AN: Alright! In this chapter we get to learn quite a bit about Mo and who she was while she was in the army. Just a warning for language; Mo's talking the way army guys talk, so there'll be a bit of swearing! If you're interested in looking up any of the videos for references for songs or dances, look up the song "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and then look up the video Evolution of Dance if you want to see just what Mo and Harper are doing. It's a good laugh! But I really encourage you to watch the videos to get a clear idea!
Also, someone else makes a little cameo here, and we learn what happened when Mo was in the accident :)
Steve was sitting on the couch, staring at the TV which was now showing Mo's desktop. Sam sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the computer screen and was controlling it. Bucky came back into the room and seated himself in the armchair as Sam tried to control his fits of giggling.
"You guys are gonna love this," he told them. He watched Sam navigate through the folder titled AFGHANISTAN. He clicked through the videos, selecting one titled STRAY_SINGING. A window popped up and Sam clicked to make it full screen and it took a second to load, but when it did, it was a shaky video, presumably taken on a cell phone. There was the sound of a man's laughter as he walked through a crude little room, and he spoke:
"Stray doesn't think she sings," he said, "but she never shuts up. So we decided to film her." There were a couple of giggles, and when he opened one door, there was Mo, and her back was to the camera.
She was thinner, Steve noticed, wearing the standard camo pants and a khaki shirt. Her arms and shoulders were muscular, her hair slicked back into a neat bun. She was unaware that she was being filmed and, sure enough, she was singing and dancing a little, bouncing to a nonexistent beat.
"Sam?" Mo's voice came from the kitchen. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing, baby," Sam called, and Mo's head poked out of the kitchen.
"Oh my god, you're not—"
"I wanted to show them—"
"You can't show Captain America these videos!" she cried, and her face was bright red, flushed and panicked.
"Oh, come on, they're funny," Sam said. "Anyway, too late now."
The video was already playing.
"Sam Wilson, I am going to kill you!"
"No, you wont. Now shut up, it's getting good."
Mo groaned and disappeared. Steve was thoroughly intrigued now and fixated on the video. Mo sang under her breath, then spun around when one of the men giggled too loudly. She glared and gave them the middle finger, and then the video cut out and switched to another, having been awkwardly spliced together, and Steve was watching another clip.
Again, it was a phone camera, and they were all sitting together, presumably waiting for something. Mo was sitting to the right of the camera, bopping and singing under her breath until her eyes fell on the camera and she gave the middle finger again—
A new clip, Mo walking beside another man, the camera just behind her, but she was walking rhythmically and slid dramatically to one side, clearly dancing, earning a laugh from the man beside her, catching the camera, and flipping it off again—
Another clip, Mo in the shower, covered by steam, but it was her voice, and she was singing some made-up song about showering—
A new clip, and this time the person holding the cellphone camera was seated in a room, and they were watching a movie. They seemed to be waiting for something, because Steve could hear giggling under their breath, and the camera was focusing on one unsuspecting man who seemed very into the movie. The movie's music swelled and suddenly the door burst open, and there was Mo, leaning in, arms stretched wide, belting out:
"And IIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-IIIIIIIII will always love yooooOOOOuuuUUUuuu!"
The man started violently, and there was an uproar of laughter as he shouted "GODDAMMIT FOX!" and leapt to his feet, tackling her, and the video cut out, showing more and more videos of Mo singing and/or dancing. She seemed so happy, and Steve couldn't recall having ever heard her sing around the house.
"I hate you all," Mo called from the kitchen, and it ended. Sam, grinning widely, clicked on another video, this one titled: STRAY&HARPER_CUPCAKE_BET.
In this video, they appeared to be celebrating a birthday. There were those foil-wrapped chocolate cakes with cream in the center, and the man controlling the camera was scanning everyone. There was laughter and shouting, and then a voice to the side:
"What do you wanna bet I can fit this whole cupcake in my mouth?"
The camera panned around and there was Mo. She was holding one of them in her hand, grinning at the man beside her.
"Fifty pushups and you're on," he said, and they shook, and then Mo opened her mouth wide and stuffed the little cake in.
"Anyone wanna help me with the hot chocolate?" Mo called from the kitchen. Sam stood and ran in, came back, passed around the hot chocolate, then ran back into the kitchen and carried Mo out, tossing her down onto the couch.
