They pass through almost 2 miles of underground tunnels, walking the whole way. Their footsteps echo in the larger ones and are muted in the smaller. Clint watches history as he passes by it. Evolution of the Shield symbol and vehicles upgrading and a 1970's quinjet that makes his jaw drop.
Then after what feels like a very long time, Steve stops at a nondescript door.
There's a large latch and a combination lock.
Steve starts scrolling through numbers and Clint catches the numbers 0409.
He remembers seeing her birthday in the files.
April 9th.
Oof.
The combination clicks open and the door slides inward on surprisingly silent hinges. Steve disappears into the darkness and they follow after.
—-
They're in old sewage tunnels. Then a water treatment section with huge gushing pipes and the roaring sound of water. Those lead into underground maintenance tunnels and then, suddenly, he knows they're inside. Somewhere they could never have gotten access too without having entered the building from above.
"How many other people know about that entrance?" Natasha asks, her stance wary at the security breach into Shield headquarters.
"That are alive?" Steve asks, still leading, "just us four. And Howard."
She glances at him and he shrugs. There's no way in hell he would have found that entrance and he thought he'd explored every inch of Shield HQ.
"What's our plan?" Natasha asks.
"My code is working its way." Tony interjects, "should be into Pierce's personal files any minute now."
Steve sighs, "which means he will almost certainly know we're on to him when that happens. So stay alert."
They stop at a door and Clint blinks in surprise at the old maintenance elevator. Steve clicks the button and the light dings on.
Steve pulls out a phone and instead of turning on the screen, he waits until the elevator doors open and he holds the door open with one hand while angling the reflective screen up and to each corner.
Clint catches on to what he's doing. And sure enough in the third corner, a red light flashes its reflection on the screen.
"Camera." Steve explains, "if we step in here they'll know we're coming."
"So what?" Tony asks, "we find the stairs?"
Steve turns to them, still holding the door open. "You said you were close to hacking his files right? Then we'll have proof. But we can't use that proof if he's used his power and money to disappear. I say we stop playing cat and mouse and we go confront him. Keep him occupied till we have the proof, and then he goes down."
No one has a better idea. So they step inside the elevator.
Clint notices that Steve stands in front, staring directly into the camera the whole time, almost like a challenge to whoever might be watching.
But not almost.
It is a challenge.
—-
It only takes 4 floors for Shield to know they're there. The rig jolts to a stop and Steve sighs, "what was my rule?"
He turns, looking specifically at Natasha, she frowns, "stay out of your way until you say otherwise."
After nodding, the man slips the circular case off his shoulders and unzips the bag.
His confusion mounts as he recognizes what comes out of it.
Tony blinks, then he shakes his head, "wait. Wait, what's that? No." He's shaking his head harder. "That's not real. That's from a comic book. What the hell?"
There's no way. Everyone knows that shield. That's the shield that the guy had in the—- Clint's breath leaves him.
The World War 2 comic book.
"You're…" Clint starts, his throat dry, "you're Captain America?"
Steve shakes his head. "No." He slides the shield on his arm and looks at them, "Now, focus up and stay out of the way."
The creak of the elevator doors is drowned out in the chaos that is Clint's mind. Natasha's staring at him and she signs, who is Captain America?
Coulson had always loved talking about Captain America stuff. Vintage trading cards and comic books. The character had been a hero to the young Phil Coulson, half the reason he joined Shield. And Clint had talked with him about it. He'd been a fan as a kid too. They reran the cartoons every rare once and a while on the old vintage cartoon channel. And when his house had electricity, he would usually have that on. His dad didn't get mad and yell at him for those cartoons since they were his childhood cartoons too.
Except it hadn't been a character.
He was real.
Tony looks green.
Steve grips the seam of the two doors and starts to pull them apart. "Stay hidden." He orders, "out of view of the open doors." The doors are obviously locked, and Shield is trying to keep them shut, locked and trapped in there. But Steve uses brute force and pulls them open anyways.
They slide to the side, and Natasha looks up at him, "what is the matter with you?"
Clint looks at the man in front of the door, leaning out to see if anyone is in the hallways.
The cartoon. The character. That guy had always been optimistic. A light in the darkness of that war. The one who strove for truth and justice and wanted to do what was right. He killed only when necessary and he fought to keep the spirits of the whole army up. He fought alongside his best friend and a team he protected fiercely.
