"Twenty years on this planet and I've kept my head down. Twenty years and not a single act of magic caught on camera. Twenty days on this planet, Harry, you get caught teleporting across New York City. Here I am, four months later, leading the manhunt for you. You've put me in a very awkward situation."
The picture of Harry that Sirius had stuck to his mirror didn't respond. He hadn't responded any of the other times Sirius had had this conversation with him, either. Rude little bugger.
Sirius washed his face in the sink and stared at his reflection. He wasn't much changed from when Harry had last seen him, even if twenty years had passed. A little less gaunt, certainly. A few more wrinkles. But a good diet, freedom, and zero responsibilities had done wonders for his health. He was in his prime, barely fifty.
Harry looked good too, according to the CCTV photos that Director Fury had provided. Mid-twenties, confident, well-dressed. The scar on his brow was faded. Promising. If only Sirius could now find the blighter, he'd ask him if Voldemort was dead, and with luck his bitch of a cousin would be too.
"When the hell did you get so proficient in subterfuge and evasion, Harry?" There was another picture taped to Sirius's mirror and he glared at it. Steve Rogers was tall, buff, and blonde. Stupid, too, it seemed, but he'd wised up and finally quit SHIELD when he realised Fury was using him. "He certainly didn't learn it from you, Rogers."
You'd think a man who punched Nazis in the face would at least question orders before following them to betray a friend. Sure, Sirius also worked for SHIELD, but he'd known exactly the sort of organisation he'd signed himself up for and he wasn't afraid to tell his CO to piss off. It was why Fury begrudgingly liked him.
Sirius flicked his fingers at the two images, setting them alight in a hot blaze that burned the paper to ash in seconds. He dressed in a grey wool suit and an black overcoat he'd enchanted for protection and speed. Early May still held a chill he wasn't used to in London, especially when standing around running surveillance, hoping to catch a glance of his elusive godson. Lurking about the Wizarding World's usual haunts had won him one glimpse of Steve Rogers accompanied by a man who looked nothing like the Harry Potter he knew, but likely was Harry. With magic, anything was possible. When Harry had learned to flush himself down a toilet to access the Ministry, Sirius didn't know. They'd only opened those entrances during the war. The first war, at least…
Shaking miserable thoughts from his head like Padfoot shook off water, Sirius took out the cigar case on the inside pocket of his coat and drew from a hidden compartment the two halves of his wand. It had snapped when he'd landed the other side of the veil and he'd not bothered to try to fix it. He'd more likely blow his face off. He slotted each half into the Glock 19s he'd customised and stored them in his shoulder holsters.
He wasn't planning to shoot Harry, although Sirius thought he might give him a bollocking when he caught up to him for ending up through the veil. But Harry's other wannabe stalker? Sirius wasn't so keen on the look of him. Dead eyes, unwashed hair, too good looking to be nicknamed Snape, but all other signs pointed to evil fascist minion. As Harry was still giving him the slip, Sirius thought he'd pay said minion a visit today. He only lamented that his coat wasn't dragonhide, as Not-Snape was packing heat too. If that wasn't a Skorpion vz. 61 strapped to a tac vest poorly hidden beneath a hoodie then Sirius would retire to Siberia. Who the hell thought a gun like that was appropriate hardware for a pedestrianised area like London, he didn't know, but he thought he'd like to find out and give them a stern talking to.
Steve frowned at the gun in his hand. "You want me to attack you with it?"
A warning shot between his feet startled him. He regretted leaving his shield behind in Harry's apartment.
"Don't tell me you're scared," Harry taunted, holding a gun of his own. Both were made from plastic, coloured neon green and yellow. On the side were the words Super Soaker.
"It just seems wrong," Steve said, then used his superior reflexes to blast Harry in the face with the aptly named water gun. Hair flat to his head and t-shirt damp, Harry looked more wet rat than wily wizard, a wide grin spreading across his face.
"You, Steve Rogers, are a lying liar who lies," Harry said in a moment of wondrous revelation.
Steve smirked. "And we haven't even played poker yet."
"I'll get you for that," Harry cried and returned fire. Steve threw himself to the ground and crawled for cover, using a sand dune to hide from the jets of water. To his left, Mediterranean waves crashed upon the beach, which sprawled along a rocky bay miles wide. Inland, waist-high grass and cypress trees obscured rocky mountainside. The air smelt of salt and olives. Apparently, they were on a Greek island. It hardly mattered where when they were the only ones there.
Harry teleported ten feet from him and Steve was caught with a faceful of water for his thoughts.
"Hiding is for losers," Harry said primly.
"Haven't you just spent four months hiding from SHIELD?" Steve shot at him and missed as Harry teleported again. "Stop teleporting!"
"It's Apparition!" Harry yelled and Steve caught him when he paused to reply, because Harry couldn't help but correct Steve whenever he called it teleportation. "Oh, you bastard."
Suddenly Steve was drenched head to toe, as if he'd fallen into a bath. He spluttered, coughing up water, Harry watching him with a smirk. Magic gave him an unfair advantage if he could just conjure it into being.
"Two can play at that!" Steve tossed the Super Soaker aside and barrelled forward, catching Harry by surprise, and raced toward the ocean. He threw Harry in and jumped in after him to dunk him.
The sun was hot on his back and laughter bubbled from him, beyond his control. It seemed not everything in the future was all that bad.