The video cut to a new clip, and it was the man she had challenged doing pushups, and everyone chanting:
"Five—six—seven—"
And then there was Mo again, and she climbed onto the man's back and the soldiers whooped, but the man kept doing the pushups.
"That was Harper," Mo said softly, seated beside Steve. "Remember, I told you about him?"
Steve nodded, completely fascinated by the videos. A glance at Bucky revealed he was probably feeling the same way; his eyes were glued to the screen. Seeing Mo like this, in her army uniform, in Afghanistan, a smile always in place—it was different, and spoke volumes to the effect her accident had had on her.
"This is so embarrassing," Mo mumbled, and Steve smiled at her.
"More," Steve said, and she glared at him.
"Ooh, this is a good one," Sam said, clicking the video titled HARPER_PUNKS_STRAY.
It was a short video. Sgt. Harper was sitting on a bed, videoing himself.
"Watch this," he said, "I told her paybacks are a bitch. STRAY! STRAY COME HERE!"
Mo came flying around the corner and ran into cellophane, which had been strung across the doorway. They'd done the entire door, and she smacked into it and bounced off, and Harper threw his head back laughing hysterically.
"Fuck you, Harper," Mo shouted from the other side.
"Why do they call you Stray?" Steve asked.
"Oh, it was an old joke," she explained. "I didn't have a family or anything, I was a foster kid. So when I met these guys and got close with them, they tried to make me go away at first, being that I was a girl. They said I was like a stray cat—feed it once and it keeps coming back. The name stuck."
It was a little mean, Steve thought, but she hadn't sounded upset.
The next video Sam clicked was called ME&HARPER_NOSCRUBS.
It was a video of Mo and Harper seated in front of a computer camera. Harper spoke: "It's been a little slow around here," he said, "so Stray and I have been working on this for a while. Hope you enjoy. See you soon."
"It was a video for his mom," Mo explained.
Harper hit a button and music started playing, and Mo in the video started laughing, and Steve was struck by how happy she seemed. Her face was unscarred, flawless, her skin smooth and darker brown than it was today. She sobered up just in time for the singing, and she and Harper lip-sang dramatically.
"No, I don't want your number," Mo sang at Harper.
"No, I don't wanna give you mine," Harper went on, and they were dancing in their chairs, perfectly in-sync.
"No, I don't want no scrubs,
A scrub is a guy who can't get no love from me—"
Sam changed the video after a few minutes, gasping dramatically. "This," he said. "This is it. This is the video."
It was titled EVOLOFDANCE_STRAYVSHARPER.
It opened, and it was a man controlling another cellphone camera.
"These two fuckin' idiots," the man said, focusing on Mo and Harper, who were standing, surrounded by a small crowd of soldiers. "They been practicing this shit for weeks. Fuckin' on and on and on."
"Fuck off, Brown," Mo said, giving the cameraman her middle finger.
"You're just jealous cuz your fat ass can't dance," Harper said.
"Hey, fuck you,"said Brown.
Mo looked at Harper, and they were bouncing up and down, swinging their arms, warming up. Mo was smiling. "Ready?" she asked, and Harper nodded.
"Hey, everyone," Harper shouted. "Shut up, alright?"
"Fuck you!" someone shouted.
It was dark out. Beside Steve, Mo hid her face with a groan. "I can't believe you're doing this to me, Sam."
"This is badass, girl," Sam said, then looked at Steve and Bucky. "You guys ain't gonna believe this is Mo."
On screen, Mo was giggling and Harper elbowed her. She sobered up. The cameraman spoke:
"This is for you, baby," he said, "I now you're wondering what we do when we aren't on mission. It's stupid shit like this."
Music started playing, and it was Elvis's Hound Dog. There were cheers as Mo and Harper started dancing to the song for only a few seconds before it switched and they were doing another style, dipping down, then it switched again, and it was disco music, another switch, and Mo had grabbed her belt, and they were so in-sync before the song changed and they were doing karate at each other.
Steve started laughing and Mo shrank into the cushions.
Greased Lightning came on and Sam started laughing as well. And when the Michael Jackson tracks started playing, the crowd lost it, cheering them on as they danced to Thriller.
