Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part I: Awakening

West Germany, 1954

Peggy Carter’s nails dug into the supple leather armrests as the private jet began its descent. Her stomach folded in on itself and she fought against the gravity that pulled her forward as they tipped down, down . . . She forced her eyes open and glanced out the window as the patchwork green fields and dark forests rushed toward her.

“Is everything all right, ma’am?” Edwin Jarvis reached across the aisle and cupped his hand atop hers. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a nervous flyer.”

She managed a weak smile. “I’m not overly fond of landings.” An understatement, she thought, though she didn’t quite mean it for herself.

Jarvis patted her hand, then leaned back into his seat opposite her. “Then don’t think of it. Think of something more pleasant. Such as our return trip, perhaps?” He grinned. “Going home to the missus?”

Peggy glanced away. That didn’t quite count as pleasant, these days. “Please. It was hardly anything so domestic.”

“Was?” Jarvis echoed. “Don’t tell me your starlet is off in search of another leading lady.”

“Off being her own leading lady. Went back to New York a few months past.” Peggy lifted her shoulders. “Perhaps for good, perhaps not. But Angie and I have always been that way.”

“My apologies, miss. I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject.”

“It’s not sore. I’ve made peace with it.” As much as she could, she supposed. “Some relationships are destined to burn eternal in the heavens—like yours and Ana’s, I dare say. Others flare like a comet and are gone.”

The jet’s wheels whined open beneath them; Peggy sucked in her breath. Distraction, distraction. But again her thoughts circled around the same damned thing they always did when she flew: Steven Rogers. Everything they’d had, and everything they never would.

Would theirs have been a constant star, she wondered, if he’d lived? Or another comet darting through the dark?

Angie had asked her as much, once, and she didn’t know how to answer. Just kissed her temple and feigned drifting off to sleep. But Angie knew. She knew why every year Peggy went to the Stork Club and danced alone, even if she didn’t understand it. She’d seen the photograph face-down in the bottom of Peggy’s dresser drawer.

“You’ve a big heart,” Jarvis said, smiling in that distant way of his. “Any soul would be lucky to own even a sliver of it.”

“Thank you, Mister Jarvis, but I think we’ve more pressing matters to attend.”

They bounced against the tarmac, and Peggy was flattened against the back of her seat. As the plane slowed and began to taxi, she finally allowed her fingers to unclench, and she smiled truly now. Nothing took her mind off of things like grueling work. And there was plenty of work to be done.

Howard Stark’s personal pilot poked his head from the cabin once they’d come to a stop. “Mister Jarvis. Miss Carter. Welcome to West Berlin.”

Peggy stood and straightened her skirt.

“Now, remember, officially you are on this errand alone, refilling Howard’s stores of German lagers for an upcoming soiree.” Peggy strode arm in arm with Jarvis across the tarmac to where their rented car awaited. “You will deposit me in the alleyway three blocks from the plaza, and then return to the designated location in precisely one hour’s time. Understood?”

“Unquestionably.”

Peggy smiled. He’d become quite the smooth operator in their years working together, for all that it made dear Ana fret. She’d offered him a position in the Operations Division when Fury made her chief of it, but he couldn’t bring himself to betray Howard so. It was just as well—he served SHIELD better in his unofficial capacity as a facilitator, and a plausibly deniable cover for a great many things. When Howard Stark was your boss, just about any absurd errand—West Berlin for a case of beer, the French Riviera for a jet full of bikini-clad models—seemed plausible.

Jarvis held open the car’s back door for her, and she settled onto the bench as he climbed behind the wheel. “Our mark will depart the conference at noon sharp. That should give me just enough time, but only if you are a not late.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He revved the engine to life. “Ready for another adventure, Miss Carter?”

She donned her sunglasses. “Always.”

*

The outdoor café opposite the conference hall was blessedly light on patrons, but the server insisted on seating Peggy right next to the only other outdoor guest nonetheless. Peggy tossed the woman a glance, making her most politely apologetic face, then, once she was seated, used the reflection in her water glass to better study the woman. Just in case.

White, modest build, mid-twenties at best guess, though cats-eye sunglasses obscured her eyes. Luxurious red hair, partially tamed by a summer scarf and cascading over one shoulder. Red lips to match. Her face embodied what the pulp writers would call heart-shaped. Rather attractive, if Peggy was being honest, and the tiny smirk to the woman’s lips said that she knew it.

And that, Peggy decided, was always the first sign of trouble.

Peggy opened her purse and retrieved her overlarge tourist’s guide to Berlin and German phrasebook, then arranged them before her on the metal table. Poring over the tourist’s guide gave her equal cover to watch both the woman and the conference hall, and she intended to take full advantage of it.

The server returned and deposited a glass bottle of Coca-Cola before the redheaded woman along with a straw, then approached Peggy for her order. She flipped haltingly through the phrasebook as she spoke German with her best American accent and a flagrant disregard for pronunciation rules. “Ich . . . werde haben . . . die Bratwurste? And coffee? Coffee for my friend, yes? Coooo. . . . ffeeeeee?”

The server’s upper lip curled, but he nodded curtly and huffed back inside the café. Behind Peggy, the woman began to slurp his soda loudly with her straw.

“Good time to invest in West Germany, huh?” the woman asked, in flawless American English.

Peggy whirled to face her. “Oh, thank heavens. Another American.”

“So much construction going on,” the woman continued, and gestured with the bottle toward the plaza before them. “Old Adolf used to give speeches there, you know, before we bombed it to hell and back. You an investor?”

“Oh, no, I’m not here for business,” Peggy said. “Purely pleasure.”

The woman wrapped her lips around the straw and sucked as she arched a single brow. Correction, Peggy thought. Extremely attractive. A bead of sweat trickled down Peggy’s back.

“But there are way better sights to see than this. I can show you, if you want.”

Peggy permitted herself a delicate smile, but in the corner of her eye, she saw the doors swing open on the conference hall. It was time to meet her scientist. “Another day, maybe. I’m supposed to meet my friend.” She tossed down an excessive quantity of Deutschmarks and slid her books back into her purse.

The woman shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Peggy turned back toward the conference hall. Mustn’t appear too eager. She tottered toward the sidewalk and charted her course toward the alleyway where the scientist was meant to duck into, unseen, and meet with her. Then Mister Jarvis would pull up, they’d stow the scientist along the back bench, and it was off to the airport. She assessed the situation—it might take Peggy an extra minute to shake the redheaded woman, in case she chose to follow. Somehow, Peggy felt all too certain she might.

The woman slurped down the last of her soda, and the straw rattled against the glass.

The crowd of scientists thickened; Peggy scanned for her asset, and spotted him. Straw hat, typically Soviet scowl, nervous eyes darting every which way. Relief washed over her. In a few hours he’d be safely in Washington with her, and this would all be—

The explosion knocked Peggy to the ground with a force she felt before she heard or saw. The fireball billowed around the entrance to the conference hall, then gusted upward in a stinging rush of heat. The sound of it crushed down on her until the world turned silent and gray with smoke.

Peggy swore, not that she could hear it, or anything else.

Powderized plaster and cement dusted her as she struggled back to her feet. The high-pitched whine in her ears threaded through her brain as she whirled back to the café. The woman was gone. Of course.

Peggy cursed again. She’d snapped the heel on one of her shoes in her fall. That damned woman! She should have known. She should have been more thorough, should have better prepared the scientist for exfiltration—

Her scientist. Oh, hell.

She staggered across the street, shoving through pedestrians whose mouths moved in silent screams. The whine in her ears turned into the drumbeat of her own pulse as she wove through the smoke and sought her mark. Too many bodies—not enough living men pulling themselves free of the wreckage. It curdled her blood with fear.

And then she saw her scientist. And moments later, the steel rebar jutting from his chest.

“No!” Peggy cried. She shook him, frantic, as sound started to trickle back in around her. But he was gone. Her Soviet scientist was gone, and with him, the secrets on the Russian space program SHIELD desperately sought.

It had been a setup all along. The Soviets must have gotten wind that he was planning to defect. Peggy swore again. They’d rather deny both themselves and the West his knowledge than let it fall into SHIELD’s hands. He’d known the risks, of course, when he’d agreed to come over, but it still burned. It was so senseless. And how many more had paid the cost?

Tires screeched somewhere within the haze; their rented car appeared, with Jarvis at the helm, a kerchief pressed to his mouth. “Miss! Oh, thank heavens you’re alive. We need to go! Now!”

Peggy cast one last look at the scientist, blood flowing from his chest. All the dead men who’d paid the cost for SHIELD’s ambition. Tears pricked at her eyes, not just from the smoke. But there was no time to mourn. He’d chosen knowing full well what the Soviets might do to him. The least she could do was respect that. With a heavy heart, she forced herself to turn away.

Peggy dove into the backseat of the car, and Jarvis peeled out from the curb before she’d even swung the door closed.

“I’ve been followed. Ever since I dropped you in the alley,” he called over his shoulder, as the car ricocheted through the winding streets. “I tried to keep them off your tail while you conducted your business, but I see it was a moot point.”

“I think we were made long before we even set foot in West Germany.” She grimaced, and forced herself to conjure up that damned woman’s face once more. She’d need to remember it for later—compare it to SHIELD’s records of known enemy agents. “Damn it! He was our best chance at perfecting Howard’s satellite design!”

Jarvis whipped them onto the highway for the airport. The air was clear now, but Peggy could still smell smoke and the rusty tang of blood, thick in her hair and clothes and skin. Sometimes it seemed the smell of the latter never really went away.

Jarvis’s gaze caught hers through the rearview mirror, betraying the tension around his eyes and the grim line of his mouth. Peggy forced herself to sit upright and smoothed back her ashy hair. No time for reflection. They needed to act.

As soon as they were back on the tarmac, Peggy charged up the jet’s ramp, shouting for the pilot. “Get me headquarters on the radio! I need to speak to Director Fury at once. We’re aborting the mission.”

Jarvis latched the jet door closed behind them and buckled himself in for takeoff.

“Actually, miss, Stark’s been trying to radio you. Says it’s critical.”

“He’ll have to wait!” she shouted, as the turbines roared to life. The radio crackled as she set it to the proper encryption channel to contact SHIELD HQ. “Queenie for Colonel, this is Queenie for the Colonel.”

But only static answered her call.

“I really think you want to radio Howard back,” the pilot called from the cabin.

Peggy pressed the radio transponder to her temple and drew a deep breath. Where the devil was Fury? As they lurched down the runway, she called for him again, but still no response came.

Fine. Howard had one minute to explain himself, whatever was so damned urgent, but then she’d have to switch back over to SHIELD comms. She changed the encryption and spun the dial once more.

“Emperor? This is Queenie, returning your signal.”

After a moment of dead air, Howard responded. “Queenie! Thank god. Listen, I’m real sorry, I wanted you to be the first to know—but the Colonel’s already swooping in with all his goons and I’m afraid it’s out of my hands—”

“Know what?” Peggy felt terror slither down her spine. Fury was with Stark? “Emperor, what are you talking about?”

Howard’s exhale rasped across the radiowaves. “We found him.”

The plane lifted off, but that wasn’t the only reason her stomach lurched. She mustn’t hope. She didn’t dare. “Found who?” she asked, as evenly as she could, though her head spun and her pulse was cantering.

No. It couldn’t be possible. But she knew it might come eventually—the closure she’d yearned for these past nine years. A hero’s proper burial and her final farewell. Perhaps it was what she needed. He certainly deserved it, and so much more.

He deserved so much more than anyone could possibly give him.

“We found him. Steve.”

Peggy let out the breath she’d been holding. This was it, then. She felt weightless, drifting—finally released from the pain of not knowing.

Oh, Steve—you deserved so much more—

Howard swallowed audibly. “And he’s alive.”

*

Natalia Romanova sashayed into the secret offices of Department X where they’d been tucked behind a defunct ballet school in Moscow’s theatre district. The pinch-faced secretary waited for her to produce her identification, then, after scrutinizing it for several minutes, sat back and folded her arms without a word.

“I’m here to see General Lukin,” Natasha said. “He should be expecting me.”

“There is no General Lukin here,” the secretary said.

Natasha stopped herself short of rolling her eyes. Another purge, then. Lukin must have run afoul of some Party official or another and got himself an early retirement to Siberia, or maybe a firing squad within the Kremlin walls. No sense mourning him, or wondering why. The purges were more reliable than the train schedules these days.

“Fine. I’m here to see whoever’s in charge of my last operation.”

“Dorotea oversees all of Department X’s activities now,” the secretary said.

Natasha’s impatient smile spread across her face. “Then I would like to see Dorotea.”

“Corridor B. Office at the end.”

“Thank you, comrade.” She drummed her nails against the secretary’s desk, then made her way to Corridor B.

The woman rummaging through General Lukin’s files looked far too young to be a general in the KGB, in charge of an entire department. Tall, willowy, and with the aggressively smooth muscles of a ballerina, she whistled to herself as she dug through cardboard boxes full of papers and idly tucked a strand of blonde hair behind one ear. Natasha watched her for a moment before entering; spotted that same dancer’s grace and lethal precision that had been drilled into her.

Maybe she was a graduate of the Red Room, just as Natasha was. The thought should have made her smile. But instead it raised her guard all the more.

“Dorotea?” Natasha asked, in as neutral a tone as she could, as she knocked on the office doorframe.

The woman looked up at her with sparkling pale eyes. “Ahh! Agent Romanoff, right? Please come in. And shut the door behind you.”

Natasha did so, and stood beside the chair opposite Dorotea’s. She assumed her usual resting stance—a loose form of first position, toes spread, arms limber at her sides. A relaxed enough pose, but one that easily flowed into whatever she needed it to be.

“You were working on the . . . Sokolov operation, yes? The scientist who was trying to defect.” The woman smiled, wide and carefree. “And please—call me Dot.”

Natasha nodded. “Well—Dot—the operation is complete. Sokolov is dead. Along with eight of the other conference attendees.” She watched Dot for any sort of reaction—a flinch, maybe, at the casualty count, or regret at all the other knowledge lost to prevent Sokolov’s defection—but it hardly seemed to register with her at all. Natasha wasn’t sure what to make of that.

“And what about the agents running Sokolov?”

“I only made contact with one, but she’s SHIELD—I’m sure of it.” Natasha rolled her shoulders back, trying to release some of the tension she felt. “Brunette. Solid tradecraft. Good American accent, too—almost as good as mine.” She smirked. “But I’m thinking British. There was something a little too pinched about her.”

Dot turned a wicked, broad smile on Natasha. “Ohh, that’s what I hoped you’d say.” She sank into her chair and propped her feet up on the desk.

Natasha blinked. “Comrade?”

“Margaret Elizabeth Carter.” She twirled her fingers. “Peggy, she goes by. She was with the Strategic Scientific Reserve on the Allies’ side during the Great Patriotic War. And now she holds some senior position with SHIELD.”

“But she’s still running ops herself?” Natasha asked.

“Oh, that’s Peggy, all right. She can’t let go. Just wants to keep running herself into the ground.” Dot laced her hands behind her head and leaned back further in her chair. “So. You said the scientist was—”

“Eliminated,” Natasha repeated.

“And Peggy?”

“Displeased.”

Dot grinned.

“But I had no instructions to pursue. She departed the scene with an unknown support personnel in a rented car. I imagine SHIELD will be sorting this one out for a while.”

“Actually,” Dot said, “I think Pegs is about to have much bigger problems on her hands.”

Natasha felt that tremor in her gut, the one that warned her that some larger gear was turning her cog, larger than even she could see. Something about this woman seizing control of Department X now, being far too interested in her op . . . They were all tenuous strands, but could be spun into something more. Nothing she could act on yet, though. Better to keep playing it safe until she learned more.

