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Chapter Text

His students call him Professor Barnes but Pierce refers to him as the Winter Soldier in possessive, almost reverent tones. The Red Room’s walls are tall and terribly smooth, making them difficult for the students to climb. The roof, similarly, is steep with broad shingles that look stable but, like false friends, slip under pressure. The Winter Soldier prowls the Red Room’s roof in the chill autumn air, a shadow amongst shadows.

It had been a hell of a day. He had been running a class of first years through the basics of hand-to-hand combat when one of them—Jiminy? Willy? something like that—hurled chunks all over the matts and then promptly burst into tears. Then in ballistics training with the third years some boy from a merchant’s household managed to disassemble his rifle well enough but when he tried to reassemble it he came up with extra pieces. “No,” Barnes sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between metal fingers, “you don’t get extras. Every part of the gun is crucial. Take it apart and try again.” Then the Black Widow returned from a job of the not-killing kind with a strange look in her eyes and a tension in her shoulders that usually meant bad news for him. She had been acting as liaison for the police, and a twitchy look on her after something so tedious could not improve his day, so he slipped away before she could pin him down.

He likes being Professor Barnes, the assassin thinks to himself while he leaps across the space between roof tops. He lands softly, a ghost moving on booted cat feet, so that the inhabitants of the houses below him will be none the wiser, will not awaken from untroubled slumber to the clatter of an assassin above. He likes teaching useful things to youngsters, even though most of them will never take a life. Some will be pulled from the Red Room in year five, when competitive examinations come to a head. He is always amazed at how lean the student body becomes, but he can hardly blame the parents. Wealthy merchants, nobles, even upper middle class craftsmen like to send their children to the Red Room, at least for a few years. They learn discipline, how to read and write, and even a few tricks for staying alive in a dog-eat-dog world. He smiles to himself while he climbs the rungs along the water tower, with the wind whipping his long hair about his face. He himself was the son of a well-to-do grocer, and was sent originally to the Red Room as a big “Fuck You” to anyone who said the Barnes family could not afford it, and also because it was fashionable to send one’s child away for higher education.

No one expected that in year three, young James Barnes would get a scholarship.

Things change, when you get a scholarship at the Red Room. People treat you differently. People who earn scholarships are dedicated to their fields, and hard-working, and talented, which is all very well for students at the University of Horticulture, but holds special meaning for a student of the Red Room. Young James Barnes lost quite a few friends after that year.

But that was fine, because he met the Black Widow in year four, and found that she was also a scholarship case. “I’m going for my terminal bachelors,” she told him over lunch one day, between one class and another. Her tone was cool and flat and her eyes raked him up and down, sizing him up, no doubt seeing the knife he kept under his sleeve, suspecting the garrote sewn along the hem of his shirt.

“Me too,” he said, the words out before he could take them back, but it was true nonetheless. Let Rebecca take over the family business. He lived for heights and the calm that steals over him with an eye peering through a scope.

In the present, he hooks an arm around one rung of a fire escape and a leg through another and hangs over the city. Below him, Cardinal Pointe sleeps, dark and settled and waiting for the morning sun. Some windows glow yellow still, and the lanterns along the busier streets are illuminated always, but the cobbled roads are quiet, with even the beggars wearily waiting in the shadows. The Winter Soldier breathes and uncoils to stretch an arm in the empty air, every inch the monster that goes bump in the night. He watches the city like a dragon watching its horde, content to the point of smugness until a commotion catches his eye.

“Thief! Thief! Dissembler!” a woman screams, her feet pounding down the alley in hot pursuit of the apparent thief. Curiosity piqued, Barnes slips smoothly down the ladder for a better look. He leaps to a slouching eaves of a law firm, unnoticed in the gloom.

The thief turned on his heel to shove the woman hot on his tail, only to have her little fist connect with his nose. Even from the roof of the law firm, the Winter Soldier can hear it crunch, and he winces in sympathy. “Augh!” the man yelps and crumples to the cobbles. The woman scoops her bag from his unresisting hand and storms from the scene, perhaps more shaken than she lets on, because when she walks into a cop who was drawn by all the noise she unleashes an ear-splitting squeal. The cop, a tall, broad man, jumps with a distinctly high pitched yawp.

The police officer seems to gather himself together then. “Is everything alright, ma’am?”

“That asshole tried to lift my bag while I was walking home,” she tells him, still a bit breathless. “But it’s fine now. He might need a doctor.”

The cop pulls a square of paper from his breast pocket and licks the end of a pencil stub. He writes down her name (“Darcy. Darcy Lewis, don’t wear it out.”) and her story to put in a file in the police house later, asks if she wants to press charges (“No, I think I hurt him enough for one night.”) and whether she would like an escort home. She says something too quiet for the assassin to make out, but it makes the cop toss his head back and laugh. The motion takes his line of sight higher than it has any business being, and when the man’s gaze pauses too long the assassin retreats to the welcome of the shadows. It is not illegal to gallivant about the roof tops, but it does make the police nervous, and they already consider assassins a nasty breed of villain if not criminals outright.

But something niggles at the back of the Winter Soldier’s mind, making him walk along the roof tops beside and maybe a bit behind the cop and Darcy Lewis. Under the glare of the street lanterns, the woman is lovely, but his eyes are drawn to the cop. He wears a sword on his belt, and a round shield across his back—unusual for police, who prefer a sword and a billy club, or a sword and a set of throwing knives, or a sword and literally any other kind of offensive weapon—and his armor is carefully maintained, if dented and scratched by a previous, less conscientious owner. The man walks like a soldier, all coiled power with an edge of wariness, but there is something in the sway of his hips, the swing of his arms. The assassin leaps over an inconvenient alley in an easy, silent bound and quickens his pace just a hair, just to get a better look at the cop under the lantern light. His hair is yellow, his skin fair, his voice drifts across the vacant streets, carried on a breeze to the assassin. “It’s good to be back. So much has changed since I left, but so much is like I remember it.” The man sounds wistful, maybe a little sad.

Darcy Lewis has slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, and walks like a woman on a mission. “My mom always said that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Like people? People suck no matter how long you’ve been away.” The man laughs at her bluntness and the Winter Soldier pauses, falters, changes course.

He knows that laugh.

The Black Widow is poised in his window and hardly looks up from her crochet needles when he dangles from the sill of the window above it. “Let me in,” he grumps at her.

“Good evening, James,” she replies, face a careful blank even while she scoots over just enough to let him clamber inside. “I trust your evening has been uneventful.”

“Do you have any idea who I just saw wearing police armor?”

“That would be the new captain of the Cardinal Pointe police force.”

“Natalia! Do you even know who he is?”

She lifts her handiwork: a noose crocheted with soft red yarn, and comically too big. “It hardly matters. I am going to terminate him in about forty-eight hours, maybe seventy-two.”

“You what!” He takes a deep breath and lets it out through pursed lips. “No, you’re not.”

“I already took the job, James. It’s happening.”

“That’s Steve, though.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he knows that when she says those two little words she actually means them. The Black Widow tells her students that empty platitudes are for politicians and newspaper article retractions, and he remembers the first time she said that to him, when young James Barnes had to choose between the life his father wanted for him and the life he wanted for himself.

Natalia knows who Steve Rogers is. To know Professor Barnes and the man underneath is to know Steve Rogers, though she never met him and he had not seen Steve since enrolling at the Red Room.

The Winter Soldier remembers year six of his education with a pang. Examinations had gone rather poorly; the year started with eleven students in his grade, and the exams closed with six. Pierce originally pitted the top two of the class against each other, meaning Natalia, already answering to the name of Black Widow, would be against Barnes, already called the Winter Soldier in underclassmen’s hushed tones. Their proctor at the beginning of the day, nodded and bid them to begin. The two students circled one another, each armed to the hilt.

The University of Horticulture believes in competitive exams and grades its students on a bell curve. That is, the majority of students will fall in the middle of the curve and earn C's, a couple students will fall in the tail of the curve with failing grades, and a couple other students will fall in the other tail of the curve with A's. In a class of thirty, even if all thirty students earn top marks, most of them will earn C's and a couple will fail, and the decision is based on however the instructor feels that day.

The Red Room does not have a grading scale, but believes wholeheartedly in competitive exams. It is not unusual for a class of thirty to enter an exam room, the proctor to lock the doors and in somber tones explain that the majority of them will not make it, and a few will pass. The exam follows a bell curve: the majority of students will be injured, some will die, and some will walk away unscathed and bathed in the blood of their classmates.

There are many things Natalia Romanoff does not believe in. She does not believe in empty platitudes, and she does not believe in whimsical fancies like love, and she certainly does not believe in no-win scenarios. The exam closed with Barnes prodding the proctor with his boot, never minding the pool of bloody growing tackier under his soles by the minute. “That was my favorite teacher,” he said.

She rolled her eyes. “He told me that my choice of weaponry was unwieldy for ‘someone of my inclination’ last year.”

“Your tiny lady hands do make a gun look unwieldy. Agh!”

She withdrew her elbow from his ribs, impassive. “It’s no great loss. Lunch?”

He stopped at his dorm to scrub the worst of the blood spray out of his slacks. He could tell on his walk back which underclassmen would make it to year five and which would “wash out” by the degree of horrified leering he received. A grubby envelope waited for him at his dorm, tucked between the door and jamb so it would not go unnoticed if he survived his exam and could be easily retrieved and sent back to sender if he failed.

Over a bowl of bland noodles and boiled chicken he sliced the letter open. Natalia settled across from him and crunched into an apple. “Steve?”

Barnes nodded. He scanned his best friend’s slanted cursive with a frown. “He’s getting sicker. The doctors don’t know what to do for him.” He rubbed his eyes, feeling immeasurably tired.

