Once Bucky was safely locked in, Steve suited up. Tony flew them all the way out to New Jersey, but it was only when he walked out of the Quinjet that he recognized the place where he had been chosen amongst other volunteers to be Captain America, what felt like a lifetime ago. He could easily see himself, wheezing as he tried his best to run in his too large uniform behind the other candidates, his skinny knees straining under the weight of the equipment, his rifle almost as tall as him… But he kept going, because he was stubborn for one, but most of all, he wanted to meet up with Hermione and Bucky, just like they'd said. It was them more than anything else that gave him the strength to keep going.
Shaking the memory away, Steve looked towards the smoking rubble coming from a building which had not been there in his time.
"I'll go check for any sign of them," Tony said before he dropped his faceplate and flew off.
Steve jogged the short distance and found Tony was already digging his way through the rubble.
"They're under here. They must have found a safe place to take cover when they got hit."
Steve began pushing blocks of concrete away.
"By what? A bomb?"
"Missile looks like. Probably short distance."
Steve paused.
"Wait, doesn't that mean…"
"Yep. We'd better hurry before Hydra drops in to pick up the leftovers."
"Why haven't they yet?"
Tony paused this time. It was obvious to the both of them that Hydra should have been here already given the two of them had only arrived after being informed of the hit.
"Fuckit. You're right."
Tony glanced around, turning on himself. Steve could only imagine he was scanning the area for a trap, when he suddenly flew off, meeting a missile mid-flight and forcing it to change course. Steve was impressed, but time was ticking so he redoubled his efforts to dig his friends up. Judging by the sound of scratching, coughing and Russian cussing, they were doing the same on their end.
"Nat? Clint?" he called out.
"Almost there," he heard Clint grunt and his hand suddenly shot out of the dust, just to the left of where he had pushed a slab of concrete out of the way.
Steve dug around the hand until the lighter rubble in the area caved in, causing another cloud of dust to rise, while he fell back on solid ground.
"You okay?" Steve called out, as good as blind and coughing from the dust.
Two affirmatives later, Clint and Natasha pulled themselves out of the hole, the worse for wear, their black uniforms white from the dust.
"What… the hell is Tony doing?" Natasha asked as she looked up.
"Playing ping pong, looks like," Clint said, eyes wide. "With missiles. Badass."
Even Natasha smiled, but it dropped off her face just as soon.
"Duck!" she warned.
Without thinking, Steve put his shield between them and whatever was incoming. Turned out Tony had missed a missile and it had hit their Quinjet and ticket out of there. Thankfully, they were far enough that the explosion merely hurled metal debris their way, and Steve deflected most of it thanks to his shield.
Tony then landed next to them.
"Troops incoming. I can carry you guys out since our ride is toast."
"Not if you have to dodge, you can't. One, maybe," Steve argued, excluding her myself from the list.
"Lady's first?" Tony asked, looking towards Natasha, arms open in invitation.
"Clint's injured," she objected, pointing at the other man's bicep where a fresh cut from the explosion bled a dark path in the dust.
"It's a scratch!" Clint objected.
Natasha raised her infamous eyebrow, and Tony was reluctant to pick up a girl who didn't want to be, or so he said, so he flew off with a very put out archer in his arms instead.
"You sure you can run in those heels?" Steve asked. They weren't high, but the terrain was rougher than usual. "I could carry you."
"And I could punch your teeth in," she countered.
Steve conceded her point and they began running towards where missiles had not been fired.
They ran straight through the training ground for the cover of trees, a blessing in disguise to be in the middle of nowhere. But by the sound of it, they had picked up a tail. Thankfully, Natasha had incredible stamina and was able to keep up with him. In fact, her smaller stature gave her an advantage running through the woods while Steve got whacked a few times in the forehead by low hanging branches. She was kind enough not to laugh at his misfortune though.
When they were sure they had lost whoever was pursuing them, although he had no doubt it was Hydra, they took a break next to a disused road they had just come across. Natasha caught her breath, then called Tony.
"Yeah, we're fine, but stranded. You?" She listened to Tony on the other end of the line, frowning more with every passing second. "Understood."
Then she dismantled her phone and threw it against a tree.
"What's going on?" he asked.
"My phone was being traced. Don't know how since it's supposed to be safe. We have to go on the move again, but Stark said not to go to the Tower because idiots are trying to search it with a warrant."
"For what?" Steve asked, then corrected himself "Or who?"
He looked around for a road sign or any other indication of where to head, but settled for following the small road, heading away from the army base.
"No clue. Stark couldn't even get the name of the agency they're supposed to be working for, but he didn't sound worried. Knowing him, he's already lined up an army of lawyers to throw at them."
The whole night stank of Hydra manipulations, from the pathetic trap at Camp Lehigh to trying to gain entrance to Stark Tower.
"What were you doing back there by the way? I know it had to do with Hydra and that flash drive. Did you find something?"
"You could say that. Armin Zola ring a bell?"
Steve stopped. It couldn't be…
"He's got to be a hundred!"
