A/N: I've got quite a few arcs for this story, so the pacing is going to be sped-up a little as I don't want to waste time making a bunch of unnecessary chapters. We're gonna be diving into the action very soon.

SAM

Sometimes he could still hear their voices. Their yells and cries of pain as they took and returned fire. It was Sam Wilson's second tour in Afghanistan when the local Taliban and several Afghan terrorists had circled his entire unit, trapping them in the middle of a canyon. At one point in the midst of a shootout, he froze, unable to think, to move, to process what was going around him. So much so that he hadn't noticed a Taliban mercenary attempting to sneak behind him with a drawn gun. It wasn't until his closest friend, Riley, had jumped him, taking several bullets meant for Sam that he had noticed. Riley took three shots to the back of his neck, another two to his spine, Sam merely took one to his left leg as he had fallen into a ditch, Riley's body fell on top of him as he watched his partner bleed to his death. Not more than a minute later, Sam found himself having to play dead under his best friend's dead body until the local Taliban and Afghan mercenaries had left. Sam was the only surviving member of his unit and due to his injured leg, he had to army crawl for over a mile until recovery forces found him unconscious and sought him to medical treatment. After painfully completing his second tour, both emotionally, physically, and mentally, Sam left the army once and for all as he did everything he could to leave it all behind. To leave it in the past, escape and be free of whatever pain and conflict it caused him. Of course, it still haunted him. Seeing the dead bodies of the people in his unit, the gunfire, the death, destruction, and ruthlessness. Had he ever moved on? Or was the apocalypse with the runners and the attempt with the New World his way of a coping mechanism? Perhaps, he hadn't moved on. Perhaps…he'd simply replaced one war with another, one unit with the next. And what pained him most was…Barry. He seemed to be a mirror image of Riley, his very being and personality…at least, what was left of it during the war. He's not Riley. Sam forcefully reminded himself. He could do so as much as he wanted, but would he ever believe it.

It had been almost a month since Barry and Logan had shown up. Every few weeks, Steve had taken a small group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to stock on supplies. The supply runs typically lasted between four to eight days. Barry had offered to go but both Steve and Coulson had strongly advised him not to. Barry was the best hope against any amount of runners, seeing as how he was the only one who could match their speed. No one wanted to risk him being hurt or lost over a supply run. In fact, Barry had taken it upon himself to start training amongst the Avengers and the team. He seemed rather eager to have a chance to learn how to fight and defend himself without his abilities. Everyone had agreed. So, for the past month, Barry trained amongst everyone in order from the least skilled to the most. Surprisingly, he was a quick learner and within a couple weeks, he had cruised through most of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fighters and was currently on par with Bobbi. He had stalemated May twice, Clint once, defeated Daisy, Hunter, Mack, and Coulson regularly. Aside from May, Clint, and Bobbi, Steve and Matt were his only opponents left. Matt had been Barry's main trainer for the most part. Barry wanted to have the best hand-to-hand combat ability and skill, most had agreed his best option would be Matt. Sam decided to see how the newest addition to the team was doing or as S.H.I.E.L.D. called him "the new kid". Currently, Sam was leaning against the side of a door as he watched Barry and Daisy on the sparring mat. Daisy performed a turning hook kick as Barry lunged his upper body downwards, remaining on his feet as he barely ducked under the hit. When Daisy tried to rebound with a roundhouse kick, Barry leapt into the air as he flipped over Daisy's leg and landed behind. An agility-based technique Matt had taught him. Barry swung his arm over Daisy's body as he swept her off her legs, only for Daisy to pull him down with her. Sam let out a slight smirk, seemingly amused. Clearly, the pair weren't aware of his presence as something about how comfortable and…normal they were with each other seemed to indicate that to him.

"Let's, uh…" Daisy's heavy breaths clearly indicated exhaustion as she rested her arms on Barry. "Let's call that a tie?"

Barry let out a small smirk. "Sure."

Sam decided to alert the pair of his presence. "You two done dancing around?"

Barry and Daisy sharply turned their heads towards Sam as they sheepishly separated from one another, stumbling onto their feet.

"Hey." the two said simultaneously, their tones similar.

An awkward silence ensued between the trio for a few moments.

"I'm gonna…" Daisy tried to say as she pointed towards the door. "I'm just gonna go and…check up with Coulson and…the rest of the team."

"Y-yeah," Barry replied. "Uh…see you."

Daisy simply replied with a brief smile before walking out the sparring room, drenched and covered in sweat as Barry was. Sam was left with the young speedster as the two eyed each other.

"How's it going?" Sam decided to try and spike up a conversation. "You, uh, really taking all this training seriously, huh?"

Barry nodded as he wiped off his sweat with a small, white towel. "Yeah, well, I'm sure it's gonna be useful if I ever face someone without my powers…or worse: who can match my speed."

Sam nodded. "Hey, I get it, man."

Barry lightly shook his head as he leaned against a wall, leaving the small towel hanging on his shoulder while Sam leaned on the wall opposite to him, his arms crossed as he eyed Barry. The young speedster grabbed a bottle as he drank it, chugging every last drop until he was done before setting it aside.

He nodded at Sam. "So, uh, what can I do for you?"

Sam cleared his throat, taking a moment to form his words. "Look man…I heard about your parents. I just wanna say…I'm really sorry about that." He could see the look on Barry's face fall as the speedster looked to the ground. "Losing a parent at that age…I don't know what it's like but I know it's hard and - I just, I get what you're going through. I've seen other people go through it too."