“Bigger problems than their foiled exfiltration op?” Natasha asked.

“Oh, yes. But where SHIELD sees problems . . . I see opportunity.” She tossed the day’s issue of the Washington Post onto her desk, facing Natasha.

CAPTAIN AMERICA ALIVE!

Natasha raised one eyebrow. All the “Captain America” business had been before her time, but she’d read up on it as part of her training. Hard to play the part of the average American if she couldn’t fake a good patriotic frenzy over some guy in tights. “That seems . . . improbable.”

“Apparently he crashed into the Arctic nine years ago, and the ice preserved him perfectly. Something about the serum, his metabolism, yadda yadda.” Dot shrugged. “How nice for SHIELD to get their toy soldier back, especially after you stopped their efforts to ramp up their aerospace program. They might even feel like they broke even. Might get a little cocky.” Dot’s smile dimmed. “They always do.”

“If Captain America is really alive, and if he’s still the man he once was . . . that could cause a great deal of problems for the Soviet Union,” Natasha said carefully.

“So it could. Which is where you come in.”

Natasha stood up straighter. Now they were on solid ground. “What are you thinking?”

“Deep cover. Ruffle some feathers, get a read on the real situation, not the nonsense they’re putting in the papers. It’s a good excuse, too, to dig into something the Americans are working on, according to a deeply embedded source. I imagine with their golden boy back, they’ll only be too eager to ramp up their efforts.”

“You’ll have to give me a little more to go on than that,” Natasha said.

Dot waved one hand through the air. “Tomorrow. I’ll give your team a full mission brief then. You deserve some rest—take the rest of today off.”

Natasha started. “My team?”

“Oh, I’m not sending you alone. This is way too important. And apparently, General Lukin wasn’t sharing his toys very well.” Dot stuck her lower lip out. “It’s no wonder he had to go.”

That warning trill again. Natasha tilted her head to one side and smiled conspiratorially—trying to draw Dot into her confidence. “I’d heard something similar.”

“Well, don’t you worry. That’s going to change.” Dot’s smile this time revealed her sharp teeth. “A lot of things are going to change around here. You’ll see.”

*

“Ma’am—I mean, Chief Carter—you’re going to have to wait—”

The young secretary, tottering in her heels, was no match for Peggy’s speed as she stormed past the typing pool for Directory Fury’s office. Peggy yanked the door open, stormed down the aisle, and slammed her copy of the Post onto Fury’s desk.

“Nice to see you, too, Chief.”

Peggy jammed her finger at the headline: CAPTAIN AMERICA ALIVE. “How in the bloody hell did this leak?”

Colonel Nicholas J. Fury crossed his arms as he regarded her. “Is that all?”

“He’s not even bloody awake yet. Hell, we don’t even know for sure if Howard’s daft plan is going to work at all. No one will let me even see him, and yet already—already—every one of our enemies will be out for his head.”

Fury heaved a sigh. “Are you done?”

“No, I’m not done—”

“You want to know who leaked it?” Fury asked. “I did.”

Peggy was practically choking on rage. “WHAT WERE YOU—”

Fury narrowed his eye at her. “Sit your ass down, Chief.”

Peggy took a deep breath and let the anger boil through her, just for a few moments. Then she swallowed it down and dropped into the chair with a scowl.

“Thank you.” Fury stood up and moved from behind the desk. Hands clasped behind his back, he paced slowly away from her. “When I named you Chief of Operations, I did so knowing you could prove just as valuable behind the scenes as in the field. But even if you’re in charge, you can’t control everything. You’ve gotta trust your team.”

“I suppose so.” Peggy’s shoulders dropped. She knew damned well that Fury understood how hard she’d fought for her place in SHIELD. He’d faced similar scrutiny, despite his distinguished career in the 92^nd Infantry during the war, the Buffalo Soldiers, and still faced it every day. Then he put a woman in charge of operations, painting an even larger target on his back, but stood by her every step of the way.

“Someone thought they could get one up on SHIELD by killing the scientist we’d been persuading to defect for two goddamn years. We’re on the back foot.” Fury frowned. “If they know we have a supersoldier on our side, however, then we let them know that maybe we aren’t such easy pickings after all.”

“You said ‘someone,’” Peggy said. “Does that mean you have reason to believe it’s not the Russians?”

“Maybe, maybe not. They lost way more scientists at that conference than just the one who was going to defect.” Fury rubbed at his jaw. “The Soviet ambassador gave the White House an earful about it—accused us of killing their top scientists.”

“Utter nonsense,” Peggy said.

“That was my first thought, too. It could just be a bluff to throw suspicion off the Soviets.”

Peggy nodded. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Or,” Fury said, “it could be a power play. Someone inside the KGB trying to grab control. We’ve seen that shit happening all over the Politburo since Stalin kicked it. Purges, backstabbings, you name it, every KGB agent with a chip on their shoulder wants a piece of that pie. But whoever it is, they obviously wanted to foil us in West Berlin.”

“And you think Captain—you think that Steve’s presence will deter them from further aggression?” Peggy asked.

Fury laughed. “Deter them? I doubt it. In fact, I’m counting on not. I think Cap’s return is going to bring all kinds of monsters out of the shadows.” Something dark gleamed in his eye. “All we have to do is be ready for them.”

Peggy glared at him. “No. Don’t you dare use Steve as bait.” She felt the embers of her anger stoking again. How dare he, when she’d only just gotten Steve back—

But she stopped herself. She hadn’t gotten Steve at all.

“Bait implies he can’t defend himself,” Fury said. “But you and I both know that’s not true.”

Peggy ran her tongue along the edge of her teeth. Whether her new opponents were KGB or something else, she supposed Fury had a point—they’d likely see Steve as their next challenge. And Steve damned well could handle them. But it still turned her stomach. Fury had given him no choice in the matter.

He had hell enough to contend with, adjusting to his new life. Nine years had passed in only a blink for him—it wasn’t fair to force this on him besides. But Peggy knew when to stand her ground with Fury, and when to get out of his way.

But she’d be damned if she didn’t do what she could to protect Steve.

“I want to see him,” Peggy said. “Let me be the one to speak to him when he wakes up.”

“They’re still running him on life support until the thaw finishes.” Fury glanced down at a stack of papers on his desk. “And we have no idea, beyond the brain activity scans, what sort of condition his memory’s going to be in.”

“I don’t care.”

Fury held her gaze for a moment, his expression stony. “He might not remember anything. He might not even know you.”

Peggy raised her chin, imperious. “I accept all of that. And I don’t care.”

“All right.” With a sigh, Fury pressed one of the many buttons on his desk. “Please escort Chief Carter to the Vault.”

*

The screams of the man in the chair were really making it difficult for Dottie to concentrate.

“Benign . . .” she read. “Homecoming . . .” She shot him a glare, but he wasn’t looking at her; his gaze was somewhere inside as the electrode plates drilled inside his brain. Three-hundred fifty volts, just like the notebook she’d liberated from his previous owner specified. “One . . . Freight car.” She snapped the red notebook shut with a smile. “Soldier?”

His screams subsided, but his bare chest still heaved, glistening with sweat and the last flecks of frost from his cryosleep. Not such a bad sight, Dottie thought, studying him appreciatively. They certainly kept him fit. She flicked a switch, and the electrode plates swiveled up and away. Once his breathing had slowed back to normal, he turned to her.

“Ready to comply.”

He was handsome, sure. Dark brown hair in a charming crew cut, and those muscles besides. But his eyes were as vacant as the tundra, and there was something so plain, so boring in his stillness. Dottie clucked her tongue. “No, no. This won’t do at all.” She flipped through the notebook until she landed on the page she’d seen earlier. “Ahh. Here we are.”

Dottie gripped the asset’s face by the chin and forced his attention toward her. He did so willingly, with a looseness in his muscles that brooked no dissent. Not even a flicker of will behind those baby blues. She squished his lips together with her fingers—no resistance.

Dottie tilted her head to one side. “Enact protocol: James Barnes.”

As he stared at her, his face changed—he smiled softly, and a twinkle appeared in his eyes. He didn’t fight against her grip, exactly, but he tugged back by a fraction.

“Well, hello there, doll,” he said in English—a sly, big-city accent. “What brings you around here?”

“That’s much better.” Dottie released her grip on him and turned her attention back to the notebook. “As a matter of fact, you bring me here.”

James grinned wryly. “You’re gonna make me blush.”

“General Lukin spent all this effort making you into our best agent and he only used you twice?” Dottie asked. “What a waste.”

A frown flickered across his face. Like he was straining against his conditioning, torn—not wanting to speak ill of the general, but also not wanting to disappoint his new handler. Like a little puppy, Dottie thought.

Finally, he settled on a tone and smiled once more. “Two missions was all he needed for me to get the job done.” He arched an eyebrow. “I’m just that good, I guess.”

Dottie grinned. “I’m sure you are, handsome.”

“So you’ve got something new for me?” he asked.

Dottie set the red notebook aside and picked up the mission brief. The Washington Post article paperclipped to the front fluttered as she opened the folder’s cover: CAPTAIN AMERICA FOUND ALIVE.

“As a matter of fact,” Dottie said, “I do.”

Chapter Text

Part II: Longing

“My god,” Peggy said, staring at the hyperbaric chamber, dozens of cords spewing from it like tentacles. She stepped carefully to avoid tripping over a coiled wire sprawled across the laboratory floor. “Are you waking Captain Rogers up, or splitting the atom?”

Howard Stark tugged his goggles down around his eyes and regarded her with a yellow-tinted stare. “This is a very delicate process, Pegs.”

Peggy gave him a look. “That’s Chief Carter to you—”

“—We couldn’t just blast the guy with a bunch of hairdryers,” Howard continued. “If parts of him thawed before others, before we’d had a chance to make sure his vital systems were intact, then he could suffer tissue necrosis—”

“—And what is that awful smell?” Peggy tugged the kerchief from her breast pocket and covered her nose and mouth. “It’s a bit like when my grandmum used to brine pickles, mixed with something else.”

“Good nose.” Howard cocked a finger at her and winked. “The saline brine helped us regulate his temperature, bringing him out of the freeze as slowly as we could. Then there was a bit of antifreeze in it to help do the trick.”

Peggy’s shoulders sagged. “Antifreeze? Good god, Howard, he’s a human being, not one of your contraptions.”

“We took all the necessary precautions. Inserted a breathing tube to assist his lungs until his brain functions took over, delivered an electric shock to jump-start his heart . . . And voila. That’s how you defrost a Capsicle.”

They finished crossing the length of the makeshift medical laboratory and stopped at the entrance to an observation room, where men in white coats dutifully scribbled down readings from an assortment of whirring monitors. Peggy felt as if she were shrinking, losing every last bit of nerve she’d felt when she demanded this favor of Fury. But she’d been the last one to speak to Steve before he plunged into the Arctic permafrost in a mad attempt to spare the world from Hydra’s wrath. She felt it only fitting she be the first face he saw.

Howard shoved the goggles back on top of his head and turned toward her. His usual showman’s grin was gone, and his brow wrinkled with concern as he reached for her hands. “Pegs . . . Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

She squeezed his hands as she nodded. Angie was right, of course. Steve’s apparent death had never felt like a closed loop to her. It was as if she’d asked a question into the darkness, and instead of a response, it only echoed back at her.

“He’s not comatose. His brain activity looks normal on everything we can check. But . . .”

Peggy clenched her jaw.

“There’s no guarantee his memory’s intact, either. I just—I want you to be prepared. In case he’s confused, or doesn’t know you.” Howard exhaled. “Don’t take it personally.”

Peggy forced herself to unfurl. “I understand, Howard.”

“All right.” Howard released her hands and took a step back. “Your sleeping beauty awaits.”

Peggy felt like she was wading into the tide, waiting for the waves to crash down on her. How many nights had she lain awake, dreaming of a moment just like this, even as the likelihood slipped further and further from her grasp? But she braced herself and reached for the door. Whatever came next, she’d learn to deal with it anew. She meant what she’d told Fury: no expectations.

She hoped she could hold herself to that.

The room was brightly lit, reminiscent of the medical wards from the war—a private metal-frame bed and a simple nightstand topped with an old-model radio set. Gauzy curtains draped from false windows that emitted a soft late-afternoon glow. So they meant to ease him into the new decade gradually, then.

Peggy looked down at her outfit, which she realized now was embarrassingly modern—high-waisted cigarette pants, far more tailored than the looser ones she’d worn eight years past, and a blouse of newer synthetic material. Her hair was largely unchanged, thankfully, but she knew the fine lines that nine years had etched into the corners of her eyes and her forehead.

And then there was Steve.

He was turned away from her, sleeping on his side and curled slightly inward, his shoulder every bit as broad and muscular as the last day she’d seen him. They’d put him in an old SSR t-shirt and trousers. God, but he hadn’t even grown a hint of stubble since he went into the ice. His hair was as soft and regulation-trim as the last time she’d ran her fingers through it. She felt the sudden, overwhelming urge to do so again; to kiss his temple and coax him back to wakefulness.

Then his eyelashes fluttered. She drew back the hand she hadn’t realized she’d extended, and held her breath.

He sucked in air, panicked, and jolted to sitting. “Wait. No.” Steve looked right, then left, his back still to her, then jumped to his feet. “Where is—”

As he turned, he saw her. The tension in his shoulders loosened, and his face turned from one of anger to confusion. His mouth edged open and he tipped his head to one side. “Peggy?”

Too many emotions welled up in her throat, but she managed a nod.

“Peggy. The bombs. They’re heading for New York, and London, and—” He took a step toward her, then stopped. “Where is it? The Valkyrie? We have to stop the bombs—”

“You stopped them.” Tears blurred her vision as she tried to keep her voice strong. “You stopped them, Steve. We won the war, and it was all because of you.” She managed a watery smile. “We’re all right. Everyone’s all right.”

The air rushed out of Steve, and he smiled. Then laughed, disbelieving. “The war is over?”

“Yes.” She shuffled closer toward him. “Hydra crumbled after what you did. Without Schmidt at their helm . . . they turned to dust.” She flexed her hands, unsure if she should reach for him. “And it’s all because of you.”

“And the—” Steve swallowed, his smile fading. “And what about the others? The Howling Commandos.”

Peggy flinched. She should have been prepared for that. And she suspected she knew all too well what he really meant.

“They . . . they’re all right.” She guided him back to the edge of the bed and motioned for him to sit down. He sank to the edge of the mattress, eyes still locked on her, mouth twisted with concern. “Falsworth and Jones . . . Morita and Dernier and Dugan.” She inhaled to continue, but stopped herself there.

The hopeful glint in Steve’s eye faded. “Right. Buck—Sergeant Barnes. He didn’t . . .” His jaw tightened. “I’m sorry. I—I remember now.”

It stung more than she’d expected. Or maybe she’d only forgotten how it had always felt. She and Sergeant Barnes had always been two planets circling the same bright star, never quite in sync, neither certain where they stood with the other. There was a history there that Peggy had never learned; Steve didn’t feel the need to volunteer it, and she didn’t feel the need to pry. But Barnes had always been the shadow behind Steve, content to stay in his darkness while everyone else clamored for Steve’s light.

She’d wondered if Barnes had thought the same about her.

Peggy pulled up a metal chair and sat before Steve, theirs knees almost touching. She’d forgotten the size of him, even his joints, his hands—not just large but full and radiating with power. It made her feel even smaller than she already felt.

“Steve . . . There’s something I must tell you.”

He glanced up at her face, then back down; his body tensed once more.

Peggy moistened her lips. “I’m afraid you’ve been asleep for quite some time.”

