Chapter Text
In the three years since he was defrosted Steve has seen a lot: smartphones, the internet, the vaccine for polio, and an alien invasion. The latter being terrifying. The future was good, great even. What wasn’t great was Steve. In those three years he realized just how much he missed the 40s and everyone in them. Mostly of Peggy and Bucky.
He’s mostly mad at himself for not being able to go to Bucky’s funeral. Crashing the Valkyrie into the Arctic hadn’t included surviving in his plan, thus no regret. Now he wishes he had come up with an actual plan, one that meant going home in the end, going dancing with Peggy, burying Bucky, marrying Peggy, having kids with Peggy, growing old… with Peggy. At least he’s with her now he figures. Even though on most days she has no idea who he is.
Steve had thought that moving to DC was the best option for him, he’d be close to Pegs and to SHIELD. Every night was the same though, dream about Bucky. Not the one he knew last, the light hearted, fun loving Bucky, before the war got to him. He tries so hard not to think of him during the war, which only leads to Steve waking up crying. Most nights he does exactly that though. When he was living in New York he visited Bucky’s headstone, hoping it could give him some kind of closure, it never did.
Steve’s week has been a mess. He makes a new friend (?), he gets a little action on a boat which turns into a lot of action, comes back to DC, and now someone is in his apartment. You’d think Captain America would have all his weeks look like this, but no, not lately.
The music coming from his apartment is familiar to him, one of his records. He climbs in through a window, quietly creeping through his own home so he doesn’t alert his unwelcomed guest. Grabbing his shield from where he leaned it against the wall after the boat incident, he peeks around the corner only to see Nick Fury of all people. Just casually sitting in his chair, listening to his record player…. In the dark?
“I don’t remember giving you a key” he says as he starts to relax a bit. Only a bit though because what the fuck is the Director of SHIELD doing in his apartment at this time of night just sitting in the dark?!
Fury sits up straighter in the chair, “you really think I’d need one” he starts, “my wife kicked me out”.
That kind of throws him for a loop, “didn’t know you were married”. Since when had Fury been married? All this time or just recently?
“A lot of things you don’t know about me” Fury spits out.
Steve huffs and goes to turn on the lamp next to Fury when he says, “I know, that’s the problem”. He flicks the light on, Fury looks like he’s been through hell. He just mimes for Steve to be quiet, holding his finger to his closed lips. The light is off again. Fury begins typing something into his phone, then turns it to show Steve: EARS EVERYWHERE. That startles him, he suddenly feels very uneasy. “I’m sorry I had to do this but I had no place else to crash” is all Fury says. So I guess we’re giving them a show. Another message: SHIELD COMPROMISED. It’s getting worse, his level of unease. Shit. This is bad. So Steve plays along, “Who else knows about your wife?”
Fury gets up from the chair now, another message: YOU AND ME. But he says, “Just my friends”, as he gives Steve a knowing look.
“Is that what we are?” He bites back.
And Steve should have probably expected this from Fury when he lets “that’s up to you” fall out of his mouth. What he really didn’t expect were the gunshots that suddenly flew into his apartment and right into the man in front of him, three calculated shots right in his abdomen. Steve goes into panic mode immediately, dragging his body around the corner and away from the window. He looks and sees a figure on the roof across the way and moves to leave when Fury grabs his wrist and handing him a flashdrive that he saw earlier this week, on his mission on the Lemurian Star, Natasha was loading info on it, why was Fury giving it to Steve now? He makes eye contact with Fury in his confusion, “Don’t. Trust. Anyone” Fury gets out with what little breath he has.
That’s when his neighbor, Kate, comes charging in. Kate? Not Kate. She says she’s SHIELD. In that all he hears is something about “Agent 13”. She mentions something about protecting him under Fury’s order and that sends him off the rails. Fury didn’t trust him, he had him watched by SHIELD, who is now compromised? By what? Or who? When ‘Agent 13’ calls in for an ambulance be remembers the shooter and takes off in his direction. He’s furious. Which he immediately both laughs at because he’s incredibly punny, but also scolds himself because it is not time for jokes. He leaps into the next building, running so fast that he can't stop himself when he goes to turn a corner. Instead he just smashes into it with his shield to stop himself and continues pursuing the shooter. Another leap out a window and onto the building next door’s roof he finally sees him, dressed in black with long dark hair. Without even thinking he slings his shield at the man’s back expecting him to go down, but instead the man whips around a catches it in his metal hand. That’s never happened before is all he can think. The man throws the shield back with incredible force, that’s when he notices the mask covering his face from the nose down. He manages to catch the shield but in doing so he’s pushed back a good couple feet. When he looks back up for the man it’s just him and the wind.
After Fury’s death in the hospital later that same night he meets with Alexander Pierce, the new Director of SHIELD. Steve trusts Fury when he said not to trust anyone, so he doesn’t trust Pierce, flat out lies when he asks him what Fury was doing at his apartment that night. Which also means that he doesn’t necessarily trust him when he says that Fury was the one that bugged his apartment. Especially when he says that the pirates from the Lemurian Star were hired by Fury. Steve finds that he doesn’t care, he does care about the slight threat that Pierce makes against him when he tells Steve that if anyone gets in his way of finding out who killed Fury, they’ll regret it. Steve trusts him when he says that.
As he waits for the elevator he can’t help thinking about if Fury really meant that he couldn’t trust him as well. He’s pulled out of this thought when the elevator dings and the doors open. He hears footsteps behind him as he enters the lift, he pushes the button to go down when he notices it’s only one of Fury’s researchers. As the doors begin to close she begins walking as quickly as she can as she says, “hold the lift”. His hand reflexively moves between the doors to hold them open. As she moves between the doors and into the lift he gives her a friendly smile and asks, “what floor?”