Barry shook his head. "I appreciate it, Sam. Really. I do…but you don't get it…what it's like. I'm sorry but you just don't."

Sam uncrossed his arms as his hands rested on his hip while he leaned back on the wall and let out a sigh. "I think I do. All that pain and all that…regret inside you and you're just wondering…why me? Look, let me tell you something. When I was on my second tour in Afghanistan, my unit got surrounded. We were trapped in a canyon for three days. No food. No water. No sleep. Taliban and local Afghan terrorists would drop gunfire, grenades, we even took an RPG and some of our men…were buried alive under rock. One day, we tried to sneak out and before we knew what was going on, we were fighting for our lives against snipers, gunmen…even suicide bombers. Reilly, my best friend, took five out of six bullets meant for me. I was the only survivor. Not the guy whose pregnant girlfriend was waiting for him. Not the man who had three kids and a scared wife back home. Not the man who was going to retire to be with his baby grandchildren. Not Reilly…who had proposed to his girlfriend before he left, promising her a wedding when he came back. It was just me. I crawled miles back to base before search 'n rescue ops found me. I had to tell my best friend's fiancé…his pregnant fiancé, that she was never going to see the love of her life again. That her child would grow up without a father.

"All these men and women, all those soldiers, people who had something to fight for, to go home to, and I was the one who got to live. Me who never saw myself making it alive. Me who…didn't have a girl or a kid waiting for me. It…haunts me. It haunted me then, it haunts me now and…" Sam let out a humorless chuckle as he got a glimpse of the attentive, solemn, and almost emotional look on Barry's face. "It's going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Every time I close my eyes I see them and every single time I think about it, I keep asking why-"

"Why you got to be the one who lived," Barry finished as he and Sam eyed one another. "You always wonder: what if it was me? It should've been me. They didn't deserve it. I didn't want to see them die."

Sam nodded. "Yeah…" He walked forward as he patted Barry on the shoulder. "When you go through something like that, you come out as the only one alive and you just can't help but wonder why. Listen, man, it's like I said, I get what you're going through. To feel like you were the only one who made it out, to have lost people you cared about and to lose your soul right with them. To be this…empty shell of who you were. Your body survived but your spirit, your heart, and your soul…it just dies with them, doesn't it?"

Barry could hardly resist the watery feeling in his eyes, Sam could see it, he could practically see the man's jaw tightening as he spoke. "It should've been me that night. It was supposed to be me. Thawne went back in time to kill me. And instead what happened? My future self got me out of there, left her to die…by Thawne's hand. My father was thrown into a prison cell for almost two decades, all for a crime he didn't commit and me? Me? I walked out of there. Unscathed. Without a scratch. My mother died, my father was gone and I was…thrown into a lonely, cruel world that I wanted to run away from."

"Maybe you still do," Sam said. "Maybe that was why you ran before you came here. Maybe…you weren't just trying to time travel, you just wanted…to run from it all. To be free, to start over, to take that second chance you always searched for."

"My whole life I always thought that I was searching for justice for my father. To find my mother's real killer. Even after I got my speed, even after I…beat Thawne. It still felt the same. It didn't matter and it didn't change. I still couldn't wrap my head around being the only one who lived that night. And I still wanted…justice for my parents. Or at least, that was what I thought I wanted. Reality of it was that I wanted to be free. I was searching for some sort of…closure. Guess it was that second chance you mentioned, you know?"

Suddenly, before either of them could say anything or even take a breath, several alarms went off within the base. The sounds blared throughout the hallways, Barry and Sam looked around and observed the alarms and their loud nature before exchanging glances.

"The hell?" Barry muttered.

"We need to get to the control room." Sam proclaimed.

In the blink of an eye, faster than perception, Sam found himself in the control room with Barry and the rest of the team. Even at its peak, the human mind couldn't perceive anything at Barry's speed. Not Barry's lightning, not even a blur of the environment that was being traveled. At his speed, it was if it were teleportation or even omnipresence. The team scattered throughout the control room as Daisy pulled up footage from an exposed area of the base.

"Cap, that's the surface of the cliff," Tony said. "We've got tens of runners circling there."

"Cliff?" Logan asked incredulously. "Of all places, you built this underground place inside a damn cliff?"

"Let's argue about that once we've dealt with the runners." May argued, her tone was against receiving or continuing the argument at any time.

"That's not at all," Daisy said ominously as footage of an area on the surface was on the screen. Two speedsters could be seen, one with white lightning and a silver vibranium arm. The other was in a red suit, with glowing eyes, he vibrated, seemingly appearing as a blur. His eyes glowed red and he had red lightning as a trail.

"Bucky?" Steve was in shock as he recognized the speedster with white lightning.

"He doesn't look infected." Wanda said.

"What about him?" Clint asked as he pointed to the blurring man in yellow with red eyes and red lightning.

Sam could see Barry growl as he shook his head. "He's not infected, not a runner. That's Eobard Thawne. The Reverse Flash. We're under attack. And he's been planning it this whole time from the look of it."

A/N: I've just realized that I forgot to include Natasha in this story. Since I don't plan on including her at this rate, let's just say she died to a runner. I just don't plan on doing anything with her or the character. Even initially, I never had plans and I just don't feel like including her. I don't have anything or any hate against her, I just don't plan on including her.