“I thought you said he went to Harbinger Bay to get treated.”

“Yeah, right before I came here.”

“But they got the best doctors in the world in Harbinger Bay.” She turned the apple over in her fingers.

“Only if you got the money for it, and the Rogerses aren’t exactly rolling in dough.”

She plucked the letter from him and scanned the text. “There’s some kind of experimental procedure, though.”

“Yeah! And it’ll kill him for sure!” he snapped, raw. The underclassmen at the table behind him fell silent and he felt the hush sink into his bones like an ache. “What are you looking at!” he snarled over his shoulder. The boys grabbed their lunches and scurried away, tripping over themselves and dropping things in their haste. Barnes stabbed at his boiled chicken. “People don’t get free procedures. Free procedures are for guinea pigs. He ain’t gonna make it.”

“It sounds like he’s not going to make it anyway.”

The apple, half eaten and held carelessly loose in her hand, went flying across the room. “Fuck you,” he hissed.

She found him some hours after curfew on the roof, perched on the corner, huddled against the February wind. Natalia walked carefully over the icy eaves and folded down beside him in one graceful movement. For a long minute they shared the silence before she broke it. “Couldn’t sleep?”

He thought about telling her to shut up and leave him alone, but it seemed like she might be his only friend—it was only a matter of time—so he took the olive branch. “Room’s too quiet.”

“I take it Rufus failed his exam.”

“Yeah. He has…well, he had this tell. When he feints he gets…got…flinchy before follow through. I told him to work it out at least a dozen times, but you know how Rufus was.” The words tasted like ash in his mouth. “That and Pierce had him up against Rumlow.”

“Rumlow is a rat bastard,” she said evenly, as if commenting that rain is wet. “I’m sorry.”

Barnes looked down at the tangle of streets below the Red Room, impassive and calm, the winter wind tearing about him but not through him. The Winter Soldier was a heavy title, but for the first time he could see why it rested across his shoulders so well. That night when he returned to his too-quiet dorm, he wrote the last letter to Steve, asking him not to go through with Erskine’s procedure, or at least to wait until summer time so he could come down to Harbinger Bay and see his best friend one last time. He never wrote about the Red Room, did not dare let his best friend know he intended to become a professional killer, merely describing his time away at boarding school as schooling and boring in all the ways school tends to be, but he added in the postscript that he was doing well in his classes and, gods willing, would have letters after his name by the end of year seven. He rifled through Rufus’ drawers until he came across a gold watch his old roommate never cared to wear and enclosed it in a navy blue handkerchief. The letter and the watch both went into a manila envelope and sealed with hot wax. He sent the package in the morning and hoped it would reach his friend in time.

The package was never returned to him, so he hoped it made it. Steve never wrote back and Barnes tried to forget his friend, whose missives arrived regularly, as if by clockwork. Barnes never heard from his oldest friend, not after year six, not into year seven, not after he graduated with his bachelors of terminal arts. He dove into his work, taking jobs that tested his skills, that pushed his limits, that put gold into his bank account. For a few months he travelled the world, living on his earnings and collecting foreign coins to drop in the bowls of beggars. When he returned to Cardinal Pointe, Pierce had a teaching position open and the Winter Soldier once again prowled the Red Room’s corridors.

“His name’s the Winter Soldier. He’s credited with over two-dozen assassinations in the last fifty years,” a third year was telling a pair of impressed first years.

“How old do you think I am?” Barnes demanded, materializing out of the shadows. The students screamed and bolted, startled more than frightened, but once on the move it was probably wise to put space between them and the resident ghost story. He watched them go, annoyed and amused in equal measure.

Chapter Text

Natalia Romanoff, the Black Widow, is going to assassinate his old childhood friend, Steve Rogers, who never wrote back or let him know he was still alive. So the Winter Soldier has some mixed feelings about that. “It’s a scarf,” Natalia tells him with wide, innocent eyes while they walk through the street on their way to city hall.

“It’s a noose and literally everyone already knows we’re assassins,” he counters. The people before them part and give them the same wide berth they would give lepers. He cannot say he minds.

“Do you think the captain is going to be in attendance?”

“Terminating him during the meeting rankles of bad taste. Surely you can wait. I’m sure the commissioner would not object.”

“I am still not telling you who ordered the job.”

He pushes his hands into his pockets and the people on the street give them a wider berth yet, like fish realizing that the rather large fish swimming in their midst has sharp teeth and a bad attitude. “What is he even paying you?”

“It’s none of your business.”

“Tell me,” he whines and nudges her elbow with his. “I’ll make it worth your while!”

“No! I could lose my license, you know that.”

City Hall is a large, white, garish building with a roof that is almost certainly not made of copper. The interior is chilly with marble floors and marble walls and carefully carved marble pillars, these last probably made of plaster and then made to look like marble; Professor Barnes could tell at a glance that the building did not need internal support from pillars. He follows the Black Widow through the atrium, down a hall and into a dark little room smelling of disuse. Already assembled there at a long table are the new director of the castle guards Commander Fury, his replacement for the city police Captain Rogers, His Lordship’s pet engineer Tony Stark, a pretty city witch the Winter Soldier does not recognize, director of internal affairs Phil Coulson, director of trade and external affairs Maria Hill, the foreign dignitary Thor Odinsson, a sandy haired man with a disgruntled air and purple shades obscuring his eyes, and last an unassuming man Barnes might have written off immediately if he had not seen his face all over milk cartons for the past two years with the caption “Lost. Answers to Bruce Banner. Studies physics with a specialty in gamma radiation. If found dial ###-####.” He and Natalia take the remaining two seats, mostly unnoticed because Stark was speaking and gesticulating wildly, flirting with the city witch who, while not overly impressed, had yet to turn him into a frog creature.

Finally a tall, slender man enters. He is dressed in a tailored suit of middling quality, shiny and black like a butler or an undertaker would wear, with polished shoes and a dark red bow tie. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” he say with just an edge of a genteel accent. “I regret to inform you that I have received information regarding a certain discontent approaching the city walls with intent to overthrow the tyranny and take the city of Cardinal Pointe for himself.” He pops open his briefcase and passes paper handouts to them.

“Do go ahead and introduce yourselves.”

The witch is named Pepper Potts, and the man with the purple shades is a Clint Barton, sometimes called Hawkeye, a long range weapons trainer for the castle guard, scout and the tyrant’s personal spy. Stark introduces himself with a cheery smirk and a “You know who I am.” Typical. Captain Rogers has his eyes glued to Barnes when the assassin introduces himself as the Winter Soldier, an alumnus and teacher at the Red Room, which draws some uncomfortable looks and a stifled gasp from the assembled party. Natalia introduces herself as Natasha (“Just Natasha.”) and the liaison between the police and the Red Room.

“And your name?” Miss Potts asks the well-mannered bow tied man, still shuffling things in his briefcase. Barton stifles a derisive snort that Potts politely ignores.

The bow tied man straightens up and smiles kindly enough, as if pleased by the interest in his personal life. “Edwin Jarvis, Miss Potts. Ever at your service.”

Loki Laufeyson, the bastard prince of Asgard, dismounts his horse with a sense of relief. With night drawing upon them, he orders his army to bivouac here and await morning to ride for Cardinal Pointe, the lynchpin of cities. The Chitauri behind him seem cheery enough, all chattering in their coarse language while they feed their horses and break into the wine they liberated from an abandoned village a few hours back. He would prefer Asgardians at his back, but his own people, as thirsty for war as a martial state can be, would never deign to follow him into battle, and certainly not against Cardinal Pointe.

Loki digs himself a reasonable fire pit, slices six slats into a large, square log, tucks autumn leaves, twigs and grass into the slats with a few pinches of kindling from his personal saddle bag and lights the inside with a spark of magic. What is the point of being a sorcerer if you need flint for fire? He can feel the nearest Chitauri watching him at his ministrations, but thankfully they have been riding in one another’s company that no one exclaims or cries out when the flames in his pit burn green and blue before settling into orange and gold. The colors come from his kindling—on a jaunt by the sea he collected scraps of driftwood that would burn green and blue for the purpose of impressing his army without expending actual magic on his part. As a result the soldiers give him a respectable margin when they camp, and his generals speak to him in awed tones.

Loki settles by his self-contained fire and lets his mind wander. Cardinal Pointe will fall under the brunt of his army, he knows, and then he will oust the tyrant from his throne and crown himself. The city itself is hardly a kingdom, and certainly pales in comparison to Asgard, the kingdom that should have been his if not for an accident of birth. Still, Cardinal Pointe is a hub of commerce and activity; it enjoys positive relations with all its neighboring cities and, while other cities might sit along seams of gold or iron, Cardinal Pointe has proven able to draw iron and gold to itself in one fashion or another. Many young men make the pilgrimage there to seek their fortune, and Loki imagines himself no differently. He will take the city, and from there he will have leverage with which to take the kingdom, at his leisure, at his discretion.

A Chitauri general by the name of Verstadt approaches him and sits cross legged on the ground, offering a wooden bowl of steaming stew. “What news?” Loki asks, taking the food gratefully.

“The men are uneasy,” Verstadt told him in the ponderous tones of someone who learned a second language late in life. “The village we passed today was…live-full, but no souls in it.”

Loki nods. It was true; the village they passed had a definite lived-in flavor to it, with dogs still chained to their kennels and yapping at the soldiers, chickens still wandering the yards scratching in the dying grasses. There were clothes on clotheslines, still damp, waving in the wind. However, no houses were barred from them. Not a single door was locked against their intrusion, not a single window resisted opening. It was as if every resident of the village had left the place in a mass exodus, without so much as packing. Upon seeing the village, the Chitauri braced themselves to fight some paltry resistance, but when none presented itself, the army took on an almost thoughtful air. The experience was…unsettling.  