There had been a girl. A wise cracking, whip smart, take no shit brunette that Clint remembers having a childhood crush on.
It's his turn to be green. Feeling like he's going to throw up. He doesn't know why this makes it feel so real. That this man, alive for over 9 decades, has truly gone from the leader of a whole army, to being known by no one.
He wonders if the cartoon was an accurate representation of what Steve was like. Because if so… how far the mighty have fallen.
Well… not fallen. Shoved violently off a cliff into a sea of depression.
"Let's go." Steve commands, gesturing them forward as he stalks into the hallway.
—-
They only make it one more floor up, and through a long hallway into a large office center before they decide to cut the lights.
Only the little blinking of the computers and accessory lighting lights the room.
Steve's head tilts and he looks back at them, "hide."
"What?" Natasha asks.
Steve glares at her, "I said, hide." Then he pulls a pistol from somewhere and he raises it, "Now."
Surprisingly, they all obey.
Clint sees little red dots appear on the far wall and he feels his adrenaline kick in. They're here.
—
It's a massacre.
A one sided, overwhelmingly brutal massacre.
He's in the eyeline of Natasha who stares in shock and Tony is literally holding a hand over his mouth the whole time.
Steve uses his shield like a scalpel. Knocking, slicing, and slamming in equal measure.
When a hand holding a pistol drops in front of him, he has to resist the urge to gag.
Bullets ping off the walls and the desks, but there's a unique tone that lets Clint know that they're hitting the shield.
And it makes him more nauseous because he remembers that exact sound effect from the cartoon.
He hears Tony throw up. And it almost sends him over the edge too.
They hear a sound of pain from Steve every once and awhile, but mostly it's the shouting and then the screams of the men he's against.
Clint's eyes catch on Steve as he grasps the vest of the last standing man and asks, "do you work for Pierce?"
The soldier glares at him, "Hail Hydr—" but the snap of his neck cuts off his word. Steve lets the body crumple to the ground and he looks around.
"You can come out now."
They rise, looking at the carnage. Steve has holstered his pistol out of sight and he's wiping blood off the edge of the shield. "More will be coming, we need to move."
Natasha walks forward and she shoves his arm, pushing it to the side and revealing a deep slash, "You're hurt."
"It will heal in like an hour." Steve responds, stepping back, "let's go."
"You got shot." She accuses, "I saw it."
He turns to her, "so?" He pulls up his shirt and points to the three gunshot wounds to his gut, "the muscles will push out the bullets and then the skin will knit over and I can't get infections." He shoves his shirt back down, "and we don't have time to waste. So let's go." He walks out of the room without checking to see if they are behind him.
Tony blinks, still looking sick, "I wore his costume when I was like 6. For Halloween. I remember. I had a little metal shield. My dad made it." He looks down at the man with the now crooked neck, and he gags, spinning around and puking behind a desk.
Natasha looks confused, "I didn't grow up in America, remember? What the hell are you two freaking out about?"
"Did you ever hear Agent Coulson talk about a character called Captain America?"
Her brow furrows and she shakes her head, "uh, I don't know, I don't think so."
Clint watches as Tony wipes at his mouth, "did you ever go into his office?"
"Yes…"
"Do you remember there was a comic book on the wall. It was signed? A guy dressed in a costume punching Hitler?"
That seems to ring a bell, "uh… yeah, I do remember that. He said it was older than me and him combined."
"That was him." He gestures weakly to where Steve had walked away, "the guy in the suit—"
Natasha narrows her eyes, "you're saying—"
"Let's go!" Steve's voice cuts through effectively ending the conversation.
But he sees it. Natasha knows how important that comic book was to Phil.
Coulson had told Clint that those comics were what guided his moral compass. How it had been those cartoons and comics that had raised him. Not his racist drunk dad. He and Clint had bonded over that. Phil had even told Clint those stories were what led him to apply and work for Shield. What guided him as a leader.
He remembers Phil's last moments. And he wonders if Phil even knew who he was actually calling on.
Penny, 1918.
Shit, he knew. In his last dying moments he called on his childhood hero.
Clint looks around at the 20+ dead bodies and feels sick again.
But Natasha's leaving and he knows they don't have time to process through this.
