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In the wake of Dooley’s death and Thompson’s temporary ascendance as lead agent, the science division discovered that the contents of the case hadn’t been Ivchenko’s primary acquisitions. Three canisters of the rage inducing gas, referred to as Midnight Oil by Howard, had been lifted from the laboratory and likely strapped to Ivchenko’s body and hidden beneath his overcoat during the final stage of his escape from the SSR’s headquarters.
Random reports of violence began being reported only hours after Dooley’s death and with a growing dread. Several agents, including Sousa nearly caught up with Ivchenko and Dottie based on the radio calls at the local police station, except the mission to bring them in suddenly turned into a brawl as Sousa and another agent were exposed to the contagion. Dottie had deftly managed to slip open the canister and aim its contents at Sousa and one of his subordinates, causing the two of them to attack the rest of the team including Thompson in a blind rage. They had to be restrained and quarantined for rest of the day and into the night until the effects of oil wore off.
“So he did have something else up his sleeve” Steve muttered as he and Bucky attempted to pinpoint the location of their next move by using a compilation of the data currently at hand. “Peggy says Ms. Underwood was one of Howard’s former dates.”
Bucky pinched his nose with free hand and shook his head.
“I bet Stark would show anyone with a nice pair of gams his private stash” he replied, “and now this dame’s left him as the fall guy.”
“Not just anyone, Barnes. You and Rogers could only hope to pull in the dames like I do” a voice said from behind them, immediately causing the entirety of the SSR, excluding Peggy, to raise their weapons defensively. Stark seemingly ignored the dozen or so pistols pointed at his chest and traded Peggy a grin. “Did you miss me?”
“Well that depends” Peggy retorted. “I believe James would like an introduction to Ms. Ginger Rogers and myself, Thompson and Sousa would like to ask you a few questions.”
“We’ve got a situation, Stark, play nice or we’ll have Carter knock you into the Hudson” Bucky added with a shadowed grin.
“The good scotch it is” Howard muttered under his breath, seemingly answering an internal question about how he might placate his friends concerns after the situation at hand had been resolved.
“We’ve got three missing canisters of Midnight Oil loose in the city” Steve informed him grimly. “It’s good to have you back, Howard. Do you think you could help us locate any of them?”
“I’ll do you one better, pal. I’ll be your bait to get them back” Howard replied with a wink.
“How do we know we can trust you” Thompson asked warily, even as he lowered his gun, motioning for Sousa and the rest to do the same.
“Hey, when I put my own neck on the line, I mean what I say” Howard returned. “This is my mistake and I intend to fix it.”
Peggy raised an eyebrow, while Steve nodded approvingly and dared to voice the question: “Well, what’re we waiting for?”
The SSR agents looked to Thompson, who waved his hand in answer, gesturing that they would go along with Howard’s plan.
“Don’t restrain him” he ordered. “We’re going to need him whole and hale for tomorrow.”
Peggy encountered an incident similar to Thompson’s previous predicament on the street while investigating a lead with Steve, who in turn had to restrain two men from ripping each other’s throats out, while Peggy knocked them unconscious and arranged to have them transported to the nearest hospital tied and handcuffed. Several other victims were detained the same way and the casualty rate was significantly minimalize to cuts, minor gouges, and broken bones as opposed to lives lost, for it. The fact that the symptoms regressed and then finally vanished over such a short period of time noticeably eased Howard’s mind.
Howard Stark accompanied by Agent Thompson held a press conference while Steve, Bucky, and the SSR agents observed from critical points adjacent to the podium for any sign of their missing fugitives. Eventually shots were fired from a nearby building, which provided enough distraction for Howard to be nabbed by the most recent victim of Ivchenko’s suggestive abilities.
After testing out the effects of the Midnight Oil it became evident Dottie and her accomplice planned to unleash the toxin into the air en mass on innocent civilians.
It was Peggy who eventually deduced the planned location of the mass exposure after realizing that it was May 8 and the first official V.E. Day after the war had ended. Commemorative celebrations in Times Square were set to start in only a few hours’ time making it the best location to effect New York’s populace on what would be a scale of astronomical immediacy.
Edwin Jarvis lead them to a private hanger containing the last of Howard’s private planes and a previously undisclosed location, only to just miss Howard taking flight in the aircraft, inevitably filled with the remaining containers of Midnight Oil.
Jarvis taking off in a second plane after Howard hoping to act as air support and inevitably shoot him down over the water if the situation became truly unsalvageable. Peggy in her turn fought and pushed Dottie Underwood out a purposefully broken window in the upper section of the hanger and just into Bucky’s reach. Dottie rose from the concrete floor and attempted to snap Bucky’s neck with her bloodied leg as the gashes in her face began to weep red and before sealing themselves in clotted black. Bucky muscled her off just enough to restrain her before she pulled a gun and would have shot him square in the chest, if the shot Peggy had aimed at the blonde’s head hadn’t hit home just a second prior.
Steve had deftly laid out Ivchenko as he attempted to escape down the corridor adjacent to the radio room, and was now trying to talk Howard out of the air.
“I can see it, Peggy, the signal from the Valkyrie is coming in strong. It’s just ahead, I can see the light-” Howard was saying, thinking that he was on a retrieval mission to recover the only science experiment, the only human being, he’d ever truly managed to encourage to be a force for good in the world.