When Lopez, a short, lithe agent that specialised in black ops, jogged toward him, her normally placid expression pinched, Phil knew his day was about to be derailed. Given he was heading for the photocopier, he wasn't entirely opposed to it.
Many of Phil's underlings thought that he liked doing paperwork. He didn't. Nobody liked paperwork. But he understood the necessity of it, unlike Barton, and didn't think it was beneath him, unlike Stark.
Any good reason to set it aside, however, was welcomed.
"Sir, urgent request for your presence in the Cube Tube."
The Cube Tube was what the agents on site had affectionately named the lab in which the Tesseract was kept. Phil suspected that Barton had called it that to wind up the scientists, in an attempt to alleviate his boredom one afternoon, and the name had stuck.
"Lead on, Lopez, and report."
"Doctor Selvig is claiming the Cube turned itself on. Nothing much to see, but the glow got brighter."
That was not something Phil liked the sound of at all. Perhaps he would prefer to be doing paperwork.
"Were the scientists cleared to turn it on?"
"They didn't, sir. At least to my eye, they did nothing new today that they haven't done every day this month. Same report from Barton."
Upon entering the lab and inspecting the Tesseract as best as he could, Phil couldn't see evidence of tampering, and Selvig was claiming that the enormous pulses of energy it was giving off were spontaneous. Pinching the bridge of his nose, Phil turned to Lopez.
"Sound the evacuation alarm. Ensure storage room P2 is top priority on the evac list, after the personnel. I need to call Director Fury."
The soldier peered down the barrel of the Barrett M82 and breathed out. On the other end of the scope was a London apartment, twelve stories up, 1,902m away. Intelligence reported that the target had detected and dodged a ballistic intrusion from 400m away and would not be fooled into consuming poison. His handlers were determined that proximity not be a factor in alerting the target to his imminent demise. The distance would also give the soldier plenty of time to make a clean getaway, although that was not a priority.
Executing the target was the priority.
The soldier breathed in. No spotter, today. He'd been trained not to need one, of course. Rarely used one. But, at this distance, the shot would be easier with a spotter, if only to make the call. The target had a guest. He didn't want to miss the target and hit his guest instead. There was something familiar about the guest that hurt to think about.
He focused on the weight of the M82 in his arms, the press of asphalt beneath his body, the room on the end of the scope, over a mile across the city. A world away.
It wasn't the longest shot he'd ever taken. He didn't think. Nor the most complicated. This was why he'd been recruited. He could make the shots no one else could. Only someone with his skills could bring down such high-profile targets, targets that were a threat to all of humanity.
The soldier breathed out. He could make the shot. He had to. The distance was such that he'd have to account for spindrift. Probably adjust by 0.3m, given the wind. Light, perhaps 4-5 knots, gusts of 8-9 knots. Humidity was high, 70-80%, that would slow the bullet down as well, dropping fast as gravity took its toll.
The soldier breathed in and a trickle of sweat beaded at the base of his neck. After a moment of consideration, he adjusted the elevation, an extra metre of clearance to account for the warming temperature as morning bled into afternoon. It was hot on the roof of this garage, tucked beneath a white, unmarked van.
A breeze tugged on a strand of hair, displacement of air four metres to his 7 o'clock. A pedestrian? No, they'd closed the top floor of the garage so he'd have privacy. A member of staff? If so, they'd leave soon enough, not likely to do more than a cursory check of the area and he was hidden from sight.
He hadn't heard anybody climb the stairs or walk out of the lift to this floor. Perhaps it was a handler, or another agent. Someone stealthy, checking on him. They'd know not to disrupt him while he was settled in behind the M82 . It would take him ten minutes to adjust if they did, matching his breath to his heartbeat, to the pattern of the wind and the city beyond.
A flash of red light, like a laser, illuminated the underside of the van and the soldier felt as if the breath had been punched out of him. A moment of exhaustion, quickly overcome—a drug or chemical agent?
He rolled and sprung to his feet with a rasp of fabric on gravel, abandoning the M82 and drawing the knife strapped to his thigh. A man in his mid-thirties stood before him, tall, dark-haired, steel grey eyes, in a suit and long black coat, a modified Glock 19 in each hand. His brows were raised.
"Well shit, you're fast," the man remarked. "And you shrugged that stunner off like it was nothing." A wicked smile graced his lips and the soldier almost smiled back. Almost.
As the soldier lunged forward, the man darted away, nearly as quick as he was, guns in his hands transforming into a matching pair of jagged knives as sharp as his smile, teeth bared like a snarling dog.
"That's my godson you're planning on sniping. Let's dance, cowboy."
A/N:
Happy June, folks! I hope this chapter brings a smile to your face as bright as the sun. Let me know if you enjoyed this update, because I've been trying to find a direction for this fic for a while and I feel like it might be coming together.
I must confess I know very little about espionage and assassination from experience, however I've read a bunch of Lee Child novels, and that's just as good, right? I must recommend One Shot - top tier lone vigilante brings justice to the world novel. Great book for plane rides. Disclaimer: I am not Lee Child but I wish I was.
Anyway, I did some research. 1,920m is nothing compared to what a top-tier sniper manages in this day and age (with ideal conditions etc). But honestly, the chances of there being decent sightlines 4k from an apartment building in London is ludicrous. So I halved the distance and figured that a decent sniper would still find it to be challenging. The Winter Soldier is always going to make this shot!