Or did Hydra freeze him too?
"I didn't say he was alive, but he wasn't exactly dead either."
Steve frowned at her, imagining a zombie-Zola thanks to Tony insisting he educate himself with his movie collection. Natasha was having way too much fun withholding information again, but she relented when she saw he wasn't going to take the bait.
"He… became a computer program, I guess you could say. Downloaded his consciousness. He occupied the whole room. Not exactly modern tech, and he might be really dead now that they bombed his hardware. If not, I'm sure Stark will take care of hunting down his code. Zola did let slip how they were planning to use the Helicarriers to thin out the herd on a massive scale, so it's a good thing we took care of those already."
"But for how long?" Steve sighed, because it looked like they were fighting a never-ending battle against Hydra.
"Tonight did feel like a desperate attack coming from them. It's not like we have the upper hand, even if we did sabotage their plan and steal their Winter Soldier," Natasha pointed out. "Unfortunately, they must have identified the four of us by now, so I think we should go into hiding. We won't be of any use if they use SHIELD to arrest us for treason, or whatever other excuse they cook up."
So that probably explained the warrant on Stark tower. Suiting up had not been their brightest move that night. They had openly declared war, and Hydra was openly retaliating. He hoped Hermione had returned to the Tower before all this.
"Know a place where we can lay low?" he asked Natasha.
"Yes, because I'm known for my wide circle of friends and abundance of trust," she drawled. "You?"
"I'm kinda new to the present," he said, but the honest, smiling face of a near stranger popped to the forefront of his mind.
Sam Wilson. He had been kind enough to go out of his way to check on a complete stranger when he thought he was in distress. Steve doubted the guy would kick two stranded soldiers to the curb if they asked nicely. He had even kind of invited him and Hermione to visit…
Washington was a bit out of the way, but Natasha argued it was just what they needed since everyone would expect him to be in New York. Steve guessed she must have ulterior motives to be in Washington though, but she made a good point. They would all regroup eventually. However, Steve was mad at himself for having promised Bucky he would be back that evening. He was just now realising he was terrible at keeping promises. He had not kept his promise to Hermione during the war either, crashing the plane instead of coming back to her.
Once they made it to Washington, thanks to Natasha's skills at "borrowing" a car, she also managed to find Wilson's personal address after "dropping by" the VA center. They ditched the car on a parking lot and used the cover of darkness to walk the rest of the way to Wilson's back door. They weren't exactly discreet in their uniforms, not to mention Natasha's ghost-like appearance from being buried alive in the rubble.
Steve knocked twice, then held his breath until the light turned on and Sam appeared in his kitchen with a baseball bat over his shoulder, peering suspiciously through the door's window. He blinked a couple of times when he recognized him, then hurried to open the door and usher them in before turning the light off again. The moon shone brightly by then, shedding more than enough light on the impromptu meeting.
"You two look like trouble," Sam said, then pulled one of kitchen chairs out for Natasha. "Coffee?"
Natasha chuckled.
"I like him already," she drawled seductively, making Sam stumble on his way to the counter.
"Don't mind her," Steve said, rolling his eyes at her. "I'm really sorry to barge in, but we need a place to stay for the night."
He continued to explain vaguely what was going on until he dropped the Hydra bomb as if it was nothing. Sam froze, frowned, then:
"Hydra? Wait, Aren't they the Nazis you fought in world war two?"
Steve glanced at Natasha and she nodded, seeming satisfied by his reaction. She was good at reading people, so it was as good a confirmation he was trustworthy as he was going to get with Hermione absent. Steve continued his tale of how they ended up knocking at his back door in the middle of the night while he nursed a cup of coffee.
"I want in," Sam concluded when he was done.
"I don't think you realize how dangerous these guys are," Steve argued. "I know you're a soldier, but-"
"Well, not just any soldier."
Sam excused himself for a moment and returned with a file. Natasha was just as curious as he was, leaning into him when he opened it, then she sat back with a laugh.
"Are you handing us your resume?" she asked. "We're not recruiting, you know."
"Why not?" Sam replied. "You should be if you've got so little allies you had to knock on a stranger's door for help."
"He's got a point," Natasha admitted, turning her vest so fast it gave him backlash.
"We have little ressources, we're basically outlaws, and, like you said, we don't have a lot of friends at the moment," Steve warned.
"Sounds fun. Just like the Howling Commandos, right?"
Sam was starry-eyed at the mention of his old team. Steve shook his head, knowing nothing he said would deter Sam from following him now.
"Do you know where we can get these wings of yours?" Steve asked, finger tapping the picture of him and another guy in action.
If he was half as good in the sky as his file said, they had just gained a very useful ally, and judging by the grin that graced Sam's face, he knew exactly where his wings were.
Luckily, Sam had a guest bedroom for Natasha and he settled for the couch. Their host did try lending them his clothes but they were much too large on Natasha and too tight for him, so he went shopping for them. There was no way they could leave the house in their uniforms without being spotted immediately.