And there was the cold, calculating soldier she remembered all too well, emerging from Steve’s puppy-dog face. The one who’d turned Barnes’s death into a path of vengeance; the one who’d donned his chorus girl costume with barely contained disdain. He would do as he was told, but only until he found a better way.

How would he think to fix this mess? How would he even understand it?

“How long, Peg?” Steve finally asked.

She bit her lower lip. No sense lying or trying to soften the blow. Steve was too clever, too undeserving of that. “Nine years.”

The truth washed over him, darkening his expression, but she could almost see him bottling it up and swallowing it down, same as he always did. Never let your soldiers see you bleed—he’d taught her that. She wondered, though, if that practice didn’t hurt him more in the end.

Finally, he smiled sadly. “Then I guess I missed our date.”

She cupped her hands over his as the tears threatened in her eyes once more. Nine years of visiting the Stork Club, having a drink for them both. She wondered what Angie would say if she could see them now. “The world has changed, Steve. I don’t wish for you to be . . . alarmed.”

His fists tightened between her hands. “For the better?”

“In some ways, yes.” She hesitated. “But not in all.”

The light that dimmed from his eyes seemed to draw the warmth out of the room. “Yeah,” Steve said, “it usually doesn’t.”

“We never stopped looking for you,” Peggy continued—desperate for something, anything to say. “You must understand that. Howard, and all of SHIELD—ah, that’s the successor organization to the SSR—we wanted—I wanted—so desperately to believe that somehow you’d survived the crash, that you were still out there somewhere . . .”

His blue eyes glimmered as he looked at her. “I did what I had to do. For you and everyone else.” Steve’s throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Anything more than that is just a bonus.”

“Oh, Steve.” Peggy choked back a sob. “You always were too brave for your own good. Too damned noble.” She smiled, but it didn’t stop a tear from spilling down her cheek.

Steve looked up at her, and she could see, so baldly, how much he wished to wipe the tear away. But he was too much a gentleman for that. When just hours ago, in his mind, they’d been wrapped in a passionate embrace, he already sensed the chasm in her heart that nine years had carved.

Damn him for being so good. So pure. Damn the world for never quite living up to the standards he set.

“So what happens now?” Steve asked softly.

Peggy released his hands. “I’d like to say that’s entirely up to you.”

He nodded slowly, some sort of realization dawning on his face. “Right,” Steve said. “But we both know that’s never been the case.”

“I’m sorry.” Peggy wiped her hands on her pants and stood. “I’m so sorry, Steve. But I’m so glad that you’re—”

The door flew open, and Howard swarmed in with a fleet of medical attendants. Peggy turned, unable to watch for a moment, as Steve’s face fell at the sight of the men with syringes and stethoscopes and scrubs. This was exactly what she’d wanted to avoid. The last thing Steve needed was to feel like a bloody lab rat again, or a dancing monkey on SHIELD’s strings—

“Steven Goddamned Rogers. It’s an honor to have you back, Cap.” Howard reached toward Steve for a hug, but when Steve looked at him, bewildered, he settled for a shoulder pat. “My god, is it good to see you again.”

“I suppose I have you to thank for all of this,” Steve said. Peggy suspected he didn’t mean it quite as appreciatively as Howard hoped.

Howard turned to Peggy. “Thanks a bunch, Pegs, for breaking the news. Now that Cap’s awake, though, we need to start the next round of tests. Need to check your white blood cell count, blood oxygenation, all that jazz, right, boys? Gotta make sure you’re still stabilized.”

Steve locked eyes with Peggy as the doctors descended on him, poking and prodding. She grimaced, trying to look apologetic. But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

He’d never asked to be their property. He only wanted to do what was right.

But SHIELD, as usual, had other plans.

*

“Mister and Missus Rushman? You’ve got to be kidding me.” Natasha tossed the fake drivers’ licenses at James.

“Sorry, doll, I didn’t pick them out.” He gathered them up and stuffed the ID into his wallet, still sharp with the smell of fresh leather. “You didn’t picture yourself enjoying a romantic honeymoon in scenic Suitland, Maryland?”

Natasha made an irritated noise in her throat. The motel room they’d checked into was newly built, but already badly worn; the décor in garish shades of turquoise and green and gold felt suffocating around her. “The less time we spend here, the better. The front desk clerk talked more to my tits than to me.”

“Isn’t that the point? We don’t want him to remember our faces.”

“I’m less worried about him than the guards we’re going to be dealing with.” Natasha dug through the layers of stiff tulle beneath her dress and strapped a holster around her thigh. “You’re the greenest operative I’ve ever worked with. Only two missions?”

James lowered his chin and peered at her with a smirk. “Well, you haven’t seen me in action.”

“No. I haven’t.” She slammed the tiny pistol into her thigh holster. “But Dottie said you had to follow any order I give you, so . . .”

She trailed off. Dottie’s instructions regarding Agent Barnes had been nothing short of unsettling. The words “brainwashed,” “reconditioned,” “reeducated” had never exactly been stated, but that was the way with the Russian language; the truth always hid in the icy gaps between words.

Had he been a political prisoner? Some sort of scientific experiment pushed to the limits? She knew perfectly well what the KGB sometimes did to those prisoners sent off for reconditioning and reeducation. It would be naïve to think otherwise. At least she’d been given some semblance of a choice in her life, training with the Red Room, becoming a Black Widow . . .

Well. Choice might have been too strong of a word. She retained autonomy—that was it. That was the difference between herself and this man, for all the charm and glibness they’d drilled into this “James Barnes” personality of his. Whoever he was, she shouldn’t give a damn, as long as the mission got done.

Natasha stretched her neck and rolled her shoulders, trying to stay limber for what was coming. She was the one calling the shots, in the end, and as long as he obeyed her orders, she didn’t need to waste another minute thinking about exactly how or why.

“James?” she asked, as she tugged her pillbox hat into place. “Are you ready?”

He was staring again, that vacant expression he got when there wasn’t anything immediately in front of them for him to tend to. No, that wasn’t quite right—he was staring at the mission brief. But not the schematics for the building they were about to infiltrate.

He’d flipped the pages back to the photograph of Steve Rogers.

“James?” she asked again, voice a little tighter. “Is something wrong?”

For a moment, it was as if her voice didn’t register. Then he blinked and turned toward her with his usual easygoing grin. “Yeah, I was just thinking. All this fuss about the ‘Captain America’ guy . . . Is he really as strong as they say?”

“Well, there’s no telling what he’s like now, after being asleep for nine years.” As he stood, Natasha moved in front of him to help him button up his white collared shirt. Her fingertips grazed over the sharp line where the metal of his arm bit into his flesh, and she shuddered. “But I’ve watched the old footage. He was definitely something else back in the war.”

“Huh.” James stood up straighter as Natasha buttoned the shirt up to his neck. “I haven’t seen it.”

Her fingers were trembling; Natasha forced herself to take a step back. “You don’t need to worry about him right now. One step at a time, right?”

“Yeah. Of course.” He smiled as he plucked his blazer from the back of the chair. “I don’t need to worry about him right now.”

Cold fear slid down Natasha’s spine. She still wasn’t used to that. Might never get used to that. But he obeyed her. She supposed that was the important part.

And if he didn’t, then there was always the failsafe that Dottie had told her about.

Natasha slotted the clip into her main pistol and tucked it into the holster at the small of her back, just beneath her dainty cardigan. “Ready to get up to no good, Mister Rushman?”

James offered her his arm, revealing the numerous weapons stashed beneath his jacket as well. “Always, Missus Rushman.”

They stepped out into the inky twilight and headed for the nondescript office building down the street, surrounded by an electrified fence.

*

Peggy took a long sip of her coffee—tea just didn’t pack the same caffeinated punch she needed for these early-morning briefings—and surveyed the agents assembled before her. Donald Hofstrom was solid when he carried out fieldwork, but always underestimated women; Albert Parsons was better working behind the scenes, supporting ops, rather than run them. Melinda Farris followed orders well, but often hesitated when faced with a choice in the field, and Evelyn Thompson to her right was another better suited for support. Peggy tried to piece together her ideal response team for the issue facing them, but came up blank.

Wilson . . . Her gaze rested on Wilson. Twelve years in the Air Force; flew in the Tuskeegee Airmen during the war. Came highly recommended from Fury. But she hadn’t had occasion yet to really put him to the test. She’d test him soon enough, Peggy told herself. But this was too delicate a situation to squander on an unpolished agent.

There was just too much at stake.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, listen up.”

Peggy set down her coffee and strode over to the slide projector. Her assistant dimmed the lights at the back of the room, but as he did so, Peggy caught a glimpse of two new silhouettes entering the door. Captain Rogers and Director Fury.

Steve wouldn’t meet her eyes, and a pit of guilt formed in her gut. After Howard’s men barnstormed in, she hadn’t gotten another chance to speak to Steve, no other opportunity to see how he was carrying on. She swallowed and steeled herself.

The slide projector clicked on and splashed the first image across the screen at the room’s front: a drab office building fortified with fencing, guards, dogs, rudimentary surveillance equipment, the works. “Late last night—I suppose it was this morning, technically—the Kronas Corporation contacted us to report a break-in at one of their experimental research buildings in Maryland. As this company regularly contracts with US government agencies, including SHIELD, we have elected to handle the investigation ourselves.”

Peggy clicked to the next slide, of a burned-out office room and ransacked desks and computer terminal. “Kronas believes one of their aeronautical research projects was being targeted. Fortunately, they had recently moved all research and equipment for that project to a newer facility in Greenbelt only a few weeks ago. This room and its equipment had only just been decommissioned, and still appeared on all their directories under the project’s name.

“The Kronas project is private, experimental—nothing definite yet, at least to hear them tell it.” She clicked to the next slide—the aftermath of the scientists’ convention bombing in West Berlin. “We cannot ignore, however, that their project covers precisely the same subject that our would-be defector, Sokolov, in West Berlin was researching.”

Parsons’ hand shot up, and Peggy nodded to him. “So you think the same people who killed the scientists hit this building?”

“We have no proof as of yet, but it seems a reasonable assumption, yes.” Peggy clicked to the next slide—a deposition from one of the Kronas security guards. “The guard on duty only got the briefest glimpse of the attackers, but he did mention that he believed one of them was a woman. It’s always possible it was the same woman I saw in West Berlin. Heavens knows there aren’t too many of us working in the business.” Peggy made the strained smile of a bad joke.

Farris raised her hand. “What’s our plan, then? Conduct an investigation?”

“That’ll be the start of it, yes. But I think Kronas’s new facility may give us an unprecedented opportunity.” Peggy clicked to the next slide, of the new facility where Kronas had relocated the targeted research. “If these attackers realize that the project they sought has been moved here, then it may be their next target. Which gives us an opportunity to catch them in the act.”

“But they may know their hand’s been tipped,” Wilson said.

“They may. But it’s possible that won’t stop them,” Peggy said, “if it’s this project whose data they’re determined to steal. I want to put two teams on site to guard and watch for signs of observation or intrusion. We’ll start up stakeout duty beginning tonight. Then we’ll send another team to investigate the old building, see if they can’t track down our spies.” She looked out at the room. “Any other questions?”

After Peggy had assigned three teams of two and passed around files detailing what little intelligence they had, she headed toward the back of the room to speak to Steve. But he’d departed with Howard. She deflated a bit at his absence, but forced herself to stand tall. It wasn’t as if he was in any shape to aid in their investigation now, anyway. And what could she even say to him? What words could possibly fill the void of nine years?

“Chief Carter?”

Peggy turned to find Sam Wilson waiting for her in the corridor, his hands tucked into his trouser pockets. She hadn’t placed him on either of the investigation teams, thinking him a shade too green, though she had asked him to cross-check some travel databases for hints of their mystery spies. “Wilson.” She tilted her head to one side. “How might I help you?”

“Actually, I was thinking maybe I could help you.” He slid his hands free to gesture as he spoke. “You see . . . I couldn’t help but notice that, in all the team assignments you were handing out, the surveillance you were setting up, you didn’t think about the skies.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Peggy said. “What about the skies?”

“If you have someone covering aerial reconnaissance, then you can spot your spies approaching the compound much quicker. Get everyone in place faster, and they don’t get tipped off.”

Peggy frowned. “It would be helpful, but unfortunately, I don’t think SHIELD’s helicopters are terribly subtle.”

Wilson grinned. “I’m not talking about helicopters, ma’am.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“A little something I’ve been developing with Mister Stark.” He beckoned her to follow him to the elevator banks. “Come on. It’s better if I just show you.”

*

He lay motionless on the motel bed, staring at the popcorn ceiling, tuning out the fuzzy noise of the bad reception on the black and white TV. It had been hours, he supposed, since they had returned from the mission. The darkness beyond the room’s curtains had given way to a dull gray haze that shifted steadily. The woman had slept in the twin bed opposite his, but only for an hour or so; neither of them had really slept, but he at least managed to stare silently while she had tossed and turned, the handcuff binding her wrist to the bedframe rattling all the while.

She was gone now. Food, she said. Stay put, she said. A tightness in her eyes as she said it, like she was feeling remorse or pity. No need. He heard the order, and he obeyed. All that mattered was obeying, the rightness of it sturdy in his bones.

A generator hummed outside. A car door slammed. The television laugh track rang through his skull.

He was empty

hollow

waiting

eyes sinking shut, but it was rarely sleep that waited for him on the other side.

He lay in a cold, snowy valley. His head swirled, dizzy with blood loss; the frost and pain had long since numbed him. It wouldn’t be long before he was too numb to hold on. Not that he had anything left to hold on to.

But then he heard the voices, sweet as a choir, whispering behind him. They’d come for him. He was going to be saved.

You are our finest agent, they reassured him. You will play your role perfectly. Just the weapon we need.

Yes, he remembered now. He’d—volunteered? Was that right? Yes, he’d agreed to this. He wanted to take on this role. He remembered it clearly now, the day they selected him from all the other agents in training. A sharp memory, clear as glass, not fuzzy like all the rest. It had to be true.

You are serving the motherland. But most of all, you are serving us.

A purpose. Some raft to cling to when those other thoughts battered him, blunt and cruel. But they were lies, and as long as he clung to this, he could weather whatever they brought.

“—coming to you from our fine nation’s capital, where tomorrow night, a banquet will be held to honor Captain Steven Rogers, who was miraculously found alive in the Arctic some nine years after he disappeared . . .”

It punctured him like a rusted nail. A shy smile and muffled words. Don’t do anything stupid until I get back.

No, no, it was just another lie. He’d been chosen for this. He’d trained for this, everything was for the good of their plans—

“Soldier?”

She stood in the doorway, clutching a paper bag. Fear strained at her features, her knuckles white around the sack and her lower lip quivering. He was standing, he realized. He was uncertain just when he’d stood up.

“Soldier?” she asked again, her voice thin as garrote wire. She held her free hand up in surrender as she carefully reached forward to set the bag on the table. “Soldier, please put down the knife.”

He blinked at her, not understanding. Looked down. Saw the five-inch blade clenched in his right wrist. When had he—

“The knife,” she said again, with more weight behind it this time. “Put. It. Down.”

He placed it behind him on the bed. In his mind, he heard the bitter laugh of all those lies.

“I’m going to approach you,” the woman said. One foot in front of her, then the next. “I’m going to reach out and touch your face.”

He stayed still, even as the lies trembled inside of him.

Her fingers tapped against his chin as she tried to grasp it. She was shaking. Fear. He hadn’t been told to make her fearful. Hadn’t meant to—

“Soldier,” she said, peering up at him.

She was so small, so fragile in this light. Hadn’t he noticed it before? She’d seemed larger than life when she was bursting with confidence, effortlessly calling out commands as they stormed the scientists’ office.

“Soldier. Activate protocol: James Barnes.”

The soldier sagged forward and tumbled back into the abyss.