“A scout must have seen us coming and warned the villagers,” Loki reasons. His spoon scrapes along the bottom of his bowl and comes up empty too soon. He sets it aside with a sigh. “It would make sense for them to flee. They could not hope to escape us unscathed.”

“They are cowardly,” Verstadt opines.

Loki resists rolling his eyes, but only just. “Not everyone lives for the blood of battle.” Verstadt fixes him with a blank look and then lumbers to his feet to rejoin his men. Loki watches him go. Were he to ask the occupation of any of the Chitauri under his command, all would respond with “Warrior!” as if that were the most natural thing in the world. Asgard was much the same, come to think of it. He could have walked into a smithy in any of the cities of his homeland and asked the smith his occupation and he would have gotten “Warrior!” Asgard had no farmers, no artists, no craftsmen, only warriors who happened to farm, paint or craft during peace time. Of course, a war state cannot live without its populace of constant warriors. If Asgard could go more than six years at a time not embroiled in conflict with its neighbors, its warriors’ sons might claim to be farmers, painters or craftsmen and then, as an afterthought “Oh! and warrior!” and the war state of Asgard would become the peaceful state of Asgard.

On the other hand, there are armies in the world where none of the soldiers answer to the title of warrior. Loki knows what it is like to go from reading one moment and battle in the next, but sometimes in the twists of his mind he wonders what it must be like for a through-and-through scholar to wrap his hands around the hilt of a sword and plunge it through a potter’s brains. Loki is no stranger to barbarism. He wears violence the way a courtesan wears a ruff, but what must it be like for people of peace states to put down their tools and take up arms? What must it be like for a man used to being coated in the soil of his field to be coated in the blood of his kinsmen instead?

Cardinal Pointe, the lynchpin of cities, winks and bustles in the gray morning light. Loki sends a Chitauri scout ahead to secure the drawbridge, kill the operator who might alert the wall guards and keep the bridge open. The city has only two major gates, but it also has locks for canal trade and some informal entry points. Loki elects not to concern himself with the West Gate or the locks. He and most of the army will overtake the East Gate, and several of his contingents will scale into the city through informal passageways and rendezvous with the army wherever the fighting is loudest.

“He has made it, sir,” a keen-eyed soldier informs them from his perch on a tee branch, where he can have an unfettered line of sight on the gate. Loki silently counts to fifty while his army holds their collective breath.

“Charge,” he growls at last, and spurs his horse forward. Hooves cut through the dirt, kicking up dry turf and sending a haze of dust in their wake. The city wall looms before them, the gate open wide for their entry. In his breast, Loki’s heart pounds an elated tattoo as he surges forward to claim what should have been his by rights if not for a cruel twist of fate. He draws his staff, feels the surge of fire in his veins, magic singing, nostrils flared, his horse races along the path worn flat by the feet of a million travelers who came before them. And then they are racing over the drawbridge, and Loki is braced for boiling oil, or melted tar or, well, anything really, but it met only with the rushed clop clop clop of hooves across wood planking and the stale, fetid stink of still water so close to human habitation. “Woah,” he murmurs to the horse, and tugs gently on her reins.

They slow to a brisk trot and he waves the rest of his army on, to continue as far into the city as they can before the fighting begins in earnest. Well, before the fighting begins.

The scout he sent ahead to secure the drawbridge looks suitably abashed but unruffled, shuffling his weight from foot to foot while Loki looks him over. “Report!”

“Sir!” the young man barks back with a salute. “It would appear no one is operating the bridge today. I met no resistance.”

Loki thinks of damp clothes on clotheslines, flapping in the wind, and dogs still chained to their kennels, yapping. He turns to study the streets, and to his relief he sees people, but not the people he should be seeing. There should be guards, and soldiers, and a worrying ratio of metal to flesh. The sun should be darkened by a hail of arrows, but when he peers skyward he sees only a few fluffy white clouds and the tireless sun. His horse paws at the cobbles, seeming to notice his stillness. Her tail flicks uneasily. He follows the path of his army down the street, looking up into windows and balconies and seeing residents watching him.

The people are not particularly frightened. Wary, perhaps, and definitely curious, but not particularly worried about the army that just walked into their city. Thor once said something about how the people of Cardinal Pointe, in his experience, were difficult to terrorize and that their tyrant must be something more than human to be able to rule them.

The streets are quiet save for the thud of feet and hooves across cobbles. The citizens, more sensible than Loki suspected, were staying indoors and above the first floor wherever possible. Loki spies a cluster of young adolescents on the roof of a building, reaching into baskets. Too late Loki thinks to warn his army but then flower petals are fluttering down on them.

Loki catches a few petals on his palm. They are tiny, clearly taken from flowers the size of coins. The petals are silky between his fingers, lavender in color, and become progressively more ubiquitous as his army walks deeper into the city. More young ones are on the roofs, laughing and dropping flower petals, or downy feathers, or glitter, or fine red confetti on the soldiers marching through their city. Soon the cobbles are completely obscured by a blanket of falling detritus, and the warriors and horses wear it in their hair.

Verstadt manages to jockey his horse beside Loki’s. “A sneak attack?”

Loki shakes his head minutely. None of the city’s residents appear braced for a sneak attack. The city sounds almost unnaturally quiet to his ears after a lifetime of battle noise, but the streets do not carry the heavy, unmistakable hush that precedes an ambush. A strange notion carries his attention, a whimsical fancy that has no business in war, but would not seem out of place on the back of a horse with the air thick with confetti. Slowly, carefully, he lifts his hand in the air and gives the hundreds of people watching him a wave.

Such a cacophony of cheers rings through the street that the army draws its swords even with no apparent enemy to fight. And then the flower petals are falling in earnest, and the cheering seems to spiral in decibel, uncontrollable. Do his eyes deceive him, but the Chitauri look bashful in the face of such attention? Is his horse prancing and tossing her head because of the noise, or because she is preening? Is Verstadt waving as well, face split in a toothy grin?

And then the bravest of the people are joining them in the street. Children in the arms of their parents are reaching to tentatively pet his horse’s nose and someone throws a necklace of autumn-colored leaves about his neck. “Yes, thank you,” he says when he allows a little girl crown him with a ring of dandelions. She grins from under her own dandelion crown, clearly pleased even when her mother carries her back to the sidelines.

They follow the main road to the castle, where an imposing  man with a length of leather hiding his left eye wait for them at the gate. Loki would normally dismount as a show of respect, but the whole day has been so strange already he does not dare lose his seat.

“Prince Loki of Asgard?” the man asks.

“The same. And you are?”

“Fury, director of the castle guard here. We have been eagerly awaiting your arrival, sir.”

Loki keeps a blank face while he considers him. “And you threw me a… parade?”

“Parades traditionally take place before a coronation.” Fury maintains his own blank face.

“A coronation.”

“Your coronation.”

“Ah.” Loki squints at him, waiting for the punchline, waiting for the trap to spring.

Fury merely addresses the hundreds of citizens and the Chitauri army, raising his hands high above his head and crying out “Long live his tyranny, Lord Loki!”

“Huzzah!” the gathered masses shout, over and over again. “Huzzah! Huzzah!” Their voices pound against the road, bounce off the castle walls, wash over Loki with the force of a waterfall.

And then people are pushing fried dough into his hand, and a cup of wine so strong it must surely burn every taste bud in his mouth, and there are people playing horns and lutes on a terrace somewhere, and someone is taking his horse to the stables for brushing and feeding. By the time he wades through the courtyard and climbs the steps to the castle’s entrance he has consumed at least three glasses of wine, two buttery rolls and a chunk of burning hot pork still dripping with grease. The man at the door, a butler he realizes thickly, introduces himself as Jarvis, master of the house, and congratulates Loki on a bloodless take over.

Loki stares at him, blinking, relieved to be out of the din of celebration. “Where is the tyrant?” he asks, annunciating as clearly as his treacherous tongue will allow.

“Standing before me, of course,” Jarvis answers with a smile. Loki does not smile, but raises an eyebrow to let the butler know he understood the joke. “Your predecessor fled in the early light of morning today, I am afraid. Cardinal Pointe has no standing army, and could not hope to defend herself from a Chitauri invasion.”

“He will return,” Loki said, more for his sake than for Jarvis.

“Undoubtedly, sir.” He pushes a glass of chilled apricot brandy into Loki’s hand with a small smile. “But not tonight, I think. Greet your people, my lord.”

Chapter Text

Loki awakens on a soft mattress in a tangle of soft blankets with sunlight pooling into the room. For a moment he feels lost, because this is not his bedroll on cold earth, nor is it his bed in Asgard. The day before swims before his memory and he does his best to block it out. He remembers getting uproariously drunk, and being carried on the shoulders of the crowd, and…were there elephant jokes? Yes, elephant jokes were most certainly involved at some point. Jarvis bustles into the room and leaves a tall glass of cold water by the bedside table without a single word.

It takes some time, but eventually Loki is able to roll himself out of bed, imbibe the water and dress himself. He trudges down the corridor, intending to find someone to either bring him to breakfast or to bring breakfast to him, but the halls seem deserted. And, having spent the majority of his time in the castle asleep so far, Loki gets himself turned about and lost in the strange labyrinth of chilly gray walls.

He turns a corner and feels his palms itch keenly right before a slender redhead slams into him. “Oof!” she huffs, and scratches at her palms even as she pulls Loki back to his feet. “You must be the sorcerer tyrant,” she says over the sound of his reflexive apology.

“And you’re a witch,” he notes.

“Pepper Potts, my lord.” 

“What brings you to this side of the castle, Miss Potts?” he asks, hoping her answer might give him his bearings.

