid." Michaels looked away.

"I just…" He tailed off and shook his head.