“Stark, I’m home. You-you already brought me home” Steve answered with trepidation over the radio. “Why don’t you come back and buy us that drink now. You promised Bucky a sip of your good scotch, so don’t go backing out now.”
“Steve, is that you? Barnes, Barnes is with you too?” Howard answered wonderingly through his trance.
“Yes we-why don’t you come back now. I know Peggy said you had a bit to drink, but a night flight is taking it a bit far, isn’t it?”
Stark snorted a laugh.
“Yeah, pal you’re-you’re probably right” Howard answered and Steve could hear Jarvis reporting that the plane he was tailing had suddenly veered off course and turned back toward the hanger.
Thompson and Sousa managed to secure and lift Ivcheko’s prone body, taking care to gag him first. Stark landed his aircraft quickly followed by Jarvis who’d assuredly tailed him the entire way back.
Howard stayed with Steve and Bucky while the SSR agents reviewed the findings and directed the transportation of Dottie’s body to agency’s morgue.
“Why you?” Bucky asked quietly.
“He had it in for me, because his brother was a casualty of a certain general’s whim” Howard answered gravely. “My lab was raided and several canisters of the stuff was dropped onto a Russian brigade. They were hit with the full effects almost instantly.”
“How could he know?” Steve wondered.
“He was there” Stark continued. “Ivchenko or Fenhoff was the only survivor of the incident, because he had a gas mask. My guess is he was an overly cautious medic who remembered the weapons of the previous war. You can’t get any men out if you breathe it in yourself.”
“Yeah, he could’ve been” Steve muttered, remembering the mustard gas that had caused his own father’s death.
“Well fellas” Howard said putting an arm around both Steve and Bucky’s shoulders. “I owe you both a drink and one for Jarvis, and Peggy if she cares to join us.”
“You’re crazy if you think that dame’s gonna get drunk around you, Stark” Bucky said with a grin. “And you know me’n Steve can hold our own.”
“I might join you for a pint, sir” Jarvis answered from where he was mentally cataloguing the damage to the hanger’s office after Peggy’s scuffle with Dottie.
The four of them frank for most of the night, which ended with Steve and Bucky seeing Howard and Jarvis back to their respective residences. Peggy returned to the Griffith to collect her things and was gifted a house for her and friend Angie to reside in by a grateful Howard. Steve and Bucky had cited their continued secrecy over Bucky’s serum and the metal arm to be sufficient enough thanks for helping Stark clear his name.
Steve refused a public award a second time, taking care to denote Peggy, Sousa, and Thompson’s hard work on the case, sternly ensuring that Peggy received the same commendation in her file as her fellow agents.
Peggy accepted Daniel Sousa’s offer of a drink the next night and Bucky seemed to think she was attempting to start over like the rest of them. Though he surmised that Dugan might be slightly jealous, because she hadn’t accepted any of his offers to dance even after Steve’s return, and Bucky thought she might let Sousa give her a tour around the floor one of these days.
“Think this might be the beginning of the line for them, we’ll see” Bucky whispered. “She might even agree to a dance if that fella plays his cards right.”
“She just might, Buck” Steve replied with a smile. “She just might.”
Ivchenko was imprisoned and his jaw bound with an intricate device that only allowed him enough liberty of movement to breathe, restricting him from making any coherent sounds. The gold ring he’d carried had been slipped from his finger by Edwin Jarvis and destroyed with the rest of Howard Stark’s recovered inventions. His only companion now is his cellmate, a man who leaves at certain points in the day in the company of three to four body guards. This man is shorter than many Ivchenko has seen and refers to Ivchenko by his true name, Johann Fenoff and insists Ivchenko call him Arnim. Arnim Zola, a scientist of notable connection was a former component to the Nazi branch organization Hydra, he insists that he wants to learn what Ivchenko has to offer, because together they could bleed Howard Stark dry. He offers up a potentially more fruitful prize in form Captain America and Sergeant James Barnes, the only living incarnations of the super soldier serum, and men with the ability to bring the country to its knees, if redacted and controlled properly.
It is this goal that eventually ends Ivchenko’s life, when he resurfaces in 1961 after Zola’s death at the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D. He is unaware that the one person Steve Rogers would break his long held convictions about shooting an unarmed man for, is James Buchanan Barnes.
Steve sights Ivchenko from distance and realizes his proximity to Bucky’s location. He hesitates, knowing that Ivchenko no longer has the ring at his disposal, knowing that there’s a possibility that Bucky could see him and make the shot. Unfortunately he also realizes that sound carries and when Steve sees Ivchenko’s lips moving, the man barely gets out a few words before Steve reacts, unwilling to risk the possibility of Bucky being talked into putting a gun to his head, and fires a clean shot through Ivchenko’s head that stops him cold.
The nightmares that follow Steve for the next week aren’t about the shot he took, because he’s firmly reconciled the categorization of Ivchenko’s voice as a living weapon in his mind. No, sometimes Steve dreams that he missed and Bucky paid the price for it. Its times like those that Bucky has to shake him awake and remind him that he did what he had to, and they’re still alive despite Hydra and Russian Intelligence’s best attempts to kill, mutilate, or reprogram them.
“I’m here til the end of the line, Stevie. You’d have to try harder than that to get rid of me.”