But the witch suddenly flushes all the way to the roots of her hair. Her mouth parts, then shuts tightly before she answers. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

A door down the corridor creaks open. “Pep?”

“Run!” she hisses, and then Loki is running after her, more bewildered than ever before while a forlorn voice behind them calls out for the witch. They duck through a pair of double doors and into a library, and Pepper tucks herself into a dark alcove between bookcases.

“What was that about?” Loki hisses, ears trained for the door, an invisibility spell at the ready should an assassin come for him or the witch. He does not even know her yet, but something about waking up in a strange place and coming across someone in a similar situation makes him want to see her safely away.

“Ever sleep with someone you probably shouldn’t have?” she asks quietly.

He raises a brow. “I could turn him into a pig.”

She laughs against her hand, eyes crinkling. “He’s actually the duke to Cardinal Pointe. About two-thirds of the properties in the city are deeded to him, and he would have been tyrant himself if he didn’t spend twenty-seven hours a day in his lab, making things go boom.”

“You slept with the Mad Duke?” Loki asks, incredulous in spite of himself. The Mad Duke was infamous throughout the empire, and well-known outside of it as well.

“He can be quite charming when he’s not being himself,” she harrumphs, but her eyes have not lost their humor.

Loki walks up to one of the windows in the library peers out on the courtyard. The ground is littered with all manner of debris, as well as drunken revelers still sleeping. “Do you know the way to the kitchens?” he asks when the Mad Duke fails to find the library.

The maids they pass in the hall bow at the waist when they see him and bid him good morning. Loki echoes back their greetings, not missing the way they greet Pepper with a similar deference. Cardinal Pointe is known to harbor the magically talented, but he never imagined the respect a witch could command. In Asgard, magic is feared and punished, with those caught studying the craft drowned in ponds or crushed with stones. Loki’s mother knew from the start that her son carried a seam of magic through his soul, the way the earth might bear a seam of iron, and try as she might she could not shield him from his father’s rage when he found out.

He was cast out of his home for a time, until his father’s rage cooled and his mother was able to bring him back. Afterward, Loki could not bring himself to be angry. He remembers the feel of magic burning under his skin when he fled into the wilderness, and he remembers the feel of the openness of the sky above him and the vastness of the land beneath him, and the sense that infinity spiraled away on either side and that he was not just a particle of that infinity but a driving force in itself. Witches are made by the needs of their generation, hammered by hardship into the craft, fashioned and cultivated and unmade and rebuilt until they can serve their people. But sorcerers are born. In the tangled thicket of trees, with the skies threatening rain and the booming uproar of his father still ringing in his ears, Loki learned his first mystery.

When they make it to the kitchen, a broad cook by the name of Happy puts together a hearty breakfast of potatoes, eggs, mushrooms, and buttered slices of zucchini bread. Pepper explains that she cannot stay—there are matters she must tend to in the city, which she describes as “woman’s work” with a wink. Happy sends her off with a bag of hardboiled eggs and half a loaf of the zucchini bread. “She’s a good sort, for a witch,” he says fondly when Miss Potts eventually leaves the kitchen.

“Very powerful, is she?” Loki asks under the guise of small talk. Pepper has a magnetism to her and a gentle charisma that makes her immediately likable, but were she to pose a threat to the throne he would have no choice but to remove her, one way or another.

“Witches can’t be powerful, Your Grace,” the cook tells him like it is common knowledge.

“Oh?”

“Why, because a powerful witch is called a wizard and wouldn’t be a witch anymore, sir. And a powerful wizard is called a sorcerer. Bless her soul but I never saw Miss Potts do any magic. She’s good in a crisis and sharp as a tack, and she can read and write and knows all about herbal remedies, but she’s hardly the magic making kind.”

“I see. How unusual.” Loki plucks the last mushroom from his plate and chews it slowly. His palms still itch with the sense memory of being in close proximity to another magical soul. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

“It would have to be a damn good trap,” the Winter Soldier told the assembled company in the dusty city hall conference room, not long before Loki’s “invasion” entered their city.

Thor inclined his head. “My brother is a fearsome warrior. Without a standing army, this good city would be powerless against his forces. He is also a powerful sorcerer, and crafty. I fear, Lord Jarvis, that what you require is not a trap but an act of divine intervention.”

“Just Jarvis, please, Mr. Jarvis if you must.” Jarvis settled in his chair opposite them and adjusted his bow tie, as if marginally uncomfortable under their stares. “Commander Fury has escaped the jaws of death more than once, in the field and out of it. Director Coulson has actually died before but the ingenuity of Miss Potts brought him back. Hell, Lord Stark has had his chest forcibly ripped open and managed to pull himself back together. We have the most evil-minded, ambitious, cunning people in the city at this table. I am sure we can work something out.” 

“We could build a labyrinth!” Stark burst out. His hands fluttered at them, unable to remain still any longer. “We could make a big fuck-you maze with moving walls and clockwork corridors and put a big ass angry goat in it to chase him.”

Barton frowned. “A goat?”

Natalia, or Natasha to these people, leaned forward. “Someone could infiltrate his camp and poison their water supply after putting a knife in Loki’s brains.”

Thor scowled. “Mad he may be, but Loki is of Asgard and he is my brother.”

“Someone could infiltrate his camp, poison the water supply and, I don’t know, sew his mouth shut?” Natasha amended.

“It would be more beneficial for the city if the Chitauri remain breathing,” Hill interjected, her voice bone dry. “Trade with the Chitauri so far has been good, and slaughtering their kingdom’s foolhardy or dissident factions could endanger trade agreements.”

“Wouldn’t want to hurt our precious trade agreements,” Barton sneered.

Both Hill and Coulson turned matching cold glares on the archer. “Cardinal Pointe’s second most profitable export is stained glass, which we sell to the Chitauri in exchange for cashews and whale oil. If you would like to pay five dollars for a pint of lamp oil, or ten dollars for a pound of cashews, then by all means piss off the Chitauri,” Coulson told him.

Barton scowled and tried not to look like he was sinking into his chair. Captain Rogers asked “So what’s Cardinal Pointe’s most profitable export?”

“Bullshit,” Hill and Coulson replied in unison.  

“Perhaps we could commission an impenetrable wall?” Thor hazarded. “I’m sure there are giants who would build one for the city at a reasonable price.”

“I think we’re going about this the wrong way,” Miss Potts said. She folded her hands over the table top, and the Winter Soldier eyed her fingernails. You can learn quite a bit about a person from the state of their hands, and hers were long, almost delicate save for the coarseness of her skin, her nails cut short, rounded, impeccably clean underneath. These hands got the job done in the most efficient method possible, he decided. These hands could have been an assassin’s in another life, or an entrepreneur, or the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. “When I was a girl, the witch I studied under told me about a goblin who could sneak into and out of anywhere he pleased. One home in particular was very fine, and he sneaked into it every day to pilfer their valuables and take from the family’s fridge. Every day the homeowner would lock all the doors and bar all the windows, but still the goblin got in. He would block the chimney by filling the fireplace with bricks, and locking all the doors and windows, but the Goblin still found a way in. He stuffed the drains in the whole house with red clay, and blocked the fireplace with bricks and locked all the doors and windows, but somehow the goblin still got in.

“With the larder nearly empty and every piece of gold in the house gone, the homeowner went to a wise woman and asked her what he should do. The wise woman told him that goblins like nothing better than to count the holes in a sieve, and they can’t help themselves but count grains of salt they see on the floor. So late that night the man locked his doors and his windows, and he blocked he drains and the chimney, and he waited for the goblin to sneak in.

“At midnight the goblin climbed his way out of a mirror in the study of all things and went about his business stealing from this house. The homeowner, now wise to his doings, laid a whole pile of granulated salt in front of the mirror. When the goblin came back to the mirror to leave, it dropped all the homeowner’s goods on the floor and started counting grains of salt. It stood there all night and all day in the study, just counting salt, and the homeowner dropped a pile of rice on the other side of the room so that when the goblin finished with the salt, it could count the rice. And when it was done with the rice, the homeowner put a few colanders he borrowed from his neighbors in the room so the goblin could count the holes in those. And on and on and on until the nasty bugger starved to death.”

“I don’t think Loki will be stopped by colanders,” Thor told her, bewildered.

“What Miss Potts is trying to convey is that the goblin could come and go as it pleased, but it was trapped in a prison of its own divining,” Jarvis explained. “How does this translate to Loki?”

“We give him everything he wants,” she said. “Give him the throne with zero resistance and watch him choke on it.”

“He’ll destroy the city,” Rogers cut in.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Barnes said. “If he signs too many decrees or levies one too many tariffs I’ll just put a knife in his brain—I mean sew his mouth shut.”

Barnes until that point had never seen Steve Rogers go from baseline to mega pissed before. Steve had always been scrappy in his boyhood, with a quick temper and extremely pointy elbows, but his anger always came lava hot, with a flushed face and a generous amount of yelling. But in that moment Rogers did not flush or yell, but the color drained out of his face and he seemed to freeze from the inside out. “That’s an awfully cavalier attitude about murder, professor.”

Barnes’ jaw tightened. “I beg your pardon?” he gritted out, sniper calm steeling over himself.

“You know, I never would have pegged you for an assassin. If you’re not going to take this seriously then maybe you should just go,” Rogers pressed.

“Who says I’m not being serious?” His hands lay flat on the table, but he itched to close them into fists, to drive his metal hand through the false wood veneer. The blond man across the table stared at him like a stranger, a cold morass in shiny officer armor with eyes like flint.

“Maybe we should take a quick recess?” Banner murmured.

“Why shouldn’t they blow off a bit of steam?” Stark laughed.

“You don’t even care,” Rogers sneered at Barnes, “about the lives you take.”

