Chapter Text
“Wait here.”
Bucky was looking at her blankly. Ava held out a hand in the universal ‘stay’ motion. “Wait.”
One of his eyes twitched below the mask.
She moved backwards. Bucky stayed put.
Thank fuck. She wasn’t sure exactly how much he understood her. He seemed to get anything that she phrased as an order, which was great for getting him back to New York but supremely awkward in essentially every other aspect. Bucky had always been the de facto leader of the team, so him following her around like a lost duckling was not something she was enjoying. And he only ever responded to her in Russian.
She moved further back.
“Um,” Bill raised his hand from over by the quantum pod he and Pym had built while she was gone. “Please don’t leave him here.”
“Why not?” Ava turned to him, smiling innocently. “He’s friendly!”
“ Ne lgi, prizrak .” Bucky said. The mask distorted his voice unnaturally and made it come out as a monotone growl.
“See!”
“He’s an infamous assassin,” Pym interjected.
“A friendly infamous assassin.” Her smile spasmed as a sharp pain shot up the side of her neck. “How’s that pod going?”
“Nearly complete,” Bill nodded along with the change in topic seamlessly. “Should be up and running in a couple hours.”
“Perfect timing. I need to go check on something.”
“It won’t end with you bringing back another fugitive assassin, will it?” Bill asked dryly.
“Um…” Ava squinted, mentally calculating the likelihood of running into Alexei or Yelena. “I don’t… think so?”
Bill stared at her, radiating fatherly disappointment. Ava shrugged helplessly. She couldn’t help that all of her friends had dark and checkered pasts.
Not including Walker. Because Walker was not her friend.
Although she did suppose, if it could be considered far enough in the past, that his stint as Captain America could count. It was definitely checkered.
“Anyway, he shouldn’t move from this spot, so just watch him and make sure he doesn’t go anywhere! Thanks!” Ava turned and jumped through the wall before she could hear Pym and Bill finish their incredulous shouts.
Luckily, unlike in Berlin, Ava didn’t need a map to figure out where to go. Avengers Tower was looming over the other skyscrapers. The logo had long since been repaired from a broken ‘Stark’ to just the iconic ‘A’ that had become a symbol of the group. Ava wasn’t sure whether to credit the reconstruction efforts to the amount of time she had been there or to Stark’s technology.
… She wasn’t even entirely sure how long she’d been back in 2012.
The days had all been blurring together- on the plane, jumping warehouses, searching for every scrap of information possible to get Bucky back.
She was exhausted.
She was also, she decided, not going to think about that. She wasn’t done yet. She’d worry about rest when she was done.
Unfortunately, Avengers Tower was a maze- and very few of the rooms had retained their function from 2012 to 2027 when the Thunderbolts had moved in. She remembered the general layout, but rooms she thought were storage turned out to be barracks and rooms she thought were barracks turned out to be laboratories and-
She was lost. In short.
Fortunately, her phasing appeared to make her extremely difficult to track through the hallways. Although this assumption was based purely on the lack of SHIELD guards chasing her down in the corridors or Stark’s AI voice following her.
It took far too long to find someone.
And when she did, it was simultaneously someone she was looking for and exactly who she wasn’t.
“Woah!” Steve Rogers reared backwards as Ava phased through the wall right next to him. He fell into a defensive stance.
“Good instincts.” She complimented.
“Uh. Thanks.” His fists unclenched a bit, lowering. “Who are you?”
“A friend. Black Ops SHIELD Operative, Agent 836.” Technically gone rogue. But how would he know that. “I’ve been sent in for my specializations regarding a new containment, possible threat. Happen to know where the new guy is?”
His brow furrowed for a moment. “A black ops agent, you say? And your specialty is in interrogation?”
“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” She said impatiently.
He glanced between her and the wall that she had just walked out of. “...Not theft?”
Ava stiffened. “I’m not sure what you’re implying.”
Rogers raised his hands in self-defense. “Nothing bad. Just trying to figure out if you’re looking for the Sentry-” he raised an eyebrow at her. “- or Bob Reynolds.”
Ava winced. “So he is here.”