"I remember an episode." Tony's voice is in disbelief, "man, I loved that damn cartoon. Because it's something my dad would always sit down and watch with me—" he looks sick again, as of now he knows why, "—there was this episode. About how they thought Captain America's best friend had died. It had this flashback sequence, did you see it?" He swallows, blinking, "two scrappy kids from Brooklyn, how close they were, basically brothers. How in childhood his friend protected him, but in war Captain America protected his friend, what did they call him?"
"Bucky." Clint whispers out, "his name was Bucky."
"Right. I remember as a kid feeling annoyed because they made such a big deal that Captain America didn't save his friend, couldn't protect him, only for the big reveal at the end that after Captain America died that his friend was found still alive."
"After Captain America died?"
Tony takes a step forward and pauses, "yeah. Sacrificed himself. Downing a giant Nazi plane into the Arctic Ocean."
Clint looks to where they left. "What happened after that?"
Tony starts walking after where they left, "I don't know. That was the series finale."
So Steve got everything back after losing it. Only to lose it all again. And more. His wife, friend, and his team.
Clint now fully understands what Howard meant when he said, "I almost hope it's not them. Because if it is…"
—
Three more times Pierce sends teams to stop them. Each one increasing in number.
Steve takes all of them down, growing more silent and more angry with each one.
But Clint notices that there's no big alarm sounding. No flashing lights or lockdown alert. So Pierce is wanting to keep this under wraps, not alert the building that— he looks at the third pile of bodies, almost 40 — they're under a one man siege.
But once they pass into the upper levels, the more secure levels, that changes.
—- Security breach—- Security breach —- Security breach —
The screech of the sirens makes all of them wince, Steve especially, but then they're running, slamming through doors and scrambling up stairs.
Anyone who engages them gets knocked out. But Clint notices a difference. Steve doesn't kill anymore and at first Clint wonders why, but then he realizes because now these people could be actual shield agents, not only agents of Hydra.
And he doesn't know why but it makes him even more sad.
—-
They're less than 4 floors under Pierce's office, running through a large bank of electrical and technical towers when an older agent comes scrambling around a corner.
They all pause as the guy freezes, eyes widening. Steve raises the shield ready to engage when the guy gasps, "oh my gosh." The man chokes out, "it's you!" Steve hesitates, and the guy lurches forward, a huge grin on his face, "holy shit they always said you were probably still alive somewhere but I didn't believe them till just now!" He's close enough and he reaches out to touch the shield. Steve is frozen staring at the guys face, "they say I look like him."
Clint and the other two are confused but Steve's voice sounds brittle as he whispers, "Dugan."
The guy grins widely, eyes lighting up. "Yep. Great great grandson of Timothy 'Dum Dum' Dugan."
"Oh shit—" Tony breathes out.
"I'm sorry," Steve gets out, his voice sharp.
The guy looks genuinely confused, "about what?"
"Getting him killed."
The guy wrinkles his nose, "uh, what? Didn't he die in a factory exploding by Hydra?"
Steve nods, "yes, but I asked him to come with me on that mission."
Something like understanding dawns on the guy's face, "No offense, Mr. Captain America, I never met him, but from what I was told there wasn't a soul on this earth who could tell that man what to do. So not to dish on your authority but I'm pretty sure he made his own choice to go. Died doing what he loved, fighting for what's right." He blinks, "are you guys the security breach?"
Natasha steps forward, "yeah, except Pierce is Hydra and who knows who else."
Widened eyes meet them and he steps back in shock, "what!? No way!"
"It's true," Tony says with a snap, "just finished posting all the gory details online—" he pauses, "oh look we're trending."
The guy looks at the screen Tony holds out to him and he shakes his head, "holy shit, that's…." He frowns, "what about Coulson? He's been absent."
"He's dead." Natasha says with a sigh, "Pierce had him killed."
"What!" The man exclaims, "Pierce said he was on a level 9 classified mission!"
"Yeah, six feet under." Tony quips, with a grimace.
"Do you know where Pierce is?" Clint asks, "right now?"
The man points a finger up, "last I heard he was requisitioning a quinjet to be evacuated out of here."
"Then we need to go." Steve says, his voice soft and his eyes still on the man, as if seeing a ghost, "we need to stop him."
The guy just shrugs, "good luck." Then he hesitates, "and maybe… maybe sometime in the future you could tell me some stories about him… if you had any?"
Steve just nods and the guy gives a mini salute, "go get the son of a bitch, huh?"