Natasha shot Stark a glare while she carefully edged out of her seat. “You know why,” she mouthed, furious but unable to stop the Winter Soldier from rising to his feet.

“Let’s hear more about your self-righteousness, Captain!” he snarled. “I provide an invaluable service to Cardinal Pointe. I touch hundreds more lives than I take! I am shaping this century. What are you doing?”

Rogers was on his feet as well, leaning across the table, nostrils flared. “Big man in a cat suit! Take that away and what’s that leave?”

“Teacher, tactician, scholar, assassin.” The Winter Soldier could feel his face falling into the dead stillness, a blankness that comes when his own anger hits its boiling point.

“So I’ve heard. I know the stories; you only do for yourself. You’re not the one to sacrifice yourself, to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you. So don’t act like you’re some kind of hero, Bucky.” He spat the childhood nickname like it was bitter on his tongue, like he was scolding a scabby-kneed kid with dreams of joining the army, like the man he was talking down to had not shed his childhood like an ill-fitting jacket and donned something darker.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” the Winter Soldier snarled.

“Enough!”

The Winter Soldier froze, one knee already planted on the table top, body poised to launch himself over the obstacle and plant the Captain’s face into the wall. Rogers relaxed out of his fighting stance, hands unclenching by degrees. Jarvis adjusted his bow tie again and resumed his seat. “Gentlemen, if you cannot remain civil I must ask you to leave. Am I clear?”

“Yes sir,” Rogers said, toneless.

“Sir.” Barnes dropped back into his seat and gripped his knees.

Chapter Text

The coronation takes place on an unseasonably warm Wednesday. Captain Rogers takes care to make sure the police force, stretched thin as they are, is a visible presence at the festivities. Pierce, the principal of the Red Room, offered to add his most senior students and a handful of his most trusted alumni to patrol the streets, but Rogers declined. The last thing he needs is trained killers masquerading as law enforcement.

“It’s bad enough that assassination is legal as long as it goes through the Red Room,” he grumbles to Officer Sam Wilson while they hash out paperwork.

“Careful what you say, Cap,” Sam warns him. “The Red Room has ears everywhere, and Pierce doesn’t like opposition. Anyone ever tell you what happened to Fury?”

“No. What happened to Fury?”

“Got the Winter Soldier sicced on him, man. That’s how he lost his eye.”

“He still seems to be breathing, though.”

“Winter raised the price on the job after he lost his arm. The commissioner wouldn’t pay it, so he dropped the mission like a hot potato. So they say.”

“How’d he lose his arm?”

“Going after Fury. Do you know that man greases his gutters and leaves bear traps under his bushes? The assassin didn’t.”

Rogers winces in spite of himself. “That’s pretty gruesome.”

“Well, the Mad Duke built him a brand spanking new arm and now Fury gets called the Pirate King behind his back, so I guess it evens out in the end. Why the sudden interest over Red Room affairs? Gonna have someone whack Fury so you can get promoted gain?”

“Gods, no! I may have pissed off the Winter Soldier the other day, and assassins are on my mind lately.”

“No one’s going to kill you without getting paid for it,” Sam assures him, folding his paperwork into a manila folder and setting it aside. “If it really bothers you, you can ask Pierce if someone put a bid on your head, but he’ll probably lie about it.”

“Great talk, Sam.” Captain Rogers stands and buckles his sword around his waist, straps his shield to his back and pulls on his helmet.

“Any time.”

The Captain and Wilson patrol the streets, looking fierce and shiny in their armor, as if they could bring order to the world through the combined efforts of righteous glaring and strong jawlines. Unbeknownst to them, the Winter Soldier and the Black Widow watch their passing from the roof of an apartment complex with dispassionate regard.

After the cops disappear from their sights, Barnes crosses his arms and huddles into himself, as if cold. “He knew me,” he mutters.

“I always knew Rogers was a, as you would say, ‘punk-ass bitch with a chip on his shoulder’ but I never pictured him turning on you that way.”

“Yeah, me neither,” he snorts. “I take it you’re making good on your assignment today?”

“What do you think I am? Tactless?” Natalia—or is it Natasha now?—rebukes him. “I’ll make my move after the coronation. I have a sneaking suspicion His Tyranny would not react favorably if I stole his thunder.”

“Are you frightened of him. Don’t roll your eyes at me, it’s an honest question.”

“Sorcery or no, he wouldn’t be able to find me if I didn’t want to be found,” she told him. “Besides, Loki of Asgard suffers from what all men suffer from, and that’s a weakness I can exploit.”

“And what does he suffer from, exactly?”

Her lips twitch, almost smiling, and she toes the edge of the roof. “A desperate need for the approval of others.” On that note she launches from the eaves and lands on the building opposite at a run. He watches her go, bemused, admiring the lithe grace of her form slicing through the city. In another life she might have been a dancer, and he might have been a hapless soldier and Steve…

No, Steve would always be a captain, he thinks. Less than three days and he finds he cannot fathom a different existence for his ex-best friend. He lets Natasha take the lead and only moves from the apartment complex roof when she disappears from sight. If another soul were to watch his departure, they might have noted that for all his grace he could never be mistaken for a dancer. Professor Barnes cuts through the city like a killing machine, like the bogeyman that haunts the restless dreams of the rich and powerful, like he could step from any high rooftop and would simply dispatch with the ground the way he would an assignment. If an observer were to watch his departure, they would have remarked that this did not make his progress any less beautiful than the Widow’s.

The coronation is a gay affair. The west side of the castle grounds was dominated by a roofed pavilion and contained by slotted walls. The area had two side doors that remained closed except in times of invasion and a wide gate, through which people continue to stream. All of Cardinal Pointe seems to gather outside the castle, chanting and singing and laughing and generally being noisome. On the castle steps Loki kneels before Tony Stark, who for once does not resort to his shallow wit but maintains a stern look as he recites the oath older than the city itself.

“Loki Laufeyson, do you swear to guard Cardinal Pointe?” Stark asks, his voice a quiet thread in the throng of the city. As if on cue, the people fall into a hush, ears straining to hear.

“I swear,” Loki promises, grim and naturally soft-spoken. For a moment, Barnes can almost fool himself into believing him a true prince, a rightful tyrant for his city. How could someone so austere and regal have once been the brother to someone so boisterous as Thor? Barnes lets his eyes wander over the other high places an assassin might wait.

“Do you swear to preserve the peace?” Stark asks, voice strong in the heavy stillness. Barnes scans the crowd and lets his body fall into a sniper’s calm. Is that Thor himself in the crowd, tall and blonde and stupidly broad? Of course it is.

But Loki does not see him. “I swear.” He does not look at the people gathered all around him, does not spare his attention for their bated breath. Unseen, Thor runs the back of his hand across his eyes and silently tries to clear his throat. The coronation is a sham, but damn it if the big brother is not choked with pride. Barnes hopes the man has the sense to disappear after the celebrations begin in earnest; there are only so many Asgardian princes the police can keep an eye on, and there is no telling how many contracts Pierce keeps on hand for foreign dignitaries.

“Do you swear to cast aside all selfish ambition for the good of the city?”

Loki does not hesitate when he answers. “I swear.” His voice sounds strong and certain, but something in his stance shifts, as if some tension leaves his spine, as if his shoulders settle a little more easily. Barnes files away that little tidbit to ruminate over later.

“Then I, Tony Stark, the hereditary Duke of Cardinal Pointe, proclaim you Tyrant of Cardinal Pointe.” He places the iron circlet on Loki’s brow. What he says next Barnes cannot hear, but he can read lips even from this distance. “You may now kiss the bride.” That startles the new tyrant into a laugh, which is lost in the cheering and clamor that follows as he rises to stand properly. Barnes lofts himself off the building and controls his fall by landing on the fire escape a few times before his boots hit the asphalt. The people mill about but even the parts of the crowd that got a head start on celebrating with beer and wine can tell he is an assassin and make way. He widens the berth with a generous application of his elbows. He did not let himself breathe a sigh of relief when Thor starts making his way out of the courtyard and not toward his brother. Thor is not the big blonde he needs to see.

Large crowds are an assassin’s best friend and a nightmare for body guards and law enforcement. A spark of panic can lead to tramplings, and in the mayhem it would be too easy to shove an unpopular bureaucrat in the path of the screaming, stomping mass. It would be so simple for a sharpshooter to leave a bullet in someone’s chest and the person would go down and be lost to the tread of boots dashing against the cobblestones.

“Fire! There’s a fire on the gate!”

Not quite ten years ago Cardinal Pointe suffered a fire that devoured half of the west side and could have undone the lynchpin city for good if not for the tyrant’s iron hold on immigration and understanding of marketing for fireproof materials. Nevertheless, the people have a long memory and a bad habit of patching holes in their roofs with pitch or straw. The crowd collects a breath laden with fear and just an edge of anticipation.

For his faults, the Captain was right on at least one thing; Barnes was no hero. Teacher, tactician, scholar and assassin, but the Winter Soldier is not one to throw himself into oncoming traffic to rescue stray dogs. The Winter Soldier does not make a show of bravery, he does not sacrifice himself, and he certainly does not light himself on fire to keep others warm. The Winter Soldier is no hero; his imagination is too canny, too lurid. A hero overcomes insurmountable odds. A hero does the Right Thing. A hero sees the all-consuming inky darkness inching across his immortal soul and resolves every day to fight that darkness, to become more than the sum of his experiences, to put others first, to bring light into dark places.

The Winter Soldier is not that. The Winter Soldier saw the darkness marring his immortal soul and dipped his hands in it, let it swallow him whole and became the monster dirty politicians tell their children about. The Winter Soldier is an asset, a killer in a black cat suit, an operative for the Red Room. Take away the cat suit and he was a teacher, tactician, scholar and assassin. Take those away and what did that leave?

