This chapter fought me at every turn, and it didn't help at all that recent real-world events have been so distracting, but here it is! Enjoy!
Loki's sensitive Jotun eyes were already watering in the sharp glare of all the artificial light the mortals loved, so he put up a glamour to maintain the outward appearance but changed back to Aesir underneath the moment he finished his frjosleikr trick. Merciful relief.
"What planet—uh, artificial planetoid—are you from?" asked a reporter. His and everyone else's eyes mostly stayed on Loki, but they didn't seem especially frightened. Or at least they were less frightened than they were curious. It was strange. Even though he hadn't transformed during the banquet on Asgard, the looks he got there had carried much more weight, whether they were friendly or hostile, but all aliens must seem roughly equal to mortals who had never seen one before.
"We are from Asgard," said Thor.
"Perhaps you already know of it from those mostly inaccurate legends some of your cultures have about us," Loki added.
"You mean the Asgard of Norse mythology?"
"Yes, that one," said Thor happily. "I am Thor Odinson, Crown Prince and God of Thunder, this is my brother Loki Odinson, second prince and God of Mischief, and this is Brunnhilde Sigursdottir, a Valkyrie who fought alongside our father to defend Earth from invasion a thousand years ago." Halfway through the sentence, all their cameras began flashing even more madly than before, and the crowd got louder. The overall tenor still sounded rather skeptical, which would be fun.
"That's an extraordinary claim," said another reporter. "Do you have stronger evidence to prove it than those outfits and that one of you can change colors and freeze water?"
"Of course! said Thor. "Why do you think Stark found us such a large place to introduce ourselves?" On cue, more of that industrial-sounding music blared out, and Thor lifted Mjolnir off his belt, grinning.
X
Steve met up with Romanoff again without seeing any sign of the would-be assassin. They had to move around some stragglers still making their way into the stadium as they reached the outer corridor hung with enormous banners of baseball players.
"There!" Romanoff cried, pointing. Amid all the people coming in, only one man was leaving. He'd ditched the SWAT jacket and cap in favor of some Yankees merchandise and he carried a black backpack, but otherwise he matched Colonel Rhodes's description. He must've heard Romanoff's yell, because he booked it through the doors. They broke into a run.
"Stay on him!" said Romanoff once they were outside. "I'll catch up." She peeled off to the right and Steve ran on at full speed. The assassin was headed towards the southeast corner of the stadium, but Steve wasn't closing much of the distance between them. At least he wasn't barefoot like the last time he'd chased a man down in New York. His quarry reached the intersection beneath the train station and dashed across it, barely missing one of the oncoming cars. A large truck drove through and obscured Steve's view for a second. When it passed, the assassin was vaulting over the red railing around stairs leading under the street.
"He's taking the subway!" said Steve.
"The earpiece probably won't get a signal down there, but I can follow the route from the street until he surfaces," said Romanoff.
Instead of waiting for the lights to change at the intersection, Steve leapt up and bounded across the roofs of passing vehicles, then hurdled the railing and dropped onto the steps leading down to the subway station.
X
It was a good thing Natasha had parked the motorcycle on the south side of the stadium. She was able to reach it in under a minute. "Colonel Rhodes, can you tell me about the train leaving the subway station next to the stadium?" she said, firing it up.
"Yeah, hold up a second," he said. "It's the B line train, and it's headed west under the Harlem River. Next stop is under the north end of Frederick Douglass Boulevard, then it swings south and stays under St. Nicholas Place and St. Nicholas Avenue for the next two."
She pulled out of the street parking spot and drove west. "Any sign of accomplices?"
"Haven't seen anything yet. I'm looking at the rifle he left now. It's a VSS Vintorez."
"A Spetsnaz rifle?" said Natasha.
"Yeah, looks like a Russian hit job."
"Vanko wasn't," she pointed out as she turned south and headed for the bridge. "If the Kremlin wanted Tony Stark dead, they wouldn't be sloppy enough to leave that kind of weapon behind. More likely this is someone who doesn't mind us thinking it was a Russian hit job." Someone like Hydra, maybe. They had to be out for blood after what happened to Pierce. Stark was a good target for several reasons, especially the closer he got to SHIELD, and tonight was the last chance they might get to interfere with the public narrative of First Contact. If Stark hadn't insisted on throwing this whole thing together in the space of a single afternoon, they would've had more time to plan an effective hit and sabotage.
X
Thor took flight to the opening bars of "Immigrant Song" and an explosion of cheers, leaving the press pool sitting dumbfounded on the stage, but Tony couldn't enjoy what his plans had wrought. Happy was still on the way with the Suitcase Armor and Rhodey was flying over the stadium looking for more assassins. He felt extremely exposed.