She kept her grip on his chin firm. Waiting.

James blinked. The woman was staring at him. Natasha—that was her name. His commanding officer, handler, whatever the fuck they called them these days, it seemed to change every time he woke up. Jesus, but she looked scared out of her goddamn mind. “What’s the matter, doll?” He smiled. “You look like you saw a ghost or something.”

Her mouth opened, teeth chattering, but no sound came out. She let go of his face and spun away from him with that damn ballerina’s grace of hers. Red Room, that’s right, she’d trained with those other dames down in Department X. They were all lethal beauty and cunning and stealth. He’d gotten a little of that, sure, since he—

—volunteered—our finest agent yet—

but his training was a little more comprehensive. But, hey, she got the job done.

“Something smells great,” James said, tucking his hands in his trouser pockets. “You get us some lunch?”

“Dinner, at this point.” She kept her back to him as she dug through a paper bag. “Hope you like roast beef sandwiches.”

“Sure. Hell, I could eat three.”

She laughed, though it sounded forced. “I brought extra. Come on, eat up. Then we’ve got to talk logistics.”

He joined her at the table, rubbing his hands eagerly. “New mission?”

“No, finishing the same one.” She looked up at him with her eyes sparkling, all traces of her earlier discomfort gone. “We’ve got a date tomorrow night. Time to collect the research we’re after.”

As he bit into his sandwich eagerly, she moved around him, frowned at the television screen, then shut it off.

*

“You know,” Jarvis said, “if you’d care for some company, Ana would be only too happy to set another place for dinner.”

Peggy sank into the back seat of the car and pressed her forehead to the cool glass window. “I’ll be quite all right. I think I could use a little quiet for once.”

Jarvis smiled at her through the rearview mirror. “Who, you? Heavens, you really must be feeling out of sorts.”

Peggy feigned a smile. “Just a bit more excitement than even I’m used to. Or perhaps I’m only getting old.”

“Margaret Carter? Never. You’ll be bludgeoning spies to death with staplers well into your dotage, ma’am, mark my words.” He flashed his identification badge at the SHIELD gate guards, then sped down the bridge across the Potomac and toward the District. “But anyone would be feeling out of sorts in your shoes now, I suppose.”

“No more than in Steve’s.” She shook her head. “If you could have seen the look on his face—the abject terror when he realized just what he’d been woken up for—”

“Terror? Begging your pardon, ma’am, but I don’t believe Captain Rogers knows the meaning of the word.”

“Maybe so. But I can’t help but feel this isn’t what he wants,” Peggy said.

Jarvis drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You could always ask him, couldn’t you?”

She tsked. “He’d never admit it out loud. As far as he knows, the war’s only just ended, and he’s left so much undone . . . His sense of duty is too great for that.”

Jarvis hesitated—never a good sign. “And what of his sentiments for you?”

Peggy groaned and pressed her face into the glass. “You see, Mister Jarvis? This is why I can’t have dinner with you and Ana. You two are the most ruthless interrogators I know.”

“Only trying to help.” He smiled again.

“When I have answers,” Peggy said, “I promise, you’ll be first to know.”

She meant it for Steve’s feelings as well as her own.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, passing the Capitol Building and easing into the tree-lined tony streets of southern Capitol Hill. Peggy shrugged out of her blazer; she was already fantasizing about the glass of scotch she intended to pour herself as soon as she was in the door. But as Jarvis pulled up alongside her townhome, she found that a guest was already waiting for her.

“Oh,” Jarvis said. “Should I . . . should I wait?”

Steve Rogers sat on her front steps, dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt, looking for all the world like James Dean fresh off a movie set. SHIELD must have dressed him like that. Or maybe he’d chosen it for himself—she liked that version better. The sight of him, though . . . Her heart lurched into her throat and stubbornly refused to leave it.

“I . . .” Peggy curled her fingers around the door handle. “No. That’s all right.”

“As you wish, ma’am.” He slung his arm over the back of his chair and twisted toward her. “Best of luck.”

Peggy wasn’t sure, though, if it was luck she needed or something else entirely.

She steeled herself, climbed out of the car, and skirted around the motorcycle parked alongside her curb. Steve’s, undoubtedly, or at least one loaned to him by SHIELD. “Captain Rogers.” Her smile felt painfully bright. “Glad to see you out and about.”

“Sorry for dropping by unannounced.” He stood up, body rigid as if he were a soldier at attention. “I just needed to get out of the compound for a bit.”

“I know the feeling.” She fished her keys out of her satchel and stepped past him to unlock the townhouse. “Would you . . .” Hold it together, Peggy. “Would you care to grab some dinner? Or maybe just a drink?”

He smiled sadly. “Maybe just some company.”

“I can certainly do that.” She winced at herself, hating the forced cheer she was stuffing into every word. She’d had nine years to work past these emotions, yet the moment he turned up, it felt like 1945 all over again. “Please, come in.”

They stepped into the foyer of her townhome, wood-paneled and tiled in black and white. Angie had always found it too stuffy—she much preferred her beatnik life on the Lower East Side. Steve’s gaze swept over the foyer, the curling staircase, the chandelier, the immaculate rooms beyond. Peggy felt herself tensing, wondering if he’d find it too much, as well.

“Nice,” he finally said. “This is real nice. Did you . . . uh, do all this yourself?”

She was sure he hadn’t meant it to be a loaded question, but she felt the barrel of it pressing against her all the same. Was he asking about her money, whether there was a husband responsible for all this? She wasn’t ready. Oh, god, she wasn’t ready.

“I, uh, hired someone.”

Steve smiled. She slipped out of her heels and set them by the hat rack, then padded in her stockingfeet into the sitting room. Steve followed her at a remove. He’d always moved like a cautious puppy that way, more concerned with trying to behave how he thought he ought around her than acting for himself. It used to make her laugh. It wasn’t as if he showed any caution in any other part of his life, after all. Now, though, it felt simply unfair.

“Howard tells me you’re Chief of Operations now,” Steve said.

Peggy moved to the side console and poured herself a few fingers of scotch. “Yes. It’s quite an honor.” She recapped the glass decanter, still facing away from him. “After . . . well, after the war, those of us in the SSR decided we needed a more permanent task force dedicated to stopping any and all such threats that might arise, similar to what we encountered with Hydra.”

“Superpowered threats,” Steve said.

“Not only that.” She picked up her glass and turned toward him. “There are plenty of other . . . forces . . . in the world that require our intervention.”

“So you’re like a police force,” he said, “but global.”

“We’re supposed to operate without national boundaries, though in practice, yes, our member states are Western ones.”

“I see.”

He was wearing that face of his. The one that always served as an early warning sign that Captain Rogers was about to do something both colossally brave and colossally stupid. It made her want to smile, like it did so many years ago. But she could no longer be sure just what it meant.

“Please.” Peggy gestured to an upholstered armchair. “Have a seat.”

Steve sat, dwarfing the chair with his bulk. His knees were nearly higher than his chest, and his arms dangled over the sides. He grinned sheepishly, and she couldn’t help but laugh, which only made him laugh, cheeks flushing red. Which only made her want to reach out and brush his hair back from his brow. Which only led her down a whole chain of events that had no place in their lives now. She forced her smile away and sat in the matching armchair beside him, a side table spacing them apart from one another.

“So,” Peggy said, bracing herself. “What else did Howard tell you?”

“Oh, what you’d expect, I guess.” He ticked things off with his fingers. “General Eisenhower’s president now—that’s good, I think. The Russians hate us. The North Koreans hate us—apparently they split off from the south. And everyone’s crazy about some singer who shakes his hips.”

“A good start,” Peggy said.

“He said we dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, too, after I went into the ice.” Steve’s expression hardened. “I had to ask just what an atom bomb is.”

Peggy’s throat tightened. “The SSR was not involved in that project—”

“We were so worried about what Hydra could do with the stupid cube,” Steve continued, “like the only terrible things in this world could come from another one.”

She fell silent. She’d long since wrung herself out trying not to make up her mind any one way about it.

Steve clasped his hands, fingers spread. “Anyway. He didn’t say anything more about you.” His gaze flicked toward hers. “Said it was better to hear it from you.”

Peggy took a lengthy drink of her scotch.

“I, uh . . . I want you to know, Peg. I don’t expect anything from you. If that’s what you’re nervous about.” His smile looked about as strained as his too-tight shirt. “I don’t have any right to.”

Peggy pressed her lips together. How could she even begin?

“I just want to know. Because I care about you—and I—I want to know if you’re happy.” His throat bobbed as he said it. “That’s all I care about.”

She blinked back tears.

“So.” Steve took a deep breath. “Are you happy?”

You live with a ghost, Peg, Angie had said. You’re haunted, babe, that’s what it is. And I ain’t signed up to be no exorcist.

“I have a good life,” Peggy said.

“But are you happy?”

She blinked, and saw her last glimpse of Angie, boarding the northbound train. “Let’s just say I enjoy my work, and leave it at that.”

Steve nodded. “Did you ever marry?”

And there it was, heavy between them. Peggy wanted, desperately, to say it. She’d never been afraid to say it before, not in front of people she knew and trusted. But Steve was different. Not because of what they’d been to each other—but because of how desperately she wanted him to approve.

Bloody hell. This was Steven Rogers she was talking about. If anyone could accept this about her, he could. And yet—part of her didn’t want to have to find out for certain.

And so she opted for a half-truth. “I almost did, once.” As close as she could have gotten legally, anyway.

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Almost? Don’t tell me he got cold feet on you.”

“No,” Peggy said carefully. She took one more sip of scotch and let it burn. “She did.”

Steve paused mid-breath, mouth open. His eyes squinted as if he were doing a complicated math equation. “Oh,” he said. Then, more slyly, “Oh.”

“It wouldn’t have been a legal union,” Peggy continued, words spilling out of her. “Just a private ceremony with our closest friends. But she . . . well, ultimately, I think she and I wanted too many different things from life.”

“I see,” Steve said, a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth. “And did she know about . . . I mean, about you and me—”

She knew I was still in love with you, Peggy thought. “She knew I, ah . . . favored the company of men and women both.”

“—Right. Right, okay.” He looked far more relieved at that. “I didn’t know that was a—well, a thing someone could be—”

“Bisexual,” Peggy said, more sharply than she meant. “I believe that’s the word you’re looking for.”

“Bisexual. Got it.”

As if she hadn’t seen the way he looked at Sergeant Barnes, god rest his soul. But she kept that to herself.

“That isn’t public knowledge, mind you,” Peggy said. “It’s illegal, for one. But there are rather a lot of people who’d think and say terrible things if they knew. They’d try to ruin me—and everything I’ve worked for. So I’d prefer if you kept that to yourself.”

Steve looked down. “I guess not everything’s changed, then.”

“No, I’m afraid it hasn’t.” Peggy drained the last of her scotch and set her glass aside.

“What was she like?” Steve asked. His eyes danced with something—loneliness, perhaps, but there was more to it than that. Not that she could blame him. It was like he’d been in some terrible party game, blindfold over his eyes, swung around and around until nothing made sense anymore and he couldn’t find his way.

“Witty. Always ready with a sharp retort. And she didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought about her,” Peggy said. “She was a decent actress, but a fabulous dancer. When we broke things off, she went back to New York to find work there. I hear she’s doing well.”

“I’m sorry, Peg.”

She waved her hand away. “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” Another half-truth. “It’s my own, really.”

“Who, you?” Steve leaned toward her. “I don’t buy that for a minute.”

“I tend to be a bit obsessive about my work,” Peggy said.

He laughed. “All right, that I can buy.”

“And I . . . I suppose I’d just never gotten any closure.” She slid to the floor and propped her head back against the armchair. “About you.”

Steve swallowed. “Peg, I’m sorry—”

“No. Stop that.” She turned her head toward him, her golden boy, the one who still carried himself as if he were that sapling they’d plucked from a Brooklyn alley fight. “You just spent nine years frozen in a suspended state while the world carried on with out you—because of you. You aren’t allowed to pity me.”

He reached out, then, his massive hand moving delicate as clockwork, and tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear. She turned her head into the touch; felt the warmth of his fingertips against her temple. For a long moment, neither of them said anything, but it wasn’t heavy and stilted as it was before.

It felt too much like coming home, and that scared her most of all.

“I went into the ice talking to you,” Steve said finally. “I woke up talking to you. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the nine years that happened in between.”

As if she hadn’t spent a good portion of those nine years replaying their short time together, wondering what more could have been. She remembered all too well how it felt when he’d return from a mission with the Howling Commandos. He’d share a round of celebratory drinks with the boys, maybe two if Barnes asked him nicely, but then he’d find her in the barracks. Sometimes he was freshly showered and shaved from a medal ceremony, others he was battered and dirty and heavy with the weight of all they’d done, but it never mattered to her.

He’d press her against the wall of her tiny room on base, burdened with ceaseless energy, both of them hungering beyond words. She’d show him how to move just so and touch her like this and let her shove him down, her hand on his throat and his fingers in her hair and more and more—

And after, knotted up in one another, they’d speak of anything and everything, nothing at all. A filthy joke Dugan had told him. Her time at Bletchley Park. His memory of his sixteenth birthday when Barnes snuck him up to the top of a Manhattan skyscraper and told him the fireworks were for him, all for him.

Could she feel that way again? Like she was harnessing a meteor for as long as she could, knowing damn well it could all end in any battle, any bomb, any plane flight? Would he even want her to, if she could?

“You’re a good soul, Steve.” She nudged her stockinged toes against his leg. “The best I’ve ever known. Maybe that’s why even after nine years, I feel like it was just yesterday, too.”

He ducked his head. “You don’t have to say that, Peg. I don’t need your sympathy.”

“I’m not just saying it. I just felt you ought to know—that it hasn’t been so easy for me, either.”

Steve would never ask her if they could start over. He’d never be anything short of an utter gentleman, attentive to her wants and needs to a fault. It was a comfort and a vexation, she thought—the choice was solely hers, for better or ill.

Peggy wrapped her hand around his calf; felt his muscles stiffen beneath her touch.

No. She wasn’t ready for this. And moreover, he wasn’t. In his mind, it was too much, too soon, whipping him back and forth from loving her to finding she’d moved on to being around her again.

A friend. He needed a friend more than anything, now. And if she was being honest with herself, so did she.

“Are they putting you up in the barracks?” she asked, pulling her hand back.

“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled sadly. “I’ve got my own bed, and a desk and drawers for all my personal effects, and a whole squadron of guards.”

“Sounds like a delight.” She stood, and straightened her skirt. “I’ve a spare guest room, if you ever need to get away from all that. You’re welcome to it anytime.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she silenced him with an arched brow. “Thanks.” He smiled. “I mean it—thank you. For . . . for listening. And talking. And just . . .” He shook his head. “Being you. Of everything that’s changed, I just can’t tell you how grateful I am that you’re still here.”

She stood over him, once more unsure what to say. She didn’t feel like his constant. She didn’t feel like much of anything. After yearning for this moment for so long . . . Everything felt like a misstep.

“Don’t let them change a single hair on your head, Steven Rogers.” She pressed a kiss to his forehead, then leaned back, looking into his eyes. He smiled sadly back at her. “I fear Director Fury and Howard want to make a dancing monkey of you again. But if they push you too far . . . you let me know, and I’ll give them hell.”

Steve stood. “I don’t doubt that.” Adjusted his leather jacket. Inclined his head to her, the portrait of politeness.

And then, once again, he was gone.

Peggy poured herself another glass of scotch and sank into the chair where Steve had sat. It still smelled of him. It was still warm.

*

“Comrade?” The secretary poked her head into Dottie’s office. “You are wanted in the communications office.”