James motherfucking Barnes, that’s what.

“Kids on shoulders!” he bellows. His voice cuts through the crowd like a dove through the air, fast and sharp and striking. “Kids on shoulders!” he yells again, and grabs the nearest little one, plopping her inelegantly on her father’s shoulders. “Keep your feet! Kids on shoulders!”

He can see the plume of black smoke curling over the gate, right where people would exit and would it not be just like them to run into the flames they fear? He shakes the thought away. He elbows his way to the gate, eyes straight forward, but he can pick out the adults pulling children up from the ground, can see the shuffle of people waiting for what comes next from his peripheral vision. A tall man with his stupid round shield also makes his way to the fire, a dark lieutenant following in his wake, and Barnes suppressed the quiver of displeasure worming across his awareness. “Evacuate the premises!” the Captain barks at his lieutenant. “You can open the pavilion side doors, kick ‘em down if you need to. Deputize as many civilians as you need to get it done!”

“Sir!”

That yellow-haired fucker is going to get himself killed, and he did not even realize. Barnes unhooks his favorite handgun from his belt and fires just in front of where the Captain’s feet were going to step. “Don’t move!”

Someone in the crowd squeals, leading to a general susurrus of displeasure rippling through the people gathered behind them. Rogers pauses and glares at him. If looks could kill…well, Barnes’ job would be easier. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Get back.”

“If the fire catches the pavilion roof-!”

“It won’t. It’s a controlled burn. Get back. Now!” The back of his neck prickles just in time for him to roll out of the path of a bullet. Another bullet screams by with a pop but hits Rogers’ shield and pings away.

“What the hell?!” he snaps again.

“Get down!” Barnes barks. He presses himself to the stone, tucked between a pillar and the wall. Rogers adopts a similar position, shield raised. Barnes rolls his eyes and reaches for the smoke bombs in his back pocket. He lobs two of them into the walkway over the gate and waits for the blue smoke to do its work and send the shooter into his path. Of course, it only half works; one bomb goes off without a problem but the other sails right back where it started. Lone wolf civilians trying to get in the killing business would panic, so this must be an assassin.

“Fucker!” he muttered and dives out of the way, sleeve pressed over his nose, eyes streaming, wishing vainly for his filtered mask and tinted goggles. Blind and coughing he would be easy picking for the assassin on the gate, but a hand grabs him by the collar and yanks him behind a round brass shield.

“Breathe!” Rogers hisses.

“Ain’t exactly an asthma attack, asshole,” he grits out. “The worst is over.”

Rogers smirks to himself. “Kiss your mother with that mouth, Buck?”

“So what’s the plan here?” Barnes glares at the place where the assassin had yet to appear. The bastard probably has a mask and goggles to counter the fire smoke and any unfriendly bombs. He thinks of Natasha but bats the thought away. Focus.

“I have an idea,” Rogers tells him. More gunfire rings out, this time not aimed at them but at Sam as he kicks down one of the side gates.

“I’m all ears.”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I don’t have to like it if it gets us out of this mess,” he grits out. And then Steve, bless him but he must be touched in the head because Steve throws his thrice damned shield. “You’re right! I hate this plan!” he snaps over the sound of the shield ricocheting and coming into violent contact with a body on the overhead walkway of the pavilion. No sooner does the shield leave his hands than another round of gunfire hails down on them, but they’re already moving for higher ground. Bucky can hear the shield hit the walkway above with a sad gloing! gloing!, like a metal pan lid dropped on a kitchen floor as he climbs the rope the assassin left behind. Steve shimmies up behind him.

“Two shooters,” he says as he clambers over the white walkway railing, careful to keep himself low to the ground so the second shooter cannot see him.

“Yeah, and our fire starter rabbited,” Bucky growls at the empty wall. He squints down into the crowd, but the gunfire has fallen silent and everyone seems to be screaming and milling about. Steve hunches down beside him, eyes skimming the pavilion below for an assassin. Sam manages to get a door open by knocking it clean off its hinges and the people nearly trample each other in their rush to leave. Idiots.

“They didn’t get Loki, though,” Steve reminds him with a sigh. Bucky groans and slaps his flesh hand over his eyes.

“You idiot, they didn’t want Loki. If they wanted to whack him, he’d be whacked. Game over. That’s all folks.” Some of the castle servants scurry to the smoldering gate wall with a long hose and douse it.

“Then who…?”

“They wanted you, dingus,” the Winter Soldier tells him. “You might as well paint a red, white and blue target on your nice round shield, because from now until you die you’re living in hell.” He claps him on the shoulder and has to look away from the rictus of horror that has become Steve’s face. “Let me know how that works out for you.”

This is the part where the Winter Soldier dissolves into the shadows. This is the part where he lobs himself over the railing, maybe with some kind of sassy sideways flip, and lands silently on the ground and mingles back into the crowd. This is where the assassin leaves the Red Room to its work, his civic duty to the mass of innocent collateral damage finished. This is where Bucky Barnes dies again, where he falls to his death, where the Winter Soldier makes himself known to who will undoubtedly become his adversary when Pierce decides his first assassination attempt went sour. He stands to go, but a warm hand wraps around his wrist.

"Wait."

“What?” he snaps.

“You saved my life. Let me buy you a drink.”

When he looks back at him, eyebrow raised, the captain’s face radiates nothing but earnestness. He could shake his hand off his wrist and make a clean get away, but something in him stills.

Chapter Text

Bucky totters dangerously on his barstool but somehow manages not to displace a single drop of beer. “Okay, okay, okay,” he gabbles, annunciating clearly through his drunken haze. “Truth or dare?”

Steve squints at him before taking a fortifying draught of his own beer and slams the tankard on the table hard enough to make the other patrons jump. “Truth.”

“How come. How come. Blerg, how come you never wrote me back?”

He frowns. “What?”

“You never wrote me back, after you went to Harbinger Bay.”

He scrapes his hand through his yellow hair. “What are you talking ‘bout, Buck?”

Bucky slaps his metal hand on the table, rattling both of their drinks and making the patrons in their immediate vicinity inch away. “Don’t bullshit me, Rogers! I wrote you, and you never wrote me back. I thought we were friends!” He leans over the table and hisses, “I thought we were like brothers!”

Steve pushes Bucky back to his side of the table with his index finger. “Shuddup. What are you even. What are you. Shuddup. I did write back, moron. Even when your letters quit coming I wrote you every week, like clockwork. Never got a single response for all my trouble. I thought you died. Maybe you fell off a train or something.”

“Don’t lie to me, that’s not how you play Truth or Dare, punk.”

“’M not lying, jerk.”

Bucky drains his tankard and scoots it out of elbow range. “Never got your letters, Stevie. How many did you write me?”

Steve rubs at his mouth and glares at the table. “Truth or Dare?”

He grins and plants his elbows on the table, cups his chin in his hands. “Don’t be shy. How many letters? I’m not as good as you—I stopped when you went to Erskine. I figured you died on the table. But you never give up, do you? Captain Rogers leaves no man behind,” he sniggers.

“Fuck you!”

“Hoo-ah!”

“Stop it!”

“C’mon, baby,” Bucky wheedles. He forgot how good it was to get plastered in a bar. He forgot how good it was to sit across an old friend who did not openly plot how best to kill him. “How many letters? I won’t laugh. Promise. How long did you carry a torch for me?”

“You’re a real asshole, you know that? Huh? Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.”

“Oh thank gods. I dare you to buy me another round, thanks.”

Bucky shambles to the bar and orders another couple beers. The bartender looks him up and down. “I think you’ve had enough, buddy.”

“But I neeeeeeeed these,” the assassin wails.

The bartender has shaggy dirty blonde hair, a square kind of face and a nose that has seen the business side of a fist one too many times. He also has an air of complete indifference to Bucky’s plight, but the side of his mouth tips upward after a moment. He pushes a slender purple dart into his flesh hand and pats it. “I’ll buy you the next round myself if you can land that dart in that bulls eye from here.”

The barflies who had been watching the proceedings sneak away from the dartboard. Steve giggles into his hands, delighted by this turn of events even though he falls solidly off his stool and lands on the sticky floor with a thump. Bucky sways on his feet and rolls the dart between his fingers. His pink tongue slowly creeps out from between his teeth as he takes aims and tosses the dart.

“You missed,” the increasingly familiar-looking bartender remarks.

“What? No! Fuck you, look!” Bucky rallies.

Steve crawls to his feet and shambles to the wall, where the dart landed easily three feet from the board. “Well I’ll be,” he breathes. He plucks the dart from the wall and brings it to the bartender, who squints at the fly on the end, its wing impaled and its legs wiggling.

“Lucky shot!” the bartender scoffs.

“Eat my entire ass!” Bucky hoots, punching the air but leaning mostly across the bar to do it. “Next round! On you!”

“Steeeeeeeeevie,” Bucky whines, his voice deceptively loud in the silent street.

“Shhhh!”

“I think the guy poisoned me. I don’t. I. I don’t feel good.”

“Where are we... Bucky. Hey, Buck.” His friend presses a hand to his lips, a strangely demure motion for a ruthless killer for hire, turns toward the bushes and empties his stomach for the second time that night. Steve waits for him to finish. “Bucky. Where are we going, anyway?”

“Guh,” he grumbled, scrubbing a handkerchief across his mouth. “Red Room. ‘Swhere I live.”

“Not a good place for me to be, I think.”

“Nng. You’re right. Police station, then?”

“Sam’ll arrest us for giggles,” Steve predicts. He clutches at Bucky’s elbow and steers him around the corner. “I got a place. Wee little ‘partment. You can. You can. Can stay over if you want.”

“Pull out the couch cushions on the floor.” Bucky staggers and tips dangerously, but regains his balance with a little intervention from Steve. “Like when we were kids.”