Next to him, Loki muttered something to Brunnhilde, who smirked, and the two of them hopped off the stage and ran out on the field in different directions. Loki sprang up onto the pyramid of junker cars, lifted up the nose of the topmost car like the whole thing was made of styrofoam, slipped under it, and then freaking threw all three thousand pounds of it in the direction of his airborne brother, who was at least fifty yards away.
Thor intercepted it before it could begin to fall and smacked it with his hammer, sending it hurtling towards where Brunnhilde stood ready. The crowd gasped and yelled, possibly expecting her to be crushed by it. However, the next thing Tony knew, she was crouched in a different spot, a blue sword held out to the side, and the car was lying in two neat halves behind her. He looked up at the big screen, where the guys in the press box were making good use of the stadium's filming capabilities by showing a slow-motion replay. In one movement, Brunnhilde had done a vertical jump at least four times her height, met the car in midair, and sliced the entire thing in half lengthwise.
Whoever had caught that on camera was definitely getting a big tip. The crowd was cheering, most of them on their feet. Tony stepped up to the podium. "That was a nice little sample for you. What else do you want to see before we get back to the Q and A?"
X
Like much of New York, the subway was similar to what Steve was used to but with uncanny differences, from the colors to the angles to the smells. He didn't have time to take any of that in, though. The train was leaving the station. He jumped the turnstile before anyone could protest.
There was no sign of the assassin among the people on the platform; he must have boarded that train. Steve didn't let that deter him and simply jumped down off the platform and chased it down the tracks. A few people shouted in alarm and a security officer yelled after him. Steve ignored them, legs pumping. The train was picking up speed in the dark tunnel, but Steve was closing in. Just when it seemed about to outstrip him, he threw himself forward and managed to grab onto the steel bar that ran across the rear door.
It wasn't really a caboose and there wasn't much of a ledge to stand on, so he perched there awkwardly, peering through the window. There was no sign of his target in the rear car. None of the passengers were looking Steve's way. He took advantage of that and plied his strength against the handle. It gave with a nasty screech, and he slipped inside.
X
He'd lost War Machine by going underground. That had been the most dangerous obstacle to his escape, but he still had a long way to go to make his rendez-vous. He'd caught the subway train as the doors were closing, so it was unlikely his pursuers had managed to follow him, but they could still be checking each stop on this line, not to mention the surveillance footage. He located the cameras in his car of the train and moved casually to a blindspot, where he dispensed with the Yankees jacket and cap he'd snatched off an unattended display, swapping them out for a leather jacket and a cap with a college logo on it from his bag.
He slipped the dagger the Asgardian woman had thrown at him into his jacket pocket. He'd never seen anything like it. It had cut right through the outer layer of metal on his arm before getting caught between two of the plates. It was heavier than any blade he'd used despite its size and had been made for smaller hands than his, but it was a thing of beauty. He was going to have to turn it over to his handlers. He would never disobey them, but the prospect still rankled a bit.
Face hidden behind the sunglasses and a book he wasn't really reading, he watched from the front car of the train. Like the baseball field, the train felt familiar in a way he couldn't explain. It was easy—too easy—to imagine the interior as olive green instead of silver, with cartoon advertisements plastered along it, feeling the texture of orange woven wicker seats, swinging his legs because his feet couldn't reach the floor yet. There was a skinny blond kid sitting next to him in his mental image. They would get papers off grown-up passengers who were done with theirs so they could read the new Buck Rogers strips, and the blond kid would get so excited he'd start wheezing.
The train was slowing down as it approached the next stop, and the soldier shook his head to clear it. None of that was real. He needed to get debriefed, and soon. He glanced over at the rear window of the train car. About halfway down the next one, a big blond guy was making his way forward, looking carefully at each passenger. It was the guy who'd chased him at the stadium with the redhead. This tail was going to be harder to shake than he'd thought.
X
Just as the train was slowing down to make its next stop, Steve spotted the assassin. His face was hidden behind a book and sunglasses and the Yankees apparel was gone, but he had the same backpack and the brown hair down to his collar. He was also the only one on the train wearing gloves, and a thin strip of silver peeked out between the top of the left one and the bottom of his jacket sleeve.
The second the doors opened, the assassin bolted out of the train. Steve ran after him, but this station was busier and there were more civilians in the way. He saw him going up the stairs at the exit and made it there a few seconds later. The sidewalk above was just as busy. Steve yelled a series of "sorrys" and "pardon mes" as he ran. He tapped his earpiece. "Romanoff, I'm in pursuit headed south on Frederick Douglass Boulevard! He's in a leather jacket and an NYU cap now."
"Way ahead of you."