Dottie’s eyes widened. “Wonderful.” She bounded from her chair, tossing aside the file she’d been reading.

The secretary looked her over, her already frumpy expression twisting into an even deeper scowl. “Your predecessor was not usually so . . . closely involved with his agents’ operations.” She clicked her tongue. “It does not behoove you to let them believe that they are your equal, you know.”

“Oh, dear Tanya. He’s my predecessor for a reason!” Dottie patted her cheek. “I told you things are going to change around here. I’d hate to have to change you out, too.”

Tanya’s nostrils flared. “I didn’t—I would never imply that you are not fit—”

“No. Of course you wouldn’t. Not ever again. Now . . . excuse me, I have a call to take.”

The communications room boasted an impressive array of encrypted radio equipment, shortwave radios for open comms, telephone lines, and monitoring stations, all of which could be plugged seamlessly into any of the department’s active operations. And Dottie had her nails sunk into all of them. She shouldn’t play favorites, she knew—these were all her children, after all—but she was crossing her fingers that this call had come in from one in particular.

“Comrade.” One of the radio specialists rushed forward. “Urgent transmission from Agent Penknife. Encrypted channel.”

“Well, let’s not keep Penknife waiting.” Dottie followed him to the encrypted station and plucked up one of the headsets. “I’m listening.”

“Good to hear from you again. I wanted to report that everything is prepared for tonight as you requested.”

“They know their new target?” Dottie asked, wrapping her finger around the headset cord. “I don’t want there to be any confusion.”

“Oh, yes, it is understood.”

Dottie scowled. She trusted Penknife about as far as she could throw them, which was, admittedly, a decent distance. But still. “I don’t want there to be any problems. Especially for the asset.”

“N-no. There is no cause for concern.”

“You’re sure his programming is prepared for this?” she asked. “I don’t want there to be any chance—”

“We’ve tested him extensively. Trust me. He will perform exactly as he ought.”

“Good. I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

“Hail—” Penknife started to say, but Dottie killed the connection before the radio specialist could hear.

“Everything all right, comrade?” the specialist asked.

Dottie patted him on the head. “Very,” she cooed. “Everything’s going to be just grand.”

Chapter Text

Part III: Phoenix

None of Steve’s combat training had prepared him for the terrifying scene in Howard Stark’s Georgetown mansion. He’d thought his USO shows were the height of patriotic absurdity, but no—leave it to Stark to outdo them. Red, white, and blue bunting covered every railing and bannister; silvery streamers, trailing like fireworks, draped from the chandeliers in the great hall. It looked as if a drunken Fourth of July threw up all over the wood paneling and gilded columns. And beneath him, in the main hall, what looked like hundreds of overcoiffed senators, attorneys, colonels, and more milled around and patted themselves on the back.

At least his captain’s uniform hadn’t changed. Much.

Pretty much everything else sure had. He couldn’t shake it, the way Peggy had looked at him when he first woke up. Her face was softer, wearier, but moreover, her eyes were filled with too much pity and remorse. It twisted in him like a knife to see her so sad, but the worst part was that in his mind, only a few minutes had passed since he’d seen her last.

Well. She’d lived with nine years of uncertainty. It was his turn to shoulder the burden all that time had built up between them. She deserved happiness—she deserved whatever it was she wanted. He just wished he knew what that was.

“What’s the matter, Cap? The canapés disagreeing with your stomach?” Howard Stark sidled up beside him, where he stood at the second floor railing watching the guests chatter, and clapped a hand onto his shoulder. It was a bit of a stretch for Howard. “You’re doing great.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Steve said.

“That’s the point, my friend. You’re here to look pretty. Shake a bunch of congressmen’s hands. Kiss a few babies. You know the drill.”

Steve pressed his lips together. Just like in the USO. “I should be out there,” he said. “In the field. Helping Peg.”

How strange it had been, watching her be the one tossing out the orders. Long overdue, he supposed. It killed him not to be out there, conducting the stakeout on the Kronas facility, waiting for the Russians to strike again. But Howard had insisted—no field work until they were positive all his vitals were stabilized.

Apparently, high-dollar shindigs didn’t count.

“Believe me, pal. Pegs has handled herself just fine. If you could’ve seen even half the jobs she’s pulled off . . . Well, you’d be mighty proud.”

Steve smiled sadly. “Who says I’m not?”

“Touché.” Howard adjusted the bowtie on his tux. “So, uh . . . you and Pegs . . . Are you two . . .”

“We’re friendly.” Steve leaned into the last word.

Howard whistled, low. “Sorry, pal. That’s gotta be a trip for you.”

Steve considered saying nothing, but chats like this were about as close as one got to camaraderie with Howard Stark. Plus, it was better than heading down to meet the crowd. “I went into the ice what feels like yesterday. But . . . she’s lived a life since then.” He glanced sidelong at Howard. “No expectations. I’m taking life a day at a time.”

“No expectations, huh? I wish all dames were that laid back.”

Steve managed a laugh at that. Some things definitely hadn’t changed. “Maybe you’re just not meeting the right ones.”

“Well, maybe we’ll meet you a special someone tonight.” Howard leaned over the railing, scanning his guests. “I can pick out a few choice gams if you like—”

Steve’s smile fell; he drummed his fingers against the railing. “I’m in no hurry, Howard.” He tilted his head away. “Apparently, I’ve got all the time in the world.”

*

Two hours into their stakeout, and already Peggy’s calves were beginning to cramp from being wedged against the floorboards of the can. She used to conduct surveillance for days on end, back when she was still trying to prove herself as a field agent. When did she get too old for this?—On second thought, she didn’t want to know.

Two hours, and not so much as a wind stirring the exposed side of the new Kronas research facility. It was possible the Russians had decided to lay low, now that they knew they’d been tapped . . . but somehow she doubted it. That woman had been too confident, too determined. If anything, she’d probably welcome the challenge.

It reminded Peggy a little too much of another Russian she’d encountered, once upon a time.

“Alpha Team?” Peggy whispered into the radio. “Report in.”

“Nothing on this side, Chief,” Parsons replied.

“Bravo Team?”

“Negative, Chief,” Farris said.

Peggy grimaced. “Falcon? Do you have anything for us?”

The next transmission was accompanied by the whistling of air rushing past. Sam Wilson had demonstrated the frankly incredible set of wings that Howard had designed for him earlier, performing aerial maneuvers over a remote field out in Maclean. It wasn’t only the design that was impressive, though, but the skill Wilson had already developed in maneuvering with them. In truth, Peggy was irritated that Howard had kept them—and their talented pilot—from her for this long.

“I’m tracking all the vehicles I spot heading up the road,” Wilson transmitted. “But no one’s coming near the compound just yet.”

“Dammit.” Peggy tapped the antenna of the radio against her lips, thinking. “Where the devil could they be?”

*

Natasha extended the engraved invitation to the doorman and looped her arm through James’s. “I hope we aren’t too late for the main event.”

“Mister and Missus James Rushman?” The doorman looked them up and down, and Natasha batted her eyes. “Just let me check the list.”

Natasha had donned a slinky black velvet gown with opera-length gloves to match. With her hair twisted up into a Hepburn-esque chignon, she was sure to fit in with even the uppermost crust of Georgetown socialites. James had been a bit trickier—they needed a way to conceal his left arm—but after she’d scrounged up a suitable tux for him and a pair of white gloves, he looked the perfect picture of the bored investor, down to his smile like he knew a secret and his hair just rakish enough like he was ready to know more.

No trace of whatever uncertainty had overcome him earlier, when he was in the Winter Soldier protocol. And she fully intended to keep it that way. There was something off in his stare the best of times, but the way he’d looked right through her—the confusion on his face, the knife in his hand—it rattled around in the back of her head, distracting her. And the last thing either of them could afford was a distraction.

“Ahh, here we are.” The doorman located their names on the guest list and returned the invitation to Natasha. “Welcome to the Stark residence. It’s a true pleasure to have you joining us.”

James flicked a stray lock of his dark hair back into place. “The pleasure’s all ours.”

They stepped through the portico and into one of the gaudiest great rooms she’d ever seen in her life—and she’d seen plenty on assignment. Patriotic bunting everywhere, diamonds winking at her from every finger and throat and hairpiece, and more military brass than a Kremlin parade. “Bozhe moi,” she uttered under her breath. “This crowd probably holds more secrets than the Pentagon.”

James offered her a placating smile. He didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor, but he did an all right job of faking one. “Just don’t forget why we’re here.”

“Oh, I know. But if we can have a little fun in the process . . .”

Suddenly he whirled her into a dance spin, in time with the brass band churning out old wartime standards, and dipped her dangerously low. A few of the couples around them murmured as he pulled her back up and pressed her against him, the fingers on his right hand digging cruelly into her back. His left hand was cold, so cold beneath his gloves; almost as cold as that dark glint in his eyes.

“James,” she whispered. “What are you doing?”

A bright light flashed behind him. “Keeping your face away from the photographer over there.”

Natasha shivered. She’d completely missed it. How the hell had she missed it? And how had he caught it?

He released her, still grinning that frosty grin, and arm and arm, they steered their way toward the bar. Good. She could use a drink after that.

“What can I get for you folks?” the bartender asked, his gaze lingering overly long at Natasha as she pressed her cleavage against the bar. Men tended not to remember her face if she gave them something else to stare at, she’d found.

James glanced slyly at Natasha. “A vodka gimlet for me. And . . .” He studied her for a moment. “A dry martini for the lady.”

“No,” she corrected. “Not dry. Dirty.” She grinned. “Make it downright filthy.”

The bartender laughed to himself and turned toward the rack of bottles.

“Sounds like you’ve got a real live wire,” the man on the other side of James said, swiveling on his stool. “Hodge—Colonel Hodge.”

James extended his hand to shake. “James Rushman. No rank. And my wife, Natalie.” He leaned toward Hodge conspiratorially before the colonel could look at her too closely. “I’m one of those filthy industrialists your higher-ups hate so much.”

Hodge belly-laughed at that. “Yeah, well, seeing as Howard Stark’s footing the tab for tonight . . . I’ll raise a drink to filthy industrialists.” The bartender sat down James’s gimlet, and they clinked glasses. “You look a little familiar. Did we meet at one of these shindigs before?”

“Oh, we go to so many, who can remember anymore.” James shrugged. “Plus, I think I’ve just got one of those faces. Now, Hodge, Colonel Hodge . . . You’re liaisoned to the Armed Forces Committee, am I right?”

While James tied up the colonel with chit-chat, Natasha leaned back against the bar and scanned the scene. Stark was seated at an elevated dining table with the man of the hour, Captain Rogers, and all the other military bigwigs and investors who’d been given a place of honor for the evening. She plucked the cherry out of her martini and held it between her teeth. Waited for a lull in whatever Stark was ranting about now—something requiring big hand motions, made even bigger from the empty martini glasses scattered before him on the table.

Perfect.

Howard paused to let someone squeeze a word in edgewise; as he did so, his gaze slid across the room and the bar. She raised one eyebrow and popped the stem free from the cherry, still clenching it in her teeth. For a few seconds too long, Howard stared.

Bait and hook.

With a half-smile, Natasha turned back toward the bar. “James, darling, I think I’m going to go powder my nose.” She pressed a bloodless kiss to his cheek. “Don’t let the colonel steal you away for too long, hmm?”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sweet pea.”

She tapped his wrist twice. Give me a two-minute lead. And then she sashayed her way up the grand staircase.

*

Steve stabbed the dry piece of steak with his fork, popped it into his mouth, and forced himself to chew.

“Now, Captain, I think what we all really want to know is, Captain, is how you feel about returning to service, I mean, not in combat—” the congressman paused to laugh at himself—“but as a rallying point, you know? I mean, that’s how we’ve all come to see you. My son, see, my son in the second grade, they learned all about you in school, and there’s even this little drawing of you on the Pledge of Allegiance sheets they pass out for the kids to memorize, you know, to help them remember their patriotic duty . . .”

Steve took a long drink of wine and wished, for the millionth time that evening, that it might actually have some effect.

He wished Peggy were here, instead of hunkered down outside some perimeter fence. She always handled these things so much more gracefully, yet she never let these sycophants get the better of her. His stomach twisted at the thought, though—it was so hard to be around her now. He still felt the pull toward her, still felt the urge to slide back into the easy familiarity they shared, his hand slipping around her waist, his lips pressed against the back of her head. It had all been such an easy comfort, and while it was still in his muscle memory, it had clearly fallen out of hers. All he was left with were half-written stories, half-lived lives.

But hadn’t that been what he’d been running from, when he tilted the Valkyrie toward the ice? Stories that never got the ending they deserved. As Peggy soothed him over the radio, as he did his damnedest to pretend it wasn’t goodbye, he’d thought of another life cut far too short. And in the back of his mind, he’d thought: At least now, Bucky doesn’t have to die alone.

“Patriotic duty,” Steve drawled, looking the senator in the eye. “I hear people are real big on patriotism these days. You’re either bursting with it, or you’re a Commie, isn’t that right, senator?”

The senator flattened his palms against the table. “Well, Captain, we’ve got Reds pressing in on us from every side. The Soviets, Red China, and now North Korea—”

“Korea, that’s right.” Steve dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “I understand they’ve got a lot of our boys prisoner there still.”

“Well, Captain, you can’t save everyone, and those boys went over there knowing what they were getting into, you see, anything for their country—”

“Sometimes, maybe their country should return the favor,” Steve said.

The senator exhaled through his nose. “Yes, Captain, we all know how much you love running into dangerous situations, risking life and limb, on the off-chance you might recover just a few soldiers.”

Steve had wished Peggy were here to handle this dolt with grace and aplomb. But now he wished Bucky were here to flip him the bird.

He wished Bucky were here, period.

“Seems to work out pretty well for me so far,” is all Steve said. Then turned away from the senator to listen to whatever dumb yarn Howard Stark was telling now.

“. . . and in that moment, flat on my ass, eyebrows still smoking from the explosion—” he paused for laughs—“I knew I’d struck on something big.”

Howard’s audience murmured with enthusiasm, but Howard’s gaze, Steve noticed, had turned elsewhere. Specifically, a bombshell redhead making eyes at him from the bar. Steve groaned inwardly.

Then stopped, as Peggy’s briefing echoed in his head.

“Excuse me for a moment, Cap.” Howard stood and tossed his napkin into his chair. “Duty calls.”

Steve watched the redhead kiss the cheek of a man at the bar, his back to Steve, then slink her way up the stairs.

Yes, Steve thought, standing, it certainly does.

*

James counted to one hundred and twenty seconds in his head as he spun some bullshit sales pitch to the colonel. Our firm is developing technology that could, in a few years’ time, revolutionize the face of war. You think supersoldiers are something to see, well, wait until I tell you about war with no soldiers at all . . . Meaningless chunks of words spliced together like a Demidov dog, just like his handlers taught him.

His vodka gimlet slowly disappeared, though he didn’t feel even the slightest spike in his blood. Another bonus of his training. It was amazing, really, everything they’d taught him. So much that he couldn’t believe anyone walked around without all this knowledge, all these skills, inside of them. How empty their lives must have felt without these incredible talents. How useless they must feel, without such worthy masters to serve.

He had purpose. He had the power. And he’d use it all for them. He was worthy and nothing could ever feel as rewarding as the opportunity they’d given him to serve.

Three, two, one. “I’m so sorry, colonel—I hate to interrupt you, but I just saw Frank Templeton, and that son of a bitch owes me fifty bucks over the Senators game.” James offered up his slyest grin. “Maybe we could continue this some other time?”

“Well—sure. I’d love to. The Pentagon would be real interested in your project, you know.”

James slipped a business card from his tuxedo’s breast pocket. “Rushman Industries. Give us a call whenever you like.”