“Oh good. You are who Walker was talking about.” Rogers relaxed completely, which caught Ava a bit off guard. That was not the usual response to people confirming her identity. Usually it was fear, if they actually knew who she was. “Looking for him?”
“... No.” She hadn’t even known Walker was here. “I was looking for Bob.”
“Helpfully for us, they should be in the same direction.” He held out a hand to shake, the picture of a good Samaritan. “Steve Rogers.”
She made no attempt to reach out. It was all too likely that she’d phase through him anyway. “Ava. Walker’s been talking about me?”
“He has.”
“Figures. He never really got the concept of secret identities and black ops work.” She sighed, running a hand through her hair.
“I’m sure he wouldn’t need to be familiar,” Rogers said easily, dropping his hand, “since he was pretty publicly Captain America.”
Ava froze. “Are you kiddi- how much did he tell you?”
“Quite a bit.” Rogers looked like he was repressing a laugh. “But he wasn’t even the first to tell us. Bob dropped the whole ‘time-travel’ concept on us. Walker just corroborated.” He began walking, and after a moment Ava followed. Might as well see where this goes. “But,” Rogers continued, “I suppose we didn’t really believe Bob until Sentry.”
“You’ve seen him?” Ava felt cold all over. She’d seen the name in the files and made her assumptions, of course, but the idea that Steve Rogers had actually met Sentry made it all the more real. “That’s not good.”
“Bob seemed to agree. That’s why Walker is here. He needed… ‘emotional support’, he said?”
“And he chose Walker ?” Ava laughed harshly.
“Hey!” A familiar voice snapped.
Ava blinked, turning her attention ahead of them- where they had caught up, it seemed, to Walker.
“You stupid idiot.” She scoffed. “You told them?”
Walker threw his hands up in exasperation. “They already knew!”
“And don’t give me that, you can’t deny it’s weird. Out of everyone, Bob called you ?”
“Thanks.” Walker said flatly. “Glad you have so much faith in me.”
“I have exactly none.” Ava confirmed. “Why didn’t he call Yelena?”
Rogers raised a hand beside her like a schoolkid with a question. “Who’s Yelena?”
“You don’t think,” Walker interrupted, “that there could be potential problems with asking the Avengers for Yelena ?”
“Wh- oh.” Ava winced. “I guess I didn’t think of that.”
“Clearly.”
“Shut up. Have you met up with the others?”
Walker’s small smile faded. “No. No one besides Bob. You?”
“Yeah, I’ve got-” Her eyes darted over to the current Captain America. “I’ve got the, uh… congressman.”
Walker snorted. “ Congressman . Dare you to call him that to his face.”
“Absolutely not.”
“And how is the congressman?”
Ava lightly tapped her forehead with her middle finger. “Under. But getting better. I think he woke up too, under the program.”
“Yikes.” Walker winced. “You should take the Boy Scout over there to him.”
Steve Rogers startled as Ava and Walker turned to him as one. “Wha- who?”
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Ava asked, ignoring him. “He’s not all there yet.”
“Cap dragged him out of it last time, didn’t he?” Walker shrugged. “That’s the way he described it, anyway.”
Ava nodded decisively. “I’ll try it. How about it, Captain America? You willing to go on a little field trip to help a friend of mine?”
“Uh,” Rogers frowned. “Do I get more information than that?”
“Not yet.” Ava replied. “Don’t want you acting irrationally. But you can bring a friend or something, if that makes you feel better.”
Rogers seemed to ponder this for a moment before nodding. “Alright. I’ll grab a comm, let the others know I’m going out. They’ll still be in reach if things get dicey-” He looked at them pointedly, as if it would be Ava’s hypothetical fault that things got hypothetically dicey. “-but if I can really help someone, I’ll go.”
“Great.” Ava nodded. “Walker, can you tell Bob that I was here? Maybe… don’t let him know about my friend yet, though. I don’t want to get his hopes up in case we can’t break him from the programming. Not while he’s already heading towards a drop.”
“Probably a good idea.” Walker nodded. “Meet up with us when you’re done.”
“Of course. Rogers?” She returned to the wall she came from, intending to walk straight back through. “I’ll meet you out front.”
He smiled grimly. “Meet you there.”