That small hurdle dealt with, Sam left for work so as not to attract attention to himself, Natasha went out on her own to assess their situation while Steve stopped at the first pay phone he found to call Tony.
"How are things at the Tower?" he asked.
"Under intense scrutiny. How about you?"
"Blending in, made a new friend."
"Good. I'll look after your old friends, don't worry."
"I'd better go then," Steve replied and hung up, scanning the sea of strangers around him.
Judging by how cryptic Tony was, he wasn't entirely sure the line was secure. As if to prove him right, not a minute after he hung up and walked away, Steve spotted two guys he knew from SHIELD's tactical team behind him in the crowd. They must have gotten lucky to have agents nearby just when he made the call, and it didn't take long for them to spot him either, since he stood out a head taller than most people around him.
They ran and Steve bolted down an alleyway, jumping over obstacles, then across a street, sliding off a couple of car hoods. He had put some distance between them, but not enough, until he decided to go up. His pursuants saw him, but Steve had the high ground, no pun intended, when it came to jumping from rooftop to rooftop.
They managed to follow him onto the first, but the second jump was over a much larger gap. The first guy fell three floors down onto hard concrete, groaning in agony. Steve stared at the second one, daring him to follow and took a good look at him. Rumlow, if he remembered correctly. He had worked with him both during the Tesseract disaster and on the ship. So the guy rolling on the pavement in pain… Yep, that was Rollins alright. Now that he had identified them, Steve turned and ran, fearing Rumlow would take a potshot at him. If memory serves, he wasn't a patient guy.
"You can't run forever!" the SHIELD-maybe-HYDRA agent yelled at his back.
No. No, he couldn't, but that wasn't the point. He just needed to run long enough to take them down, and at that game, he was unbeatable. They all were - Hermione, Tony, Fury, Clint and Natasha, even Bucky - they were the worst, most stubborn people that walked the earth.
When they all met up for dinner at Sam's, Steve was the only one who'd had a run in with Hydra.
"Pay phone? Amateur," Natasha scoffed. "Did you talk to Hermione at least?"
"Just Tony. Said everyone is fine, but he let me know to get a move on..."
Steve trailed off. If Natasha was giving him shit about using a pay phone, what was she going to say about picking up a tail.
"What are you hiding?" she asked, leaning over the table, eyes narrowed at him. "Spit it out, soldier."
Scary, Sam mouthed at him, which Steve wholeheartedly agreed with.
"I… uhm… Well, you remember Rumlow and Rollins?"
"Of course," Natasha drawled, prompting Steve to recall a file mentioning she was a part of STRIKE just like those two agents, even if they operated in two different units. SHIELD was complicated…
"They found me right after I hung up, but I gave them the slip."
"Are you sure?" Natasha asked, jumping to her feet suddenly to peer out of the window.
"Yeah. Rollins fell down three stories and Rumlow didn't make the jump."
"But are you sure there weren't other agents?" she insisted, then looked him up and down. "Did you check yourself for bugs?"
"Bugs?" Steve asked, confused now.
"For fuck's sake," she muttered before patting him down, retrieving an innocuous piece of black plastic from his vest's pocket, which most certainly did not belong to him.
"Bug," she said, holding it up. "Bad," she added, dropping it to the floor before stepping on it with her murder-heel.
"Oh," Steve said as he finally put two and two together, but in his defense, he still had a lot to learn from how things worked in the present. "Sorry?"
"I guess we better scamper off?" Sam asked, looking between them. "Like… now?"
"Da," Natasha spat, evidently pisssed he had given away the location of their safe house.
"Alright, I'll just pack-"
The front door blasted off its hinges, ending its course near the kitchen.
"Or not," Steve concluded, picking up his shield he had thankfully left propped against the wall when they first arrived. "Run for it. I'll keep them busy."
And he did just that: held his shield in front of him and ran, using it as a battering ram to bulldoze the intruders back out of Sam's home. It worked. He hit at least three men and they were thrown outward, landing on the front lawn with a choir of groans, but bullets started raining down on him, so Steve just kept running as he shielded himself, doing his best to deflect the bullets back to their owners. More shouts, of both anger and pain, rose over the din, and Steve kept running. He hoped to lure them all away from Sam's house and from his two friends. He had made a terrible mistake by underestimating Rumlow. He still couldn't figure out when the other man had managed to plant a bug on him, but he intended to repair his mistake as best he could.
When he had reached a relatively isolated area and the number of people still trailing him had dwindled to four, Steve stopped running away, whirled around and charged them. Two minutes later, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and leaned over to pick up by the shirt the one he had hit the less hard, shaking him until he woke up.
"Who sent you?" he demanded.
He didn't recognize these guys and they had no insignia despite their all-black battle fatigues that screamed of governmental agency. The man grinned, his teeth bloody. Steve was about to smack some sense into him when large flashlights bobbed around, surrounding him. Steve dropped his prisoner and ran again towards where there were less dancing lights. Confronting them when he was on his own suddenly didn't seem like such a good idea. They needed to regroup.