"I will."
—
When they burst out onto the roof, the quinjet is just landing.
Clint feels the wind tug at him, making it hard to stand still as it rushes across the rooftops. He's only been up here once before and it was on a different tower.
"Alexander Pierce!" Steve bellows, causing the whole roof to come to a stuttering silence.
Only the wind sounding off.
The man in question turns slowly and when he sees Steve, he grins, "well, look who's decided to step back out of the grave."
"Drop the pretense." Steve says with authority, "you've already lost. Don't make me kill you. Give up now."
Fear is present is Pierce's eyes, although he pretends to only be amused. "Please, Coulson was only a small pawn in a much larger game of chess. You threw down your queen—" He grins wickedly, "—ages ago, don't try to reenter this game."
Steve raises a pistol and points it at Pierce, "final warning."
Pierce eyes Natasha and Clint, "I knew you were rats the second you didn't head to HQ. What traitors you both turned out to be. Another failure of Coulson's."
Natasha splutters, "You're calling us the traitors?"
Tony steps forward, "listen man, I've already uploaded your file, you're toast."
"Ah yes, the second rate son from the eccentric billionaire. How did you manage to get roped into this?"
Clint watches Tony's face go red but then he narrows his eyes, "I don't know who you're calling second rate. Every supervising officer you've ever had has labeled you a two faced snake. I wouldn't be spouting your own merits."
"And yet," he gestures to the rooftop, "I'm the head of the largest security—"
A gunshot rings out and Pierce gasps, clutching at his arm.
"I hit an artery. You have precious minutes. Drop your weapons, tell them to surrender, and I'll allow someone to attend to you." Pierce growls out, trying to stem his own flow of blood, but then another shot rings out, and he gasps, now shakily looking at two matching wounds. "Now." Steve commands, walking forward. Other Shield agents are pointing their weapons at him, but they're looking at Pierce, waiting for orders.
"Shoot him!"
They over, bullets flying their direction. "Hide!" Steve orders as he raises his shield and the sound of ricocheting bullets sound. They dive for cover, now trusting his word and not hesitating.
Only seconds is needed for him to knock out or kill the 6 agents up there. Then they peek from their hiding space to see Steve standing over Pierce, the pistol pointed at his head, "who was in the pods?"
They hurry over and Pierce is laughing, blood spouting from his mouth and his grin is red and tinged with insanity, "you don't know?" He laughs again, spraying more blood and clutching at his arms.
"Natasha, Clint, hold his wounds."
They obey, stemming the flow and Pierce is wincing, looking paler by the second. "So Phil didn't tell you two?" He looks from Natasha to Clint, "I was sure he had. The minute I saw you with him in that building where Coulson died."
Clint looks up at Tony whose eyes are wide with terror, as if he can read where this is going. And Clint is getting the same sick nausea.
Steve is staring at Pierce, "do you surrender?"
Pierce huffs an amused laugh and he shifts his hands, reaching for something. Then he shouts, his voice a barely half croak, "pilot!"
They all look up, but the blacked out windows means they can't see in. Then a crack and a sound of surprise. Clint looks up to see a shattered hole in the windshield of the Quinjet and then turns, about to ask what happened only to find Steve looking down at his chest, a hole in his shirt, and blood slowly starting to sprout out of it.
PIerce grins, "she's a great shot. Just like her dad."
The comment makes Clint's adrenaline shoot off like a rocket. His brain can't process fast enough as Steve raises his pistol and Clint's eyes widen, "No!—" he shouts, "don't!—" but Steve doesn't hesitate, firing three shots into the cockpit.
No fire is returned and Steve takes a deep breath that seems to hurt the gunshot in his chest, "do you surrender?" Clint is staring at the cock pit, a sickening sense of dread radiating from his chest.
"Hey!" Tony shouts, reaching down and snagging Pierce's watch out of his hand. "He must have used this as a signal." Pierce laughs, his breath getting ragged.
"For what?" Natasha asks. Holding the wound tighter and making Pierce glare at her.
"Reinforcements?" Tony guesses, "I don't know."
Then Pierce yanks his arms out of their grasp and he reaches out, snagging Steve's pant leg, bloody hand leaving a stain, "Isn't she pretty?"
Steve looks on in confusion, "What?"
Then Pierce takes a deep shaky breath and he grins, "hail, Hydra." And he relaxes against the asphalt, eyes fluttering shut. And then he moves no more.