The number, Tashenka had explained, routed to an answering service, where a sweet and breathy-voiced girl would dutifully take down the colonel’s information and subtly ply him for more and more details about his work. The girl’s report would then go to their superiors, who would assess him for development or avoidance. Such an efficient system. He admired it, the neatness of it all.

“You bet, Mister Rushman. And hey—” Hodge raised his glass of gin. “Go Senators.”

James tipped him a salute and loped across the grand room toward the stairs.

The architectural plans they’d studied flicked through his mind, clear as a slide projector. Up one flight, down an art-strewn corridor, up another flight to the third floor. The corridor split in two at the top of the third floor. One way, he saw Natasha standing in front of a Kandinsky painting, coaxing some kind of half-assed art critique out of Howard Stark, whose hand was already pressed to the small of her back.

James turned the other way and headed down the short hall: Howard’s private office, guarded by steel-reinforced doors.

He slipped the white glove off of his left hand, then, twisting and clicking the tip of his index finger, he dislodged the lockpicking mechanism and slotted it into the door.

Somewhere far beneath him, as the mechanism twisted and whirred, a rousing patriotic anthem played. The star-spangled man with a plan . . . The melody tugged at him with a phantom beat, half-remembered lyrics bobbing beneath the surface of his thoughts. He must have memorized it as part of his training. They were thorough like that, ensuring he knew every nuance and fragment of American culture he might possibly be expected to know as an effective agent. They’d thought of everything, and it filled him with pride.

The doors clicked open.

James slid his fingertip from the slot, retracted the mechanism, and snapped the covering back into place. He pushed the doors open slowly enough to keep their hinges from squealing, then slipped inside and closed them again. His heart was pounding, slow and steady, and his senses crackled with hyper-awareness. He loved the focus a dangerous mission brought out in him. This was what he lived for—this was what he was made for. He wanted to execute it perfectly.

Stark’s office, like most of the mansion, was gaudily decorated with oaken wood and gold leaf and a massive oil painting of himself that took up half of one wall. An ungainly computer terminal sat in one corner of the room, connected to a punch card gearset. James started there, shuffling through the punch card tabs, but none of the labels matched what they were looking for.

No, Stark probably wanted to keep it off the books. He needed a private repository, one even SHIELD wouldn’t think to look in. The oil painting was too obvious, but James checked behind it anyway—nothing but more wood paneling. He moved to the desk drawers, his finger making quick work of the locks. One drawer held stacks and stacks of receipts and invoices. Another, which James quickly shut, a stack of black and white cheesecake photos of would-be starlets leaning against fireplaces and sprawling on bearskin rugs in various stages of undress. James slammed that drawer shut quickly and moved on to the next. Typewritten pages chronicling a failed jet propulsion project—

James stopped and went back to the drawer with the girlie photos.

He gathered up the scattered pictures and set them on the desk. Then he pressed on the drawer’s bottom—until it popped open, revealing a compartment beneath. He tossed the false bottom aside.

And there, staring up at him, was a case of vials and an overstuffed folder labeled PROJECT PHOENIX.

James’s heart thudded against his ribs. He’d done it. They’d be so pleased with him. His face flushed just imagining it. They’d be so pleased, they’d tell him all the wonderful ways his work would serve their cause, all the changes in the world order his work would bring about—

“Ohh, come on, Howie. Just a little peek?”

Tashenka was at the door. James snatched the case of vials and the folder and dove under the desk.

“All right, all right.” The lock on the office doors clicked open. “I keep my best scotch in here anyway.”

Natasha giggled at him, and they stumbled inside.

Keeping his left arm still—in the dead silence of the office, even its subtle whirring movements were deafening—James peeled open the cover of the folder and scanned the pages. Encrypted. Shit. And that fucker had probably used some sort of one-time pad, too. They could try locating the pad, if he’d used a passage from a book in his office, maybe, or something similar . . .

But he and Natasha had planned for another contingency. Time to set it into motion.

James unfolded from underneath the desk. Stark paused mid-pour of scotch, and his mouth popped open. “Wait a minute—” The glass slipped out of his hand as he whirled to Natasha. “What’s the big idea—”

Natasha tilted her head at him, all the earlier bubbliness in her expression drained away, leaving an face cold as stone. “Come on, Howie.” She bit into the nickname. “Let’s go for a little drive. I think you said something about a convertible the color of my hair?”

Stark’s arms drooped as he swore. “Pegs is gonna kill me for this, but—”

And the damn fool tried to sweep Natasha’s legs out from under her.

Natasha leaped cleanly over his legs and spun to the side. In an instant, James crossed the room and snatched Stark up by the throat with his left hand, plates shifting beneath the tuxedo sleeve as he raised Stark into the air.

“Project Phoenix,” James said. “What is the cipher?”

Stark sputtered and wheezed as James’s metal fingers pressed into his trachea. “Like I’d—fucking tell you Commies—”

James pressed harder. “You will. Now or later. The choice is yours.”

Stark’s legs kicked frantically through empty air as James dangled him. His face was turning a bruised shade of purple as James’s thumb clamped down on his carotid artery. Just a few more seconds—

“Holy shit,” Stark gasped, staring at him as he clawed uselessly at James’s metal arm. “Sergeant—”

James twitched, involuntary. Blinked.

Howard’s eyes rolled back in his head as James shuddered—

You will be our fist and our scalpel—

Then the tremor was gone. Stark went limp in his hand.

Natasha exhaled—as if she’d been nervous. Why? Their training was more than adequate for the task. “Finally,” she said. “Bastard really loves to talk about himself.”

James slung Howard’s unconscious form over his left shoulder and gripped him there. “Well, let’s hope he loves telling us his cipher just as much.”

Natasha took a step back from him, looking a little unsteady. “I’m, uh—I’m sure you won’t have a problem convincing him.”

“No.” James tilted his head at her. “I won’t.”

She studied him a moment longer, chewing on her lower lip, then relaxed. “Okay. Project Phoenix. You found it?”

“Vials and an encoded folder.” He jerked his head toward the desk behind him.

She scooped up the files and took a deep breath. “Then follow me.”

*

Steve flattened himself against the hallway and cradled the alcove phone’s receiver against his shoulder. “Switchboard, how may I direct your call?”

Steve grimaced—he was certain everyone in the entire house could hear the operator’s grating voice. “Burt’s Drycleaning,” he whispered, hand cupped around the mouthpiece. “Klondike 5-1791.”

“Connecting you now,” the operator boomed, and Steve shuddered again.

Finally, the line clicked, and a woman answered after the first ring. “Burt’s Drycleaning.”

“It’s Captain Rogers. I need to get a message to Chief Carter immediately.”

The woman’s sigh crackled across the phone line. “Captain Rogers, we talked about this. When I say ‘Burt’s Drycleaning,’ you say . . .”

“That I don’t remember your goddamned code phrases,” Steve snapped. “And if you know what’s good for SHIELD, you’ll get this message to Chief Carter.”

The woman went silent for a moment before answering. “Fine. What’s the message, Cap?”

“That the spies she’s looking for are here. At Stark’s place.” Steve craned his neck around the corner. “And I think they’ve got Stark with them.”

“Wait. They’re kidnapping Mister Stark?—”

Steve replaced the receiver as quietly as he could—he’d heard footsteps whirl around the side staircase about thirty feet away from him. Shit. He sprinted toward the stairwell as fast as his stiff dress shoes would allow and peered over the railing just in time to glimpse the red-haired woman and dark-haired man vanish a floor or two below him—with Howard Stark slung over the man’s shoulder.

Muscle memory sent Steve reaching over his shoulder for a shield that wasn’t there.

He swore again. Kicked off the dress shoes—they’d only slow him down. And then took off down the stairs after them.

*

“—to Queenie, HQ to Queenie, Captain says hostiles are at the Emperor’s castle. Repeat, the hostiles are at the Emperor’s castle.”

Peggy was already diving into the driver’s seat as she responded. “I’m on my way. Is Captain in pursuit?”

“He didn’t say, ma’am—”

“Well, are they on the move?” She jammed the gearset into drive as she revved the engine to life.

“He also didn’t say—but they may have Emperor with them—”

“Blast. Thank you, HQ.” Peggy switched the channel with one hand as she used the other to guide the van back out of the ditch where she’d parked. “Falcon, this is Queenie, come in.”

“Falcon waiting for Queenie, over,” Wilson replied.

“Situation at Emperor’s castle. You’ll be able to reach it a good sight faster than I can.”

Wilson uttered a more colorful oath than she one she’d used, but shared a similar sentiment. “Is it our targets?”

“Captain seems to think so. Blast, we fell right into their trap—”

“Don’t worry, ma’am. We’ll stop them. Falcon heading south.” In the background, she heard the whir and snap of his wings.

“Alpha Team, follow me for Georgetown. Beta Team, remain in place. Just in case.”

“Roger, Queenie.”

“Roger!”

But Peggy felt all too certain now that the Kronas Corporation had been nothing but a wild goose chase. She swore again as she merged onto the road, just in time to be trapped behind a lumbering construction vehicle. She leaned on the horn, then, seeing no other recourse, swerved into the oncoming traffic lane and throttled the car into fourth gear.

Dammit! For all her concern about Fury using Steve—Captain Rogers—as bait, she’d been the one to leave him exposed. In a matter of days, no less. And Howard was right there with him. Had the Russians sieged the banquet, infiltrated quietly, or something in between? What if they had weapons? Explosives? Bloody hell, what if Steve took it upon his damned fool self to try to defuse the situation on his own?

Peggy groaned and strangled the steering wheel. It wasn’t ever a matter of if, when Captain America was involved. Only when.

Steven Grant Rogers, I swear on the Queen’s English, if you get yourself hurt—

Two glowing lights from an oncoming car rushed toward her and she swerved back into her lane, just barely clearing the construction truck. Peggy clenched her teeth until they ached. If she wanted to give Captain Rogers the scolding of a lifetime, she’d have to survive, as well.

*

“Ooh,” Natasha cooed, as they reached the basement garage beneath the Stark mansion. “I want that one.”

James turned toward the cherry-red Aston Martin Healey convertible she’d pointed out. “Completely impractical. We’d be exposed on all sides, and have hardly any room to maneuver—”

“But it’s tiny. And fast.” Natasha popped the Healey’s trunk. “Trunk’s small enough to keep him from getting into too much trouble.”

“The Jeep has much more utility—”

“James,” Natasha said, an edge to her tone. “We’re taking the Healey.”

One beat of hesitation, and all the harshness sanded away from him. “You got it, doll.” He dropped Stark into the trunk—none too gently—and bound his hands and feet with a length of rope from his pocket. “Want me to drive?”

“Yes,” Natasha said, though in truth, she suddenly felt too rattled to protest. It really was as if the very thought of disagreeing was impossible for him. The thought raised goosebumps on her arms.

As soon as she slid into the passenger’s seat, he shifted into second gear and peeled out of the garage.

The brick and ivy homes of Georgetown whizzed past as James threaded the convertible down a narrow cobblestone street. He reached Canal Street and pointed them west, away from the District, running alongside the Potomac River as—

WHAM. A massive weight slammed down on the trunk of the car.

“Blyad!” Natasha swore, twisting around in her seat. A blond man in full military dress clung to the convertible’s trunk, fingers digging into the soft cloth of the collapsed roof. The car swerved as James tried to regain control, but the man clung tight.

Natasha yanked off one of her heels and drove the stiletto spike into the back of the man’s hand with all her might.

He barely blinked. She swore again and pried at his fingers with one hand while issuing a flat-palmed smack to the crown of his head. Still unfazed. The man looked up at her, teeth bared—

And she stared into the face of Captain America.

“Throw him off!” Natasha shrieked in Russian. He looked like a man possessed, his expression dark and dangerous. He looked, she thought, like a man with nothing left to lose.

James swerved across the width of the road as he upshifted. “I’m trying!”

Captain Rogers clamped one hand around Natasha’s wrist and tried to pull himself forward. She twisted her arm, breaking his grip, but then he was grabbing hold of James’s right shoulder. His other arm swung around and scrabbled at James’s left arm.

With the faint whine of hundreds of gears, eyes never leaving the road, James calmly reached up with his left hand and pried the captain’s hand away with brutal, swift force.

Momentarily stunned, Captain Rogers’s hold on the car faltered. Natasha wrenched the car’s emergency brake handle up. The car ground to a halt in a screech of rubber, back end flinging to the right and spinning them around, coming to a rest with a painful crunch of metal. Captain Rogers went flying ahead of them on the road and skidded off into the darkness, beyond the headlights’ reach.

James revved the engine, but the car’s front tires now dangled precariously over the lip of the road, pointed toward an embankment that tumbled toward the Potomac River below. Shit. So much for leaving Captain Rogers in the dust.

They’d fight their way out of this the hard way, then.

Natasha grabbed James’s face and twisted it toward her. “James. Listen to me.” His expression hardened; in the weak moonlight, she saw his eyes lock on hers. “Enact protocol: Winter Soldier.”

All warmth drained from his face, leaving behind nothing but a sharp-eyed killer. Natasha dropped him and scrambled back. With no expression, no word, he rolled his left shoulder until the seams of the tuxedo sleeve tore open.

It sent a rush of cold through Natasha. But if they were facing off with Captain America, she knew it was the best chance they had.

*

Steve shoved himself off the asphalt with a gasp. The woman was every bit as ruthless as Peggy had warned. But he had the serum on his side. No uniform, no shield, but if he could wear them down, then he stood a good chance at bringing them in.

A shot fired at him from the darkness, and a bullet whizzed narrowly past his ear. Well . . . maybe a decent chance.

Steve squinted into the darkness, past the blinding white of the headlights. There she was—running barefoot across the road, narrow skirt gathered up in one hand, toward the hillside that sloped up toward the north. Steve grabbed one of the chunks of granite that lined the road and lobbed it at her, but he was out of practice, and too used to swinging the shield with its balanced weight. The rock struck a tree trunk right as she skidded past.

Fortunately, he still had speed on his side.

He shot toward the trees, and caught up with her in a matter of seconds. Threw his weight onto her, sending them both crashing to the angled forest floor. They slid through soft earth, twigs tearing at Steve’s face and arms. Then they hit the bottom of the slope and tumbled out onto the road.

He scrabbled toward her, trying to grapple her by her hair, but she was still too quick. Every swing he took at her, she easily evaded his heavier punches. Then she slid away from him, bounded to her feet, and pointed the tiny pistol directly at his chest.

Steve held his hands up—if nothing else, he could play along until she was distracted. “What does the KGB want with Stark?” he asked. “We have an understanding with them.”

The woman smirked. “Not my problem.”

His knee swung up in a blur, launching the pistol out of her grip. She swore in Russian—he was pretty sure it was Russian, and it sounded like what she and the man had spoken earlier—and tucked into a roll to the side. He dove after her, but again, too slow.

She’d evaporated into the night. Steve looked up and down the street, but in the darkness, even with his enhanced sight, there was no sign of her. For the millionth time, he wished he had his shield at hand.

Then a man strapped into wings swooped down from the sky with a scream.

“Captain Rogers! Chief sent me!” the man shouted. He wrapped his arm around the other figure, obscured in the darkness, then swooped back up into the air.

Steve stood still, blinking. The woman was gone; the man had just been carried off by the bird guy. Suddenly, the road was completely silent.

Then the bird guy swooped back down with another shriek as the man grappled him, and they both tumbled to the ground.

Steve rushed forward, but between the wings and bird guy and the male spy—left arm glinting in the moonlight, like he was wearing some kind of metal gauntlet—the whole mess made for a dangerous approach. The spy ripped off one of the wings in a squeal of metal and gears.

“What the shit?” Bird Guy shouted.