“You don’t have to stay over. If you don’t. If you don’t want.”

Bucky sways again, this time pushing Steve against a rough brick wall. He pins him there, broad and heavy and smelling like stale beer and vomit. The metal arm gleams gold in the flickering street light. “Better trained men than I want to put you in the ground, punk.”

“I can handle myself,” Steve grunts. Was Bucky always this warm?

“You don’t have to.” His voice drops soft and low, quiet in the shared breath between them. “I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.” And then he slaps his flesh hand against Steve’s cheek, grinning. “Move out, soldier.”

“I thought we were having a thing. A moment there. Slow down; you don’t even know where I live.”

This is what Bucky must never find out:

Steve never stopped writing him letters. After a hard shift or a bad day, Steve would take a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and get writing. Over the years he spilled his guts out to a Bucky who would never read those words in letters he would never send. After seeing Bucky again in that meeting, the crushing realization that his best friend had become a killer, Steve went home and did the only thing he could think to do. He wrote to him.

I can’t even believe you. His pen skittered across the page. You’re alive after all this time, but what have you become? At what cost? He hammered out two full pages, front and back, and at the end he had tucked them in the bottom of his footlocker with the other letters he never sent but was too headstrong to dispose of them. Or too sappy. How many times did he want to give these letters to Bucky? To bind them together with a length of twine and just shove them in his arms, even knowing that on the off chance he was still around, his childhood friend would be less than receptive.

But Bucky is alive, and he still likes Steve well enough to drink with him and keep him from being terminated, and now they are drunkenly letting themselves into his apartment. Bucky is alive and swaying and taking in his wee little apartment with hungry eyes, casing it out, taking in the security.

“Security’s a joke. I could probably shoot you through these paper thin walls without even having to look.” He sinks into the threadbare couch and wriggles for a moment.

Bucky is here, in Steve’s home, and he must never get into his footlocker ever because there are some things that don’t bear explaining.

Steve brushes his teeth and when he finishes, he tosses his toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste at Bucky, who still manages to snatch them out of the air despite the haze of drunkenness hanging about him. “Got somethin’ to say, Rogers?”

“You reek like puke, jerk. Clean up.”

Bucky turns the toothbrush between his fingers. “Ain’t it kinda domestic to share a toothbrush?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Extremely domestic, but lucky for us puking in the gutter’s the antidote an’ we already done that. Brush ‘em.”

“Sir yessir.”

Before they go to bed, Bucky does a quick sweep of the apartment, checking for any traps or clues an assassin before them might have left. Steve falls asleep before he finishes, body lax on top of the comforter, mouth parted. Bucky curls up on the foot of the bed, sets his brain into surveillance-while-sleeping mode and keeps his gun close at hand as he drifts into a dreamless sleep.

The Red Room trains its assassins to withstand excruciating torture and develop tolerances for even the most dangerous toxins. That said, Natasha Romanoff might be immune to hangovers, but James Barnes is not. Hands shaking, he unfolds himself from the foot of Steve’s bed, checks to make sure the pillow over Steve’s face had not suffocated him in the night, and pads into the kitchen. He chokes down no fewer than three glasses of tap water before rifling through the cupboards. Any concerns about poisoning he might have had are laid to rest: Steve has a loaf of stale bread, a box of saltines and two cans of tomato soup, presumably to keep the saltines company.

He stabs a slit into one of the can and alternates glugging down red broth with crunching through crackers until the soup is gone and the box is noticeably lighter. A guzzles another glass of water before sneaking back into the bedroom, where Steve is still alive.

And this is where it falls apart, because the Red Room is a boarding school for assassins in training, and one of the things Bucky learned as a young man was that other students were not to be trusted. Boundaries mean nothing when your despondent roommate might be hanging on to some arsenic for a special occasion, or might rig a tripwire to set all your earthly belongings on fire when you return from class. As a result, Bucky learned to be nosey. Specifically, he learned to shamelessly, but discretely, go through other people’s things when they are looking the other way.

Steve’s closet turned out to be full of clothes, and completely lacking in the secret compartment department. His desk proved to be depressingly office-like, full of paper, staples, white out, pens, the works. He hoped his old friend—new friend?—might have an interesting hobby and keep maybe a riding crop in one of the drawers, or lacey garters or something. All work and no play, he thought to himself even as he ran a finger across the underside of the desk. His nail never caught on the edge of a hidden drawer. Such a shame.

Steve did not go in for many things in his home, but the last thing left unchecked would be the footlocker he had tried and failed to subtly kick under the bed. This last Bucky drags silently into the open. He fishes a paperclip from the desk and unbends it before applying it to the lock and…

Steve sleeps through the soft click of the lock opening. Bucky eases the lid open, thankful that it does not squeak, and picks through the contents. There is a pair of old boots, a rifle, a copper badge from another city, a lovingly folded outfit that has the cut of a uniform but the dappled greens and browns of the jungle. There are paperback books permanently damaged by rain water and singed by fire, but even in their dismal state Bucky can tell two of them are science fiction and the third is poetry. There is a sketchbook and a set of pencils that look like they have not been touched in a long, long time. And there is a stack of papers at the very bottom where a false bottom would not go unmissed, thank you very much. Watching Steve for any indication that he might be awake, Bucky eases the stack out from under the sketchbook and skims the top page.

He stops dead for a moment, then skims it again just to be sure. The nearly imperceptible change in Steve’s breathing breaks him from his reverie and he slides two pages from the middle of the stack of letter and tucks them under his shirt before replacing everything back in the footlocker the way it was. He snaps the lock shut and tucks the whole thing under the bed just as Steve shifts and grunts and rolls over, looking pale and shaky and unhappy. Bucky grins at him.

“Good morning, Cap.”

Steve pulled a pillow back over his face. “Just kill me yourself and be done with it. Can’t be worse than this hangover.”

“That’s the spirit.”

Chapter Text

This is just to say                         I wanted to tell you

You

I wanted to transform myself. And I did. Erskine saw to that. I lived a whole life without you. I helped Peggy found the Howlies out in Harbinger Bay, and I learned to use a shield like a weapon, and I made a name for myself. What I mean is I went out in the world and I lived without you, but I never forgot you. Not once. Not ever. You were in my thoughts when I went on my first date, and when Dum Dum taught me how to shave, and I thought of you the first time I nearly died in the field and the last time I nearly died on my sickbed.

But I always imagined you the way you were. You were a kid, but always larger than life. How old were we? 11? 12? But I never stopped thinking of you as bigger and stronger than me, even when I got taller than I had any right to be.

When you walked in that room with Natasha, I thought I saw a ghost. It was you. I’d know you anywhere. And the first stupid thought that came to mind was that I’m somehow taller than you are.

How wild is that? You were dressed all in black, Kevlar and leather, and I know you think you’re sneaky with that knife you keep strapped to your forearm under your sleeve but it’s not fooling anyone, pal. You were dressed all in black and leather and Kevlar, the most obvious assassin in the world next to Natasha, and you know my second thought? How will I ever get used to a shorter Bucky?

And you let your hair grow long. Never saw that coming. Is it better with longer hair? Do you get cold when it snows? I would think long hair is a liability in the field but Natasha seems to like her hair long so it can’t be too bad.

But I built you up like a mountain in my brain and then I meet you again and we’re strangers. It’s terrible. I lived a whole life without you, and I forgot that you did too. You have this entire history I know nothing about and this whole rapport with Natasha and I’m a stranger in my own hometown.

You don’t   I want to say you don’t measure up to my expectations, but that’s not right. I expected you to be a grocer. Can you believe I actually haunted the fruit stands and veg markets near every day when I came back, hoping to get a glimpse of you? Was I off by a mile. Here you are in the killing business (and I hear business is booming) with a whole history behind you that I could never be part of, and a whole future ahead of you that I don’t know if I want to be p

I want to start again, but I don’t think you’d go in for that. There’s too much       There’s too little  It’s too weird between us. Cops and assassins are natural enemies. Natasha says she liaises with us just so we don’t forget it and I know that if we never knew each other I’d be arresting you for something and you’d be plotting to kill me for something and it would be a whole mess.

But we do know        You know I came to visit Cardinal Pointe about 2 years ago? I saw the Barneses and they seem to be doing okay, but any time I asked after you they got all quiet and all they would say is that you were dead to them and I took that to mean you must be really dead, because Mama Barnes would never willfully disown her James.

I am sorry about Rebecca. I wanted to    I should have been h     I would have come if I knew. I would have gone to your place and we’d put the couch cushions on the floor like we did when we were kids. We’d drink and eat sweets until we got sick and we’d not think about anything terrible and it would be like it was only not at all because that’s not how life works. I want 

I have a place in town now, a wee little apartment that was Peggy’s when she was staying in Cardinal Pointe. The landlord doesn’t charge too much because he likes seeing cops around the place. He thinks it keeps the neighborhood quiet. Here comes the neighborhood har har. If we knew each other I’d show you it but the neighbors would get nervous with an assassin about the place. And I don’t know you half as well as I think I do, but I know you would never use the front door you’d rather jimmy the window open and climb along the drainpipe to get in and that would give Miss Terrybottom fits. I wonder if you ever think of leaving the Red Room? Do you ever want to move out? Maybe somewhere you keep an apartment of your own where you don’t have to be an assassin or a teacher, where you can just be Bucky and pretend to lead a normal life? But maybe you don’t.

“Professor Barnes, what are you reading?”

Barnes sighs to himself and folds the letter back into quarters and turns to his student. Jiminy is ten years old, absurdly young by Red Room standards, but the son of a prestigious overseas diplomat and rather good at literacy if not ballistic knife throwing. The classroom, empty save for the two of them, has begun to grow dim and the shadows are long and comfortable for the habitually sneaky. “The ramblings of a fool. Is there something you need?” He drops the letter in the top drawer with no intention of leaving it there when he leaves. Some things are better to keep on one’s person.