Steve sighs and shakes his head, "Tony, go through the files. Somewhere there has to be a tansport manifest. We can try to figure out where they moved the pods, and Nata— Clint? Where are you going?"
BUt Clint can't stop. He's up, moving towards the quinjet. He has to know. He's sure. Steve wouldn't understand. He didn't know. He had no idea. No context of Pierce's words. But he does. They do.
He uses the release latch a nd the door hisses open. The quinjet is quiet. No one else on board.
He slowly walks to the front, and he can see someone slumped over. His heart is hammering, thumping so hard his vision is pulsing.
The first thing he notices is hair.
A long thick braid, golden and hanging over a shoulder. Golden. His eyes flick out the cockpit windows to Steve's hair and he almost chokes on his own air.
Natasha is behind him, he can hear her walking up the plank.
But he puts his hand on the shoulder and he pulls back, dragging the body from its slumped position.
The head tilts back and he gasps, open eyes, barely conscious and crinkled in pain, stare at him.
Full lips that if painted red would be reminiscent of her mothers. Blue eyes so shocking they could only be from her father.
He assesses her. Three gunshots, one in her lower throat, one in her chest, and one rendering her right arm useless.
"Natasha!" He shouts, reaching forward and putting pressure on the wounds.
She uses her left hand to bat at him, but she's weak, blood loss and pain making her slump further in her seat.
He's holding pressure on two wounds, Natasha's small hands are holding the other. Probably should be concerned with the mixture of Pierce's blood on their hands to her, but they don't really have an option right now.
"Guys?" Tony's voice enters the Quinjet, "Steve's getting crankier than his usual cranky self, so let's go—" Tony blinks at them hunched over the pilot's chair, "what's going on?"
They look at each other and Natasha grimaces.
Clint looks back to Tony, "remember that secret your dad spilled?"
Tony pauses, "uh, which one?"
"About Carter being… you know?" Natasha grits out.
"Yeah…?"
Natasha looks meaningfully at the girl, which causes Tony to furrow his brow. He walks closer looking at the face of the girl and then his eyes widen and he chokes, "no way!"
Clint nods, "yes way." He's about to ask what the hell they're supposed to do now when heavy footsteps appear and Clint goes rigid. Steve enters the back of the quinjet, "We might as well just take this jet." He says, then he looks at them, raising an eyebrow."what are you doing?"
"Trying to keep her from bleeding out." Natasha says calmly, but her body is wound tight with tension.
He rolls his eyes, "she was working for Pierce. She's Hydra, just let her die."
The girl makes a weak sound in her throat and Clint grimaces, "I don't think you want us to do that."
Steve looks confused, "and why not?"
They all three look at each other. Then Tony huffs, "she's y—"
"Could have the information that Pierce withheld." Natasha cuts in. "She's obviously close to him. And since he's dead, maybe she'll be more amenable to telling us where the pods are. Maybe she's the one he used to transport them."
His eyes narrow. He knows when he's being lied to. But since he has no context for the lie, he asks the wrong questions, "what, was she a fellow shield agent you knew?"
Clint nods, "yeah, something like that."
Steve shrugs, "fine, you want to keep her, that's fine. Patch her up and then secure her. But we need to get moving."
Clint watches as he barely even spares a look at the girl. He wonders that even if Steve did look her square in the face if he would recognize her. Hard to see something you're not looking for. How do you recognize your own daughter when you never knew you had one?
They're setting her on the medical bed when he finally does look at her, "she's young." He says, "Hydra must have recruited her really early. What a shame."
Clint wonders how he can stare at the hair that matches his perfectly, the cheek bones that curve the same way as his, and not notice. But he doesn't. Just goes back to the pilot's seat, wipes the blood from the steering column and starts up the jet.
Natasha triple checks that he's occupied before signing, what the hell! If she's alive then that means— her hands go still and now for the first time she looks sick. Tony watches them, lost as to what she's signing.
That's who Phil saw. Clint signs back, that's why he had us find Steve. It's his wife and friend.
Natasha looks down at the girl and she's shaking her head in disbelief.
Tony is staring at them but his eyes are far away. And Clint can see that he's following logical paths and making his own same conclusions.
But it isn't until he says, "holy shit, what a fucking mess—" does Clint know that he really understands.
—