She makes eye contact, her speckled-hazels meeting his baby blues. She blushes which immediately makes him blush a little as well. “I actually just needed to speak with you, Captain” she manages to squeak out.
“Oh?” he says very smoothly. He kicks himself for being so rude to this poor girl. Woman? Yes. Woman.
She realizes her mistake and introduces herself, “Valerie Jaimes, Head of Research. I was working closely with the Director”. She’s nervous he figures, by the way she fixes her curls even though they look fine, they remind him of Peggy’s a bit, but also by the way her arms are antsy as she hold a file folder in her hands that keeps shaking.
“Of course, it’s nice to meet you Ma’am” he gives her a nod that from anyone else wouldn’t feel like much, but from Captain America, it’s like winning the Nobel Prize.
She levels herself and begins speaking, “I managed to get my hands on cctv of the accident before The Director was shot”.
He suddenly gets very interested in what this woman has to say, she can tell too because she immediately pulls up the file and out an image of a man in all black tactical gear in oncoming traffic. “I believe this man was the main event”.
“What?” he asks, obviously confused by what she had said.
Her head looks back down to the image, “Earlier in the recording he was attacked by a squad of men dressed as police, he managed to escape though”.
“Do we know who this man is yet?” he asks very hopeful, but is crushed when she says “No”.
The elevator dings as it stops on a floor, the woman shoving the image back into the folder as the doors open for Rumlow and the rest of the STRIKE team. The woman quietly exits the lift and Rumlow’s eyes follow after her as he enters the lift with the rest of his team.
Agent Jaimes returns to her desk just as everyone begins crowding the windows, when she finally gets a look out the window all she sees is Captain Rogers running from a huge pool of glass on the ground. She looks up, recalling how she left the Captain only minutes ago.
The only good thing out of Steve’s week so far has been that all this led to Steve seeing his new friend, Sam, again. Sam is really chill, especially when two Avengers show up at his place looking like they’ve been to Hell and back. But his week just gets weirder when he finds out what Sam meant when he said he was a Para-rescuer. Steve thought more parachute and less metal people wings.
Sam and his wings come in handy with an interrogation with Jasper Sitwell, meaning Natasha kicked him off a building and Sam flew him back up looking like he had just peed his pants, which led to him spilling his guts about Project Insight.
As they were driving on the over pass shit quickly hit the fan. Sitwell was ripped out the window of Sam’s car and into oncoming traffic where he gets hit by a particularly huge semi. Panic ensues, Sam stops the car abruptly sending the man on the roof flying in front of them. The masked man recovers quickly though. They are hit from behind and the man once again is on top of the car. Pretty soon that very familiar metal hand is smashing through the front window and ripping out the steering wheel. Bullets fly as Natasha begins shooting at him through the roof of the car. The man leaps onto the car behind them and it smashes into them once again, pushing them against the barrier.
Steve quickly forms a plan as to how they won’t die in this car accident waiting to happen and pushes the door off the car mid take off and has both Sam and Natasha land safely on the door with him. They skid, Sam falls off at some point but safely rolls behind them. That’s when the metal-armed man pull out a rocket launcher and shoots straight for them, Natasha and Sam take cover behind abandoned cars while Steve awaits the impact with his shield. The impact sends him flying down below the over pass and into a bus. Civilians are standing around further away, watching the fight.
There are more shots and another from the masked man. Natasha gets off the over pass and shoots at the man above. She runs off and the man jumps down onto a car after her. Steve recovers and leaves to go find the man. He covers himself from the spray of bullets from on top of the over pass as he scans the area, no sign of Sam or Natasha or the masked man. That’s when he hears it, someone speaking German, very angry German.
He follows the voice and finds masked man pinned down on his stomach with a woman struggling on top of him, for a moment he thinks she’s Natasha the way she’s dressed in a leather jacket except she’s wearing a hood. She seems to match the masked man more with her all black get up though. His German is a little rusty but he makes out her saying “Go there. Do as I say, right now”, he thinks something along those lines. This woman must be helping the masked man. That’s when he very stupidly says, “Hey, you!”
The woman is alarmed and turns around to him, she has a very plain face, with plenty of freckles. She lunges for him and so he takes evasive measures. She pulls a knife out of her boot and gets it very close to his neck. She quickly looks around for the masked man but doesn’t find him. Shit, please don’t let him get away he hopes. In the moment she takes to look Steve gets the upper hand and pins her between him and the pavement where he manages to knock her unconscious by hitting her head back against the concrete. Natasha finds him just then and they drag the woman a few yards when Sam comes down from the sky with his wings.
“Who the hell is this?” he says in a light tone, a nice break from what is going on around them. Natasha looks to Steve just then.
Steve looks down at the woman’s freckled face, “She helped the guy escape”.
Sam and Natasha share a look but Nat is the one to open her mouth, “Are you sure he escaped?”
“Yeah, she was telling him to go somewhere like she was going to meet him there, when she engaged me he took off”, he huffs out, disappointment evident.
The ongoing stream of gunfire in the distant stops, it doesn’t sit well with Steve. He looks around the corner of the alleyway and sees the men on top of the over pass loading into their tac van and leaving the scene. Steve lets out the breath he was holding, “probably going to meet up with their guy”.
“What? So they’re just gonna leave their girl behind?” Sam points out.
Steve just shrugs, “Their loss is our gain”.
They’re all quiet for a moment, catching their breaths and assessing damage. They all agree they’ll live and then all stare at the unconscious woman on the ground next to them. “I think I know somewhere we can go” Sam breathes out.