There was a screech of wheels and a motorcycle swerved abruptly off the road by the sidewalk and directly into the assassin's path. He didn't react in time and slammed right into it, knocking it over and sending himself and Romanoff sprawling. The sunglasses went clattering across the pavement.
X
If Thor had done this sort of a thing prior to his banishment, it would have gone straight to his head, but after a month of slowly re-earning a measure of trust and camaraderie from his mortal friends, it was a pleasant change of pace to entertain an entire crowd of humans. Someone in the crowd would get an idea for a feat of strength they wanted to see, and if it was a popular one, it would become a chant that they could hear on the field.
The first thing they requested was for one of the Asgardians to arm-wrestle War Machine. Brunnhilde did that and won easily, but that only made the humans more creative in their request, for next they wanted to see how much weight they could lift. Loki and Brunnhilde held two of the metal beams between them and Thor stacked the five remaining cars on top. He would've looked for something else to add to the pile, but the tires of the bottom car burst from the strain at that point, and it seemed unwise to continue that particular demonstration.
Thor and Loki encountered a slight setback when they tried to oblige the crowd by crushing one of the vehicles between them, in that their hands initially went right through the metal when they applied enough pressure. The metal beams proved useful again, for they could use them as buffers between their hands and the vehicle itself. They compressed the machine into a fifth of its original length within seconds, and the crowd cheered.
"Let's get some audience participation!" said Stark. "Who wants to play tug-of-war with the Valkyrie? Make sure you grab a pair of gloves out of the box so the chain doesn't pinch your hands."
X
The soldier went into a roll to break his fall after slamming into the motorcycle, and he wasn't back upright again before the redhead was on him, trying to get her legs locked around his throat. He moved his left arm in the way, but he recognized that maneuver. Acting on his hunch, he reached around and jabbed at a spot on her stomach a few centimeters above her left hip. She yelled and convulsed and the pressure vanished from around his neck. He threw her off of him. The motorcycle she'd cut him off with was within reach and still running. He yanked it upright and got on.
"Bucky?"
He looked around. It was the big blond guy who'd chased him off the subway. He was only a few meters away, but he was just standing there, staring at him like he recognized him. The soldier squeezed the accelerator and shot away down the street. Who the hell was Bucky?
X
The blinding pain only lasted a moment, but it was long enough for the assassin to get away, and on Natasha's bike too. She might be okay with that, though. He'd known exactly where her bullet wound was. Nobody but Clint, the SHIELD medic who'd patched her up, and Fury knew about that bullet wound—except for the one who gave it to her. It looked like Brunnhilde had done for Stark what Natasha had failed to do for that Iranian physicist. Dammit, she'd fought a battle on an alien planet; a human assassin shouldn't still be able to rattle her this much.
From between a pair of alarmed pedestrians, Rogers appeared next to her and pulled her to her feet. Then he took off running even faster than before after the motorcycle. She tapped her earpiece, not attempting to follow. "Rogers, wait!"
"Can't do that, Agent Romanoff."
"Look, I know you're Captain America, but this guy is one of the most dangerous assassins in the world. We're lucky we aren't his targets."
"He's Bucky."
"What?"
"Thor was right. I'm not gonna let Hydra get him back."
Natasha's stomach dropped. Bucky. Sergeant Barnes was the Winter Soldier. "Боже мой."
Yep, I worked in "Immigrant Song," and Tony's playlist isn't finished yet.
Hidden Easter egg: three of the guys playing tug-of-war with Brunnhilde were definitely Frank, Matt, and Foggy. The timeline checks out for the Castle family to have been there if Frank was on leave (Lisa and Frankie would've been about the same age as Clint's kids in this fic, I think), and the budding Avocados at Law were in year 2 of law school just a couple miles away from the stadium.
So now my list of things to check out if I ever go to NYC includes the vintage subway cars they roll out in the holiday season. Videos of those cars are how I was able to give color and texture to Bucky's childhood memory. New headcanon: Steve and Bucky's schoolmates definitely referred to them collectively as Buck Rogers once those comics started appearing in newspapers in '29. Initially I only wrote the chase from Steve's PoV, but Bucky's turned out to be more interesting by a mile, with his poor scrambled head.
I think the main problem I was having with this chapter was pacing. Chase sequences don't take very much time, but the stuff at the stadium is supposed to go on for hours. They don't line up at all and I think I obsessed over that more than I needed to. I also wanted to get the entire press conference and chase sequence finished in this chapter, but then I realized that I didn't want to gloss over the moment when Nat figured out both key facts about who she and Steve are chasing. I already have part of the next chapter done, and it does feel more like an opening scene than a middle one as well. I think that's going to help.