I'm sorry for the wait and that this chapter much shorter than last one. I've found that writing for America is harder than the others. Since it's so short, I've decided to write a one-shot and post it separately(It will have nothing to do with the Avengers au) it will probably be up between tomorrow and Wednesday.
Alfred F. Jones was boxing. Every other Wednesday he took his bag, and walked to the gym ten minutes from apartment.
Punching bags usually helped him forget his time in war. How he flew his plane into the freezing water because there was no time for any other solution. Defeating Hydra's leader Ivan Braginski, or as he called himself, Red Skull. Watching his best friend, Miguel, fall to his death. The words of his girlfriend, Alice, comforting him:
"You'll never be alone."
How when he woke up, he thought that he made it. Only to discover he'd waken after seventy years on ice.
BAM!
The punching bag flew across the room after the punches became too strong. Panting, Alfred picked another bag from the pile next to him and began again.
"Trouble sleeping, Alfred?"
"I've slept for seventy years, sir. I think I'm rested enough." Alfred didn't say that the real reason he couldn't sleep was because his nightmares wouldn't let him.
"Then you should be out celebrating, seeing the world. In a sensible manner of course." That was all Alfred needed. To see a world that had changed without him; not always in a good way.
"When I went under, the world was still at war. I wake up and they say we won, they never said what we lost along the way." Alfred hated seeing his beloved country, one that used to be such a free, noble place, as it is now: corrupt and restricting.
"We have indeed made mistakes, some quite recently."
"So you have a mission for me, sir"
"Ja" of course. Beilschimdt wouldn't seek him out in the middle of the night for a check in. He had people for that.
"Trying to get me to accept my reality and face the world?" Alfred asked sarcastically. Ludwig Beilschimdt had tried several times to assimilate Alfred to modern society. All attempts failed.
"Trying to save it" Beilschimdt said handing him an open file.
"Hydra's secret weapon" Alfred noted, skimming the first page.
"Gilbert pulled it out of the ocean while we were looking for you. He thought, as we do, that it would lead to the discovery of a clean, sustainable energy. Something this world needs."
"Who took it?"
"He goes by Matthias. You could say that he is not from here. There is a lot that we will have to go over, if you're in. the world has gotten stranger than you think." That was impossible; Alfred had seen all the strange things this world had to offer.
"By now I doubt anything will surprise me." Alfred said, pacing his things in his gym bag.
"I bet you ten dollars that you are wrong. There is a briefing packet waiting for you in your apartment. Is there anything you can tell us about the tesseract now?" Beilschimdt asked.
"You should have just left it in the ocean."