The spy tossed the wing aside and stalked toward Bird Guy with eerie calm. Completely ignoring Steve. It was the best opening Steve was going to get. He charged forward, arms wide to tackle him—

But as soon as Steve got close, the spy swung his left arm around, catching Steve squarely in the chest. With considerable force. So much so that Steve went flying backward and skidded across the asphalt a good ten feet away.

Steve rolled onto his side, gasping for breath. The punch had landed square in his diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. Something no one had managed to do to him since—well, since before the serum. He rolled onto his hands and knees and forced himself to stand up.

The spy had knocked Bird Guy to the ground and was wrestling a pistol out of Bird Guy’s holster as the Bird Guy kicked furiously at his face. Steve dove for him again, throwing his full weight into the man, this time to knock him away from Bird Guy. The pistol went flying off into the darkness.

They tumbled together across the road, into the harsh spill of the headlights, temporarily blinding Steve as he tried to pin the man underneath him. But the man got the upper hand and spun on top of him, then, as he stood, he seized Steve by the throat with a strange whirring sound.

Steve gasped for breath as he was wrenched upward with brutal force. The hand was cold, metallic as it squeezed around Steve’s throat and lifted him up into the air. He couldn’t break the stranglehold—he’d have to try something else.

Steve curled his legs up toward his chest, then thrust his feet at the man’s torso with all his might. The man crumpled forward—only by a fraction, but enough to force him to let go.

Steve bounded back from the man, then swung a haymaker at him. The cold metal hand flew up to block his punch, then slowly peeled his fist away. As Steve struggled to break his grip, he finally pulled the man enough into the light to get a good look at his face.

Dark hair in a crew cut; cold blue eyes. A sharp jaw and a chin—

Steve’s stomach pulled into a knot.

A cleft chin made for Steve to press his thumb against. A chin he had pressed his thumb against, in a long-ago life. He’d brushed his fingers against that jaw and stared at those blue eyes like they were a Manhattan sunset.

He’d thought he never would again.

“Bucky?” Steve whispered.

No. He had to be hallucinating. Some trick of the light. He’d watched Bucky fall from the train into a cold ravine so far below. Bucky was gone, and no matter how far Steve had been flung into the future, he could never recover him from the past.

The man with Bucky’s face cocked his head to one side, smiled, and thrust a knife between Steve’s ribs.

Steve staggered backward as the sound of squealing wheels surrounded him. “Captain Rogers!” someone was shouting. “Captain Rogers, get in the car!”

Bright lights and darkness. Bucky’s face, and a stranger’s. Steve reached out, reached for his face, reached for his hand, leapt from the train after him, waited for the cold to take them both.

“He’s losing too much blood—”

“Where’s Howard?”

“Check the trunk—”

Steve tried to move his mouth, but his head was like cotton and his tongue was dried out. “We have to go back,” he wheezed. “We left him in the ravine. We have to go back for Bucky.”

“Stay with me, Steve.” A slender hand grasped his. “Please, stay with me—”

“Chief, there’s no signs of either of them—”

“Spread out! Scout the area!”

“He ruined the suit, I can’t take off—”

Peggy’s voice cut through the fog and snow and roaring train. “Stay with me, Steve. Please. We’re heading to the hospital now.”

“It’s Bucky,” Steve said. “We have to go back.”

He reached out for Bucky’s hand again, and this time, when he linked his fingers through someone else’s, everything went black.

Chapter Text

Part IV: Ghosts

“Does anyone want to explain to me,” Director Fury said, “just what the fuck is going on?”

Howard shoved away from the SHIELD paramedics cleaning a cut on his forehead and angled toward Fury’s desk. “They broke into my office. At my home, Nick. During the goddamned banquet—”

“And how exactly did they slip into the banquet?” Peggy asked. She stepped around another cluster of SHIELD overnight operations workers who’d colonized the couches in Fury’s office as they coordinated plans.

“I don’t know, Pegs, it’s not like I put them on the guest list!”

She arched one brow at him. “Are you entirely certain you might not have passed an invitation to certain buxom redhead? You did once drunkenly invite an entire dance corps onto your three-person sailboat . . .”

Howard paused a moment. “Well—I mean, it's always a possibility—but the point is, they broke into my private office, stole my research notes—”

“You’re keeping SHIELD research project notes in your home?” It wasn’t easy to accomplish a death stare with only one eye, but Fury managed it.

Howard grunted. “Not everything I do is for SHIELD, Nick. And why is no one caring about the part where they abducted me—”

“Yeah, about that,” Sam said. “How exactly did they do that?”

Howard shrank back and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Well . . .”

Peggy sighed. “It was the redheaded woman, wasn’t it.”

She lured me away from the banquet! With her—her feminine wiles!”

Peggy threw her hands up and whirled away. “I can’t even believe you, Howard.”

“Oh, give me a break, Peg. They train them for that, you know. If she’s Red Room, she’s probably spent years perfecting her craft.”

“Red Room.” Peggy’s stomach sank. “That’s the first helpful thing you’ve said.” Red Room was another indicator that the Russian government was behind all this. It felt too tidy to Peggy, but it was better than some phantom entity.

Not that Peggy relished the thought of going up against another Red Room-trained spy. She’d had quite enough of that for one lifetime.

“So after they got me alone and ransacked my office, they kidnapped me and stole my research notes. Thank god Captain Rogers was able to intervene.”

Sam regarded Howard with a raised eyebrow. “So that’s all you remember?”

“Well, seeing as how I spent the next hour unconscious and crammed in the boot of an Aston Martin . . . yes, that’s about all I remember.” He blinked, rubbing at his head. “I think I could describe the woman’s face to a sketch artist.”

“Oh, you were actually looking at her face, then?” Peggy asked.

Sam unfolded his arms and stood at attention before Fury. “Sir, we think these are the same foreign agents who broke into the Kronas Corporation research offices two nights ago. The woman is almost undoubtedly the same one Director Carter encountered during the botched exfiltration op in West Berlin. But I’m thinking the Kronas break-in was a distraction now—something to throw us off their trail while they made their way into Mister Stark’s house.”

“Thank you, Wilson.” Fury relaxed by a fraction. “We’ve got Carter’s description of the woman. But who’s the other spy?”

Howard shook his head. “I barely had time to realize he was there before he knocked me out.”

“I only saw him briefly, sir, and it was very dark. White, dark hair, about six feet tall, and he’s got this dead vacant look in his eyes—oh, and did I mention the fucking metal arm?” Sam said. “The one he used to completely tear up my flight suit?”

Peggy pressed her lips together, exhaustion and adrenaline and emotion stirring a dangerous cocktail within her. But she couldn’t discount any possibilities. “Captain Rogers kept muttering a name before he fell unconscious en route to the hospital. He—he seemed to believe it was Barnes.” She exhaled. “Sergeant James Barnes.”

Fury tossed his head back with a groan. “Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“We can ask the captain for more details when he’s out of surgery, but that’s what he said.”

“One of the Howling Commandos,” Fury said. “Who died in the war. It says so right on the plaque downstairs, in SHIELD’s front entrance—”

“Yes, well, it’s right next to the plaque memorializing Captain Rogers, isn’t it?” Peggy snapped. Then held up her hand with a wince. “I’m sorry, Director, it’s—it’s been a long night.”

“Noted,” Fury said. He himself was dressed in plaid pajama pants, though he hadn’t neglected to pull on one of his signature black turtlenecks. “Now, Captain Rogers’s judgment may not be the soundest right now, considering he’s only a couple of days out of deep freeze . . .”

“I thought so too at first,” Peggy said. “But I pulled Sergeant Barnes’s records, just to be sure.” She jabbed her nail at the thick manila folder she’d placed on Fury’s desk in front of her. “In ’43, Hydra captured his entire unit in occupied Italy and used them for labor in one of their weapons manufacturing facilities. According to Captain Rogers’s report on the camp liberation, he found Barnes inside a medical ward that looked set up for human experimentation.”

Sam made a guttural noise; even Howard looked a little green around the gills.

“Our medics gave Barnes a clean bill of health, but they couldn’t detect something they didn’t know to look for. It seems possible, however unlikely, that something Hydra did to him in those experiments could have allowed him to survive his fall in ’45.”

Fury swore under his breath.

“He survived.” Peggy’s voice wavered, guilt rising in her like a tide. “And we—we left him behind.”

“No.” Sam gently laid his hand on Peggy’s arm. “No, don’t do that to yourself. You didn’t know, Chief.”

No, all she’d known then was the fathomless well of Steve’s grief. It burned inside him, hot and vengeful, even as it drowned him. All she could do was stand back and let him burn.

She thought it had been denial that drove him to beg Howard to comb the area, again and again. She thought that maybe, if Barnes’s body could be recovered, then Steve could at least lay him to rest. But just as she’d carried Steve’s ghost with her nine years—Barnes’s ghost had lingered over Steve, watching every single Hydra agent he slaughtered, following him into the ice. Peggy was the last person who could judge him for that.

Sam gave her arm a light squeeze, then let go. “All you can do is decide what comes next.”

She offered him a grateful smile. So much for fearing him too green for field work. If it hadn’t been for his aerial surveillance, they wouldn’t have caught up to the spies at all. She tensed. They wouldn’t have recovered Steve in time.

“All right, team, here’s the plan.” Fury clapped to get the operational assistants’ attention. “First, we put out a bulletin. Watch the train station, airports, everything. Get the police combing the streets for these two. A metal arm like that is surely bound to catch someone’s attention.”

“We should send someone to interview some of Howard’s banquet guests, as well,” Peggy said. “Someone must have seen something, overheard something—or if there were any event photographers there—”

“Good idea,” Fury said. “Then I want to find out who in the hell they’re working for. Hydra did this to Barnes, but anyone could have scooped him up. If this woman’s Red Room, then that helps narrow the list, but not by much. They’ve had agents go rogue before.”

Peggy’s grip on the folder tightened as she nodded.

“And Howard,” Fury said, “you need to sit down with Chief Carter and come to Jesus about anyone and everyone who might want to steal your research.”

“Yeesh.” Howard rubbed the back of his neck. “How long have you got? Coz that list is longer than my—”

“Regardless,” Peggy said sharply, “I want to know. I can start sending out teams to investigate all of them. We’ll call in the intelligence branch to write up briefs on each, as well.”

“Sam, I want you back on aerial patrol duty, as soon as Howard can get you up and flying again,” Fury said. “If Howard’s research was their real target, they might try some of his warehouses, labs, and subsidiary corporations next.”

Howard jammed his hands in his pockets. “What? Don’t be silly. Most of those are secret. There’s no way the Russkies, or whoever they are, know about all of them—”

“Yeah, just like your office was impervious to thieves,” Fury said. “Don’t worry, you and I are going to have a conversation about that soon enough.”

“I’ll get in touch with the CIA and MI6, see if they have any information at all about our spies,” Peggy added. “Something isn’t adding up in all of this, and I intend to find out what.”

“It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the best we’ve got for now. So let’s do it,” Fury said.

As they shuffled out of Fury’s office, Sam tapped Peggy’s elbow. “Is Rogers doing okay?”

Peggy hung back. “I won’t know for sure until he’s out of surgery, but I’ve seen him survive worse than a few stab wounds.”

Sam glanced down, something darkening his gaze. “I didn’t mean his injuries.”

“Ah.” Peggy grimaced. “That remains to be seen.”

“Seeing your best friend come back from the dead like that . . . I mean, that’s bound to throw him for a loop. But I guess you know a little bit what that’s like, too.”

She clutched the folder tighter to her chest. “I’m afraid I do.”

“And how are you holding up, Chief? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Peggy managed a wan smile. “I’ll tell you when I have time to stop and think.” She cursed herself for her first instinct—that she hoped that wouldn’t be anytime soon. Working had become a nervous habit for her, more useful than pacing, less toxic than drinking—not that she didn’t indulge in a fair bit of both. Another of Angie’s grievances.

Sam studied her. “I’m in no place to give you advice, Chief, but I suggest you make the time. You can’t outrun yourself forever, you know.”

Peggy shook her head. “Have you ever lost someone?” she asked.

“Yes, actually.” He glanced down. “My wingman. During the battle for Berlin.” She didn’t interrupt him, so he continued. “Our source told us we were clear. But they’d missed a cluster of anti-aircraft cannons down the riverbank. Suddenly it was nothing but smoke, noise . . .”

Peggy swallowed hard. “I’m very sorry for your loss, Sam.”

“But that isn’t why you asked,” he said.

“Did you make time to stop and sort your feelings right away?”

“Hell, no. I signed up for every goddamned insane flight plan I could. And I didn’t stop for seven years. Western front, Pacific front, recon ops over Siberian airspace, and then on to Korea. That’s how I know.” He pointed a finger at her. “You’re better off sorting yourself out now.”

Peggy fumbled with her set of keys. “And if you had one more chance to speak to your friend?”

“Then you can be damned sure I wouldn’t waste a minute of it not letting him know what he meant to me.”

But that, Peggy feared, was the problem—she didn’t know herself.

*

The cabbie pulled up alongside the curb of Connecticut Avenue and killed his headlights. “You really sure this is the place you want, lady?” he asked, arm slung over the front bench as he looked back at the disheveled dame and her mute friend. The bars in Cleveland Park had closed hours ago, and a burning-out streetlight sputtered overhead.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, and pulled a crisp five-dollar bill from her beaded evening clutch. “Plenty more where those came from. When I get back, I’ll tell you our next stop.”

The cabbie pocketed the five as she climbed out of the backseat, a flash of leg visible through the slit in her gown. Not that he was looking. “Okay, lady, suit yourself.”

His gaze flickered toward the other passenger in the backseat, the guy who hadn’t set a goddamn word since he’d picked them up thirty minutes ago. The man stared right back. A chill ran down the cabbie’s back at the intensity of it, and he quickly looked away. He shrank down in his seat and watched the woman through his side mirror instead.

She strolled down the street, head turning every which way, then stopped at a metal mailbox along the sidewalk. She was right in front of Nelson’s Pub, but even ol’ Nelson had packed it in for the night. Only things out on the street this time of night were the rats and roaches and this crazy redheaded dame. She looked up and down the street, then dropped something into the mailbox. It landed with a heavy thunk. She hesitated a minute longer, then made her way back toward the cab.

Huh. The cabbie rubbed his jaw. He hadn’t remembered there being a mailbox in front of Nelson’s before. He must’ve missed it.

The woman slid back into the cab and slammed the door shut. “They ain’t got mailboxes out your way?” the cabbie asked. He turned the headlights back on and shifted into gear.

The woman didn’t answer for a moment—just exchanged a look with the man as the cabbie watched them through his rearview mirror. So he did move after all. Creepy little fuck.

“I like this one better,” she said, her voice smoother than a top-rail gin.

“Have it your way. Where we headed next?”

“Change in plans. I’d like you to pull into that alley over there.” She pointed up the block, toward one of the alleys that fed the service entrance for a couple of bars.

The cabbie blinked. “You can’t just walk up there?”

The woman sighed heavily and made a production of opening up her clutch again.

“Okay, okay, I get it, sweetheart, I’m going.” He pulled away from the curb and rolled up half a block, then turned down the narrow alley. Dark shadows swallowed up the cab. He crawled toward the alley’s end, waiting for the woman to tell him to stop, but she didn’t say a word, so he came to a stop and put the cab into park. “Now what?” he asked.

“Now,” she said, “I think it’s my turn to drive.”

She smiled viciously at him in the rearview mirror. Then there was a strange clicking sound, like metal scraping together, and the mute man lunged forward, his expressionless face filling the mirror.

The last thing the cabbie felt was cold metal clamping down on his throat.