The lad shakes his head. “Professor Underwood wanted me to tell you to visit her office when you have a spare moment, if you would be so kind.” He speaks carefully, no doubt having been on the receiving end of Professor Underwood’s displeasure in the past. The woman has a flare for the dramatic and a certain sense of propriety for precise language. Even when he was a student, she made Barnes’ skin crawl.

“I’ll be with her presently,” he assures Jiminy. “Have you been practicing your archery this week?”

“Yessir.”

“That’s good. Off you go.” He watches Jiminy go and then retrieves the letter, tucking it under his shirt and carefully does not think of symbolic acts or the way the paper crinkles against his skin. Though he hates to admit it, there are some people that do not do to keep waiting and he marches out into the hall and down the stairs.

In a cloak-and-dagger world, Dottie Underwood at once blends in seamlessly and sticks out, not unlike a whole priced item at a fire sale. Dirty politicians and despotic kleptocrats never put bogeymen in their children’s closets, preferring to put practical monsters there instead, usually assassins. And then these parents, after putting the fear of the Red Room into their progeny, send the petrified children to study at the Red Room, often with the comforting epithet about dog-eat-dog worlds. There is a method to this madness: the greatest threat to a politician’s (and their family’s) health is an assassin, and sending a treasured son or daughter to the Red Room (with a sizeable donation) can afford such a person a measure of safety. Of course, no one stops to think that the greatest threat to an assassin’s health is other assassins, with the second greatest being officers of the law, and the third a tie between large heights and heart disease. The children of dirty politicians and despotic kleptocrats live in fear of bogeymen dressed all in black Kevlar, but find themselves becoming the very things they fear most. What, then, is left for them to fear?

Dottie Underwood, that’s what. A powerful man has nightmares of assassins, and Dotty Underwood is what assassins have nightmares about. A powerful man, if felled by an assassin, will never hear it coming, and probably will never see it coming, either. An assassin, when felled by a Dottie Underwood, will see it coming miles away. The last words many a dead assassin hears are “Oh gosh! Will you look at that! Butter fingers!” or “Golly I am so sorry!” or “Oh no!  Not again!” right before she slides her Katana from between their ribs.

The worst part is that Professor Underwood does not even have a codename. During her hay day, she just adopted a generic first and last name, slid into whatever role she needed to get the job done, and then cheerfully terminated her target. Some said that Dottie Underwood wasn’t even her real name. Some said even she didn’t know her real name. In any case, Pierce tried to assign her the codename Agony Aunt, and the she did what she usually did, which was smile and nod and agree until she got what she wanted. Agony Aunt never caught on, but her favorite students took to calling her Aunt Dottie. Natasha just called her Auntie—an epithet that would never cease to make Barnes give a full body shudder.

Anyone meeting Professor Underwood for the first time would notice this: a cheery woman past her prime, in her late forties, maybe early fifties, with a bright red mouth, lavender eyeshadow, carefully manicured nails. She would speak in cheery, mellifluous tones, and most of her sentences would end in an upturn, putting question marks at the end of every statement. “I just love love love what you’ve done with the place? I’ve heard that Harbinger Bay is just fantastic? I would prefer some sugar in my tea, if you would be so very kind?” A person meeting Professor Underwood would notice the way she downplays herself in every way, peppering her speech with minimizers like just and maybe and very. Underwood never talks about the way things are, but how she feels about them, as in “I just feel like it’s very warm today? I noticed that Mr. Pierce can be quite brusque and I feel like maybe it makes him seem a little unapproachable? I feel like the perfect end to a day is a hot bubble bath and some chilled wine, don’t you agree?” She smiles winsomely at every joke she hears, and never laughs but she chortles, “Aha ha ha!” She forgets little things regularly, and punctuates her non-mistakes with words like “Oopsy-daisy!” and “Golly!” and “My goodness me!” A person meeting her for the first time would walk away thinking her sweet as a candy dish and shallow as the same, right until the moment she plants a salad fork in their jugular and the last words they hear is a litany of “Oh my goodness me! Will you just look at that? Ah ha ha ha, I’m so sorry, but I feel like red really isn’t your color?” Unfortunately, garlic, wooden stakes, and holy relics did nothing to deter her, so Barnes had to walk into her office armed with nothing but his wits and nearly a decade of experience to protect him.

Pierce gave her an office in the basement of the building, presumably because his office was on the topmost floor and the more space between him and her red mouth and lavender eyeshadow the better. She kept a small but neat office, with walls meant to be lavender but in the dimness looked like the color of a fresh bruise, purple and sullen. Framed photos line her desk, and an unwary bystander would imagine that the fluffy kitties and puppies were pets of hers, the grinning children and laughing adults her kin. Some assassins collected trophies, but even the worst of the worst took only teeth or scalps or made clothing out of their victims’ flesh. Dottie Underwood took their photos, the happier the better. Her desk drawers house photo albums choked with the smiles and laughter of her victims during the best days of their lives. The framed photos are the worst because Underwood was especially proud of those jobs: cherished pets that simply had to meet with grisly demises, a young woman on her wedding day with her eyes sparkling who knew too much, a gentleman leaning on his cane and twirling his mustache who made one too many questionable decisions regarding his sizeable investments, a toddler playing in a pile of autumn leaves who should have grown up to run his father’s expanding business. This is what Steve thinks of when he looks at me, Barnes realizes, and tears his eyes from the pictures to look at Underwood’s too-wide eyes and too-sweet smile.

“Why, James! Do have a seat? It’s such a pleasure to see you?”

Barnes drops into the chair opposite her gruesome mortuary of a desk and braces himself for the worst. “You needed to meet with me?”

“Pierce said you have been interfering with the Rogers commission and he wanted to know why? So I told him I would look into it?” She tips her head when she speaks, looking almost child-like. He knows it is meant to be endearing. His gut clenches.

“I have done nothing of the sort, I assure you,” he lies, and he sounds certain. He will not emulate the way she talks and make everything a question. He won’t.

“Oh, James,” she sighs. Underwood folds her hands and lays them on her desk like a child at prayer, but such a gesture between assassins is as good as an olive branch. She may or may not be unarmed, but there is no knife in her hands now, no syringe heavy with poison waiting for an unguarded moment on his part. “Is this sentiment?” and just like that the façade has fallen. She does not bat her eyes or simper, and he suspects she is looking for an honest answer.

“It isn’t a debt,” he admits. Assassins understand about debt. Loyalty is something of a shaky subject for some, but debts are easily acquired, ubiquitous, poisonous. He grapples for what it is that places him between Steve Rogers and oblivion, but comes up only with a handful of winters in a cold apartment while a sickly boy wheezed through the night, and a handful of summers spent running through the streets of Cardinal Pointe armed with sticks and balls and the innocence of a fragile childhood. “Call it investment.”

“Sentiment,” Underwood repeats, eyes flinty. Sentiment is one of those things the Red Room does its best to drum out of its pupils. Monks shave their heads and eschew earthly pleasures for their line of work. Assassins shave in front of a mirror with a good view of the room behind them and eschew most if not all human relationships. Even pets are not safe. Barnes pulls his eyes from the photo of a gamboling housecat and watches Underwood’s face. “Do you think you can save him?” she asks.

“I haven’t much choice.”

She taps her fingernails against the desk, dissatisfied. “This is a distraction, one with a greater than average chance of getting you killed. There is no happily ever after for you if you choose to pursue this beyond its logical end. Let Rogers go.”

He clenches his jaw and gets to his feet in a single smooth movement. “If that is all, madam?”

 “James, be reasonable. You have to be lucky a hundred times, where we need only be lucky once.”

“I never knew you cared so much for my wellbeing.”

She raises a single eyebrow and her mouth twitches like she badly wants to smile. “You speak of investment. The Red Room is deeply invested in you, Professor Barnes. Your work has been a gift to mankind. Did you not know I was on the committee that approved your scholarship? And now you’re going to throw your life away, and for what? A handsome copper?” She spits the word copper like it were a particularly vile slur. “I’ll grant you, he looks quite fine in chainmail,” she tacks on with some of her usual girlish aplomb seeping into her tone before being washed away by the next thought. “But he’s still a copper, and a captain at that. He’ll arrest you at the drop of a hat, James; that’s what the title ‘captain’ means. Do you think this…this affection you hold for him will be returned? Do you think risking your life for him during this foolish undertaking will earn points in your favor if the police catch you about your business?”

Barnes shakes his head, as much in answer as to shake off the feeling of being a scolded child. “I don’t do it for brownie points or favors or to put debts in others’ ledgers,” he growls. And he is so far out of line he should really be on the other side of the door—no one speaks to the Agony Aunt like this and lives, but some fevered madness compels him to continue. “I do it because, call it a difference of opinion, but Steve Rogers deserves to live as much as any of us if not more.”

“Tough cookies,” Underwood tuts. “None of us deserves to live, like it’s some kind of cosmic participation ribbon. We are born, we live, we die. Some sooner than others, and if one man’s death makes another man wealthy, that is between only the assassin, the target and their gods. So no, your blond beau doesn’t deserve to live; he doesn’t have a right to live that makes him more special than any of the missions you’ve taken over the course of your career.”

“He’s not my beau,” Barnes hears himself say as if from a great distance, because Underwood’s onslaught has short circuited his brain.

“Bully for you.” Underwood leans back in her chair and her hands disappear from view. Now is as good a time as ever to make a hasty retreat. “Stay away from coppers!” she calls after his retreating back, her voice once again saccharine sweet and hinting at bodily violence. Barnes walks just a bit faster.