It went on for a few minutes, Steve watching as Harper did the worm in the dirt and Mo danced like an Egyptian, earning a few catcalls as she shimmied her hips. Sam was in tears as they did the chicken dance. They were in the middle of dancing like they were riding a horse when the music stopped. The two faltered and there were a few scattered shouts, booing, when the camera moved to the side and focused on someone else, someone Steve recognized immediately—the swagger alone was enough to give him away.
"Oh my god," gasped the cameraman. "Oh my god, it's—"
"So," Tony said, stepping through the circle surrounding Mo and Harper. The soldiers parted for him quickly. "This is what the American people's tax dollars are being spent on?" It was dead silent. Mo and Harper stood frozen.
"It's Tony Stark," said Brown. "Oh, fuck, it's TONY STARK."
It was Tony Stark. Steve was stunned into silence. He looked at Mo as Tony spoke on the screen.
"You—you know him?"
"No," she said. "I mean, I met him briefly, but—" she cleared her throat. "Anyway, no, I don't know him."
"Oh, by all means," Tony said on screen. "Carry on. Music!"
He clapped twice and stepped back and the music started playing again. Tony motioned for them to continue, and after a brief second, they did, and then the laughter and shouting returned, and Steve was frustrated when the guy kept returning to Tony's face instead of filming Mo, who was doing the hammer dance with Harper, earning cheers.
He didn't return the camera completely to the pair again until Tony's eyes flew wide and he started laughing, clapping his hands.
"I like big butts and I cannot lie—"
The soldiers went crazy, whooping and whistling and hollering. Harper had stepped back and bowed for Mo, who had turned around and was dancing, and Harper dropped to his knees, his hands framing Mo's butt before he leapt to his feet and danced right alongside her. When the Cotton Eye Joe song came on, everyone in the video was clapping, and Steve laughed, watching the two bounce back and forth.
When the music finally ended, Mo and Harper dropped to the ground, laughing, breathless, and the sound of the soldier's laughter flooded the video with a few whoops and whistles. The video bounced around as Brown pushed through the crowd to where Tony was shaking hands with Mo and Harper, now standing.
"—really something," Tony was saying around a smile. "Also, I've recorded that and it's going on YouTube."
And then he walked away. Mo's looked mortified as the video ended.
"The video is actually on YouTube," Mo said, and now she was smiling. Steve looked at her, noting the changes; she had looked so much happier in the videos, and Steve understood. All the men in the videos—Brown, Harper, their friends—they were all dead. Her eyes were glossy and she sniffed.
There were many more videos left. One of them, titled, STRAYvsHARPER_DanceThruTheAges, featured them dancing together for the same group of soldiers, and Steve was impressed when they hit the 40s era.
"Not bad," Bucky said, and it was the first sound he'd made through the videos. A couple of them were pretty boring, just Mo or someone else filming bits of their missions, Mo giggling and talking to camels, doubling over with laughter when one bit Harper and he threatened to shoot it.
Finally, Sam clicked on another video, simply titled HOME. Mo was very quiet and they exchanged a glance. Mo nodded, and he clicked it.
It was fuzzy at first, and showed Mo sitting next to Harper in two wooden chairs in the dirt, each of them with a guitar in their lap. The atmosphere was different in this video, quieter, more serious. The man holding the video focused on Harper, and he looked into the camera and spoke.
"Hi, baby," he said, "I—we're going on that mission tomorrow, and I know you're worried, but we're gonna be fine." Mo looked different, Steve noticed, her eyes downcast, her mouth downturned, serious. "Anyways, Stray and I have been rehearsing this song, and—well, you're always saying you miss me playing for you, so I figured we'd play it together. This one's for you, baby. And for Sahara. I can't wait to meet her."
She didn't need to explain it to Steve, but she did anyway, her voice raspy: "The song is for Harper's wife. He had a little girl. She was two months old, he hadn't met her yet."
Steve's heart broke a little, knowing that Harper had never gotten that opportunity.
"Ready?" Harper asked, and Mo bobbed her head. "Two, three, four—"
Mo started strumming her guitar while Harper started whistling and strumming his. A couple of soldiers stopped to watch. Mo started singing, and although he'd heard her playful singing in the other videos, her voice caught him completely off guard.
"I didn't know you could sing," Steve murmured, and she shrugged. "Or play."
"You never asked," she replied. She didn't say it coldly, but she was right. He didn't know much about her.
"Alabama, Arkansas,
I do love my ma and pa,
Not the way that I do love you."
She turned her green eyes to Harper in the video, and then he started singing, smiling at her:
"Well holy moly, me oh my,
You're the apple of my eye,
Girl I've never loved one like you."
And it was obvious that they loved each other. Not in a romantic way; it reminded him of his relationship with Bucky. Anyone who looked at them could see the connection. Mo's voice took over the next verse, and they alternated that way:
"Man oh man, you're my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness,
There ain't nothing that I need.
"Well hot and heavy, pumpkin pie,
Chocolate candy, Jesus Christ,
Ain't nothing please me more than you."
The next verse was about home, and Steve felt his throat tighten up a little. Even the soldiers in the video—and more had gathered—were silent. It was eerie, it was sad, and Steve knew what it was like to be so far away from home. It was obvious; he could hear the longing in their voices. They just wanted to come home.
They were good together, singing back and forth, looking at each other lovingly, like they knew, they knew that whatever else happened, they would be there for each other. Steve chanced a glance at Bucky, whose eyes were trained on the screen, eyebrows low over his eyes. Mo rubbed her eyes.
The song was closing. The guitar strumming slowed down and then stopped and Mo sang into the eerie stillness:
"Home, let me come home,
Home is wherever I'm with you."
And then Harper, staring into the camera, clearly singing to his wife and baby:
"Our home, I'm coming home,
Home is wherever I'm with you…"
It ended. Mo, in the video, smiled softly. There was quiet, scattered applause, but there was mostly silence. The video ended.
"That was the last video," Mo murmured beside Steve. "Before we—before."
No one said anything. Sam looked at her and she just gave him a little nod, and Steve knew that she was reassuring him that she was okay.
The next video started playing automatically, and it was GoPro footage taken from Mo's perspective. Steve was still stuck on Tony. It seemed strange—what were the odds of him showing up in these videos? Why had he been there? He tried to let it go, but he was here in this video as well.
"Alright," Mo was saying as she walked. Steve could see Harper in the edge of the video, walking beside her. "Here goes nothing."
He caught sight of Tony, standing beside his friend Rhodes near the Humvees as Mo climbed into the one in the lead. Before long they were driving, and the video shorted and cut, jumping forward. Mo was communicating with someone on the radio.
"The Funvee," she said. "That's what he's calling it?"
"Sounds like more fun," Harper's voice pointed out. Mo laughed.
"We're—"
That was it. Mo had started speaking, and then the video seemed to short. There were loud sounds, the sound of an explosion, and he couldn't make sense of what he was seeing until things stilled. He could hear gunfire. His heart pounded.
"MEDIC! MEDIC!"
Someone was screaming. The camera had gone still, still attached to Mo. More gunfire.
"MEDIC!"
"Sam," Mo breathed, but they were all transfixed.
In the video, Mo moaned. Gunfire, people shouting for the medic, someone shouting, "Stark! Get to Stark!"
Mo made an odd noise in the video, then the camera jostled and Steve saw her hand, smudged with blood.
"Harper," she mumbled, and then started screaming "Oh, my god—HARPER! HARPER! We need a medic! We need—"
An explosion rattled the Humvee and she grunted, then started calling for help, screaming that she was stuck.
"Sam!" Mo shouted, and everyone jumped and Sam slammed the laptop shut, effectively cutting off the video.
"I'm sorry," Sam said. "Mo, I'm so—"
But Mo wasn't looking at him. She was looking at Bucky, who was staring at the blank screen. Sam swore as Mo got up as best she could on one leg and made her way over to Bucky in the armchair, dropping to her knee in front of him. She placed her hands on his knees, speaking soothing words to him, drawing him out.
Steve was rattled; that video had been the video where she'd lost all her friends, and Tony Stark had been there.
AN: I'm cranking these chapters out for you guys, so I appreciate reviews! User katiesgotagun suggested Mo teaching Bucky some dancing, and I liked the idea, so I adjusted some things. Next chapter is them dancing, and then we'll get to their run together.
If I get more reviews, I'll post the dancing chapter tonight!
ALSO: If there's anything you want to see, for example the dancing scene, PLEASE LEAVE IDEAS. I write to please you guys, so if theres something you want to read, I want to write it! Just leave requests in a review!