*

Peggy knocked, tentative, against the private barracks suite door. This was a terrible idea. Steve needed his rest, and so did she, though she knew that after the night’s excitement, there was no chance she’d be able to sleep. Her eyes felt like sand, and her limbs as if they were encased in lead, but her mind kept whirling and whirling over the frenzied fight and Steve’s words. There was too much she was hungry to understand.

Well, if Steve were asleep, then he wouldn’t have heard her knock. She shifted her satchel from hand to hand and turned to go, but then the lock clicked open.

“Peg.”

Steve Rogers stood before her, in sweatpants and no shirt, a square of gauze taped above his stomach, at the bottom of his right lung. Peggy sucked in through her teeth. She’d certainly forgotten that sight. Gleaming muscle and carved ridges and flawless warm skin—

“You’re awake,” she said, or tried to, though her tongue was refusing to fully cooperate.

“So are you.” He glanced back inside the room. “It’s almost five in the morning.”

“Well, I’ve been a tad busy.” She looked up at him, at those soft blue eyes, only they’d hardened after the night’s events. She hated that he had to be involved in this. Hated that he had to suffer at all. “I couldn’t very well sleep without first making sure you’re all right.”

The tightness left Steve’s shoulders, and he stepped back into the suite. “Do you want to . . . come in?”

“Yes,” she said—too brightly. She cursed herself for it. “I mean, yes. If that’s all right.”

He held the door open for her and beckoned her inside. “The doctor said I’ll heal up in no time,” Steve said, heading toward the kitchenette. “In fact, the wound had already started to close up by the time they got me in the OR. Had to cut into me all over again just to check for internal damage.”

“Well, at least they’re thorough.” She stood in the center of the living area, uncertain if she should sit.

Steve busied himself pouring two glasses of water from the kitchenette. “Said I’m free to go back on duty by tomorrow afternoon. Which is kinda funny,” Steve said, “because nobody told me I could be on duty in the first place.”

She smiled sadly. “That doesn’t seem to have stopped you.”

“No,” he said, “it didn’t.”

He took a gulp of water, muscles rippling, then set the glass on the counter. Leaned back against the range and cast his gaze down.

Peggy’s arms itched to reach for him. Offer a comforting embrace, perhaps—anything to erase that heavy pain he wore so plainly on his face. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

“It was him, Peg.” She hadn’t heard him sound so lost since—well, since Barnes’s death. It ached to hear him sound this way. “I’m sure it was.”

She shook her head. A part of her plain wished it weren’t true, but then she hated herself for thinking it. “It was very dark out. You were in pain, you were under a great deal of stress—”

“I said I’m sure. I’d know him anywhere.” He closed his eyes, his lower lip trembling. “Hydra must have found him again—”

“There is no more Hydra,” Peggy said. “But we’re exploring all possibilities. Whether it’s the Russians, or some other rogue group—”

“I don’t care who they are. They have Bucky.” He opened his eyes and fixed her with a stare. “But I don’t understand. He didn’t even recognize me—not so much as a flinch. It was like he was some kind of . . . machine.”

Peggy pressed her lips into a grim line. This was the part she’d dreaded most. Yet more proof for Steve, she thought, that his country wasn’t deserving of him. “Actually,” she said, “there are . . . methods.”

The blood drained from Steve’s face. “Peggy.” He took a step toward her. “What are you talking about? If—If you or SHIELD know something—”

“Nothing definite.” She winced. “It’s only hypothetical research we’ve done—but I won’t allow it, Director Fury won’t allow it—”

“Won’t allow what?” At his sides, Steve had clenched fists.

“Mind control.” She took a deep breath. “Methods of breaking down someone’s will, stripping away their sense of self. Some of the prisoners of war we recovered from Nazi camps claimed to have experienced it, to some extent. Korean War veterans, as well. SHIELD won’t take part in it, but we have more detailed information from . . . other agencies.”

“Detailed information.”

“Yes.” She looked down, unable to meet his stare. “I’ll pull the files first thing in the—” She stopped herself. “Well, after I get some rest.”

“Nazi, though. Not Hydra,” Steve said.

“It’s possible that whatever Hydra did to Barnes in that labor camp allowed them to use these methods, or perhaps made them easier to implement. If someone knew how to capitalize on that . . .”

“Jesus.” Steve propped his arm on top of the refrigerator and turned from her. “What are you saying? That his mind’s just—” He choked off the word. “Gone?”

Peggy rubbed her hands along her arms, suddenly very cold. “I don’t know, Steve. Without actually examining him, there’s just no way for us to tell.”

Steve turned his gaze away from her, shoulders shaking. “No—Bucky’s stronger than that, he wouldn’t—”

“It may not be a matter of strength. We’ve no idea who these people are, or what they’re capable of. We don’t even know for certain that it’s really Sergeant—”

“No. It is.” Steve shook his head. “The way he fought, it was . . . it was too much like how he fought back in the war. Brutal, determined—fearless.”

Peggy took a step toward him.

“In the Commandos, he fought like he was made for it. Oh, Jesus, Peg.” Steve’s face fell. “What if that was the serum all along, and I was too dumb—”

“No. You stop that right now. There’s nothing you could have done.” She paused at his shoulder. Every instinct in her was screaming at her to comfort him, to reach out and wrap her arms around him, rest her head against his sturdy chest and rub soothing circles to the small of his back. But it wasn’t her comfort he needed now. He needed answers.

“I have to find him,” Steve said.

“We’re already working on that.”

“Then let me help.”

“Steve—”

“Please.” His face was raw now as he looked at her. “Don’t let them keep me up on their trophy shelf. I need to be out there, looking for him, not getting paraded around in front of subcommittees.”

Peggy sighed. “Consider it done. After you’ve gotten some rest.”

“Now was that so hard?” Steve shook his head. “No—I’m sorry. I just, uh . . . when I thought about winning the war, I didn’t exactly expect it to turn out like this.”

Peggy looked away. “None of us did.”

Steve reached out then and brushed his fingers against the side of her face. She stiffened; hated herself for welcoming his touch. But with an unsteady breath, she tilted her hand against his palm.

Steve’s mouth twitched as if he wanted to smile, but couldn’t quite bring himself to. “I’m sorry.” His hand fell away. “I don’t . . . In my mind it’s only been a few days since we—and I just don’t know how—”

“Neither do I,” Peggy whispered.

Steve studied her, his blue eyes gone gray with weariness, his sturdy jaw tight with hurt. She could only imagine how ragged she looked still dressed in her black stakeout clothing, makeup long since sweated or smudged away. There’d been a time he looked at her as if she were something powerful—something he loved and feared. Now, though, he looked lost.

“Come here, you.” She opened her arms, and he all but staggered into her embrace and pulled her firm against him.

“Nothing makes sense anymore,” Steve murmured, his mouth at the crown of her head. “You’re here, but not. Bucky’s alive, but not. We won the war, but—”

“But you can never go home,” Peggy said.

He nodded. “Exactly.”

She lifted her head from his chest and looked up at him. The same damned magnetic pull she’d felt toward him all those years ago levied her now. Urged her to lose herself in him. She imagined how it might play out—his hands in her hair and his sunrise lips on hers and his flawless, lab-grown body pressing her against the wall. Fumbling and frantic with nine years’ worth of burdens they sought to shed. And then—

She couldn’t even contemplate the and then. Would Chief Carter be overshadowed by Captain America’s Sweetheart? How could anyone stake a claim to him? And if, by some miracle, they found Barnes and made him well—She remembered all too clearly the awkward trio they’d made. It was different in wartime, when after was anything but a guarantee. But what happily ever looked like now, she couldn’t begin to guess.

“Steve,” she said.

He stroked her hair. “Hmm?”

“Did you love him?” she asked. Lowered her gaze. “Barnes.”

“Of course. I’ve known him my whole life. He was the one constant when everything else . . .”

“That isn’t what I mean,” Peggy said. “And you know it.”

Steve’s shoulders sagged. “It’s . . . it was more complicated than that.”

She exhaled; closed her eyes. “We’ll do everything we can to bring him back.”

Steve kissed the crown of her head, then released her. “You need to rest,” he said.

“No—yes—I’m sorry.” She backed away from him and tried to straighten her hopelessly rumpled blouse. “Please try to get some sleep as well.”

“But then—”

“But then I’ll put you on the search. I promise you.”

She let herself out into the hall, not letting herself so much as glance back at him.

Pressed her hand to the wall. Staggered forward.

Took a deep breath and let it out, trying to release all her yearning, all her envy, all her guilt and regrets.

Then headed for the garage.

*

A gruesome discovery in Rock Creek Park this morning—the body of Joseph Rosetti, driver with the Washington Cab Association, was found just off the jogging path, showing signs of an altercation . . .

*

The soldier was staring at her again. His stare was cold, not that that struck her as unusual, but the way it seemed to rime with frost inside her lungs and slow her pulse—that, she was not a fan of. But she’d asked for this protocol. She could hardly be resentful that he’d executed it to the fullest. It was more the fact of the protocol itself that unsettled her, a feeling that raised more questions than she cared to have answered.

“We’re clear.”

Natasha forced herself to smile and came around the building corner. “Good work,” she said, then input the code from her mission brief. The alley door popped open with a soft click, and she wrenched it wide. “After you,” she told the soldier.

He looked at her, expression blank, then silently moved inside.

The door opened directly onto a staircase that led down at least two flights, the bare concrete walls of the stairwell stinking of hard minerals and sweat. Natasha crinkled her nose against the stench. Not that she thought she was smelling particularly fresh, but this was something else entirely. It smelled like—well, it smelled like the basement of the Lubyanka. The KGB headquarters, where they interrogated prisoners in desperate hopes they might cough up something of use before being shipped off to the icy reaches of the east or an unmarked grave. It smelled like bleach and blood.

At the bottom of the staircase, she found a tiny concrete-walled room with a sad green couch and an even sadder harvest gold refrigerator. “Sit,” she said, gesturing to the couch, and in no time at all, the soldier complied. Natasha fished around in the refrigerator until she found a handful of ice cubes to press against her cheek where Captain Rogers had clocked her good. She looked a wreck, even after a shower, and at this point, she didn’t care. They’d gone toe to toe with a supersoldier and won. Well—as close to winning as she dared to hope they might come.

“Ah.” A man appeared in the doorway—short, his every feature rounded, down to his glasses and his careful smile. “I see you found us with no difficulties.”

“I wouldn’t say no difficulties.” Natasha pried the pack of ice from her cheek. “If you know our mission brief, I’m sure you’re well aware . . .”

It was a test she was tossing out—a lure. But the man seemed to see it all too plainly for what it was. He merely smiled at her, his lips slick with spit, and adjusted the bowtie at his throat. “I am glad our soldier is proving himself useful.”

“He disarmed one SHIELD agent and stabbed Captain America in the lung,” Natasha said. “Seems useful enough to me.”

The man’s grin widened. “He has performed excellently. But I believe that he is capable of so much more.”

The soldier’s gaze had tracked their conversation, eyes darting between Natasha and the man smoothly, but if he felt anything regarding their subject of conversation, it didn’t show on his face.

“The chief received your delivery,” the man continued.

Natasha stiffened. They’d left the Project Phoenix data in the dead drop, the fake mailbox, exactly as instructed, though it had taken more effort to conceal their actions than she’d intended. Maybe she was being overly cautious, maybe not, but given that Captain Fucking America was on their heels, she didn’t think a little extra caution was out of line.

All a part of the job. She couldn’t stop to mourn every name in her ledger. Otherwise, she might be next.

“She is very pleased with the results. They are being carried back to the motherland as we speak.”

“You were able to decrypt them?” Natasha asked.

The man pressed his smile into something as thin as razorwire. “We have far more advanced computing techniques than SHIELD would credit us with.”

“Might’ve been nice to know that before we wasted precious time kidnapping Stark,” Natasha said.

The man snorted. “Stark might have had other uses.” He strode toward the soldier; his fingers curled against the soldier’s cheek, possessive, with a familiarity that curdled in Natasha’s stomach like grease. “Perhaps he could even serve as faithfully as our soldier here, one day.”

It was the smallest of openings, but Natasha knew how to wedge her fingernail into that crack. Figure out just how the soldier had been made. Who he’d been before. Who they intended him to be. She shouldn’t press—it wasn’t her concern, so long as he performed, and he had done so admirably. But then she recalled the way he’d looked in the motel room, knife clenched in his fist, body coiled tight as a shell, eyes blank without remorse and, worst of all, without direction. Without command.

She wasn’t sure what it said about her that the fact she hadn’t given him a command scared her most of all.

“The chief said you wished to work with him more,” Natasha said. Her voice sounded too thick to her—embarrassing. The last thing she needed was to sound scared. Like she couldn’t handle this task.

“Yes,” the man said. “The chief’s next task for him will present even more challenges.” He looked her over, his gaze scraping across her like sandpaper. Natasha felt the urge to wrap her arms around herself, though she didn’t want to give this troll the satisfaction. “He will be suited to the task, however. And I trust that you will, too.”

Natasha smirked. “It’d help if Chief would bother to tell us what that task is.”

“In due time, my dear. All will be explained for you.” He turned to the soldier, and his smile melted into a scowl. “Soldier. Come.”

The soldier stood, spine stiff, shoulders slack. Natasha took a step back.

“You may wait here if you like,” the man said. “The chief will have word for you very soon.”

Every instinct in Natasha’s body was screaming at her to run away from here, but she nodded and situated herself on the sagging sofa. “Sure. Thanks, comrade.”

The man snorted to himself as if she’d made some joke. “We should not be long. Here—the Washington Post, if you care to read it.” He gestured to the newspaper folded on top of the refrigerator.

As the soldier and the man disappeared into the recesses of the safehouse, Natasha paged through the newspaper, though her eyes refused to land on any one article. Puff pieces about Captain America’s return, upheaval in the Kremlin continuing after Stalin’s death, negotiations with Kim Il-Sung, more Western propagandistic nonsense. A distraction from their task and nothing more.

Then she heard the screams.

Overhead, the dim bulb flickered, as if someone was drawing a great deal of power from the circuits. She lowered the paper with a tremor in her arms and looked up at the light. It returned, then, as it dimmed again, the screaming resumed.

No words. Just a cry of pain.

Natasha snapped the paper open and tried to think of anything else. The chief would contact her soon with a mission update. The sooner, the better. Maybe the next time she heard from Dot, she could be free of this terrifying soldier once and for all.

*

As Howard Stark tried to step from his lab in one of the many sub-basements of the SHIELD compound, he found himself face to face with Peggy Carter. “Hello, Howard,” she drawled, her smile as toothy as a shark’s, and just about as sweet.

“Pegs!” Howard flattened himself against the lab door, but it had already swung shut behind him. “Boy, is it good to see you.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Peggy said, “after spending an evening crammed inside the boot of your car.”

Howard rubbed at the back of his neck. “Yeah, well, sacrificing for my country and all that jazz. Gosh.” Howard looked her over. “You deserve a day off, after the night you had.”

“One could say the same for you.” She extended her arm to him with a red-stained grin. “Come, Howard. Let’s walk.”

“Do we have to?” Howard muttered, but of course he knew it wasn’t a question.

Peggy clenched his hand in the crook of her arm with an iron grip. “I can’t help but notice, now that I’m reviewing my after-action report of last night’s events.” She cocked her head toward him. “You never did mention a thing about what manner of research it was that those spies were after.”

Howard hesitated. “Well, as I’m sure you know, Chief, I’m a private contractor.” He turned his fifty-watt grin her way. “Not everything I work on is government property, and thank heavens for that.”

“Isn’t it?” Peggy asked.

“No. It isn’t. And frankly, it’s not a damned bit of SHIELD’s business what I do with my free time, or what I choose to research—”

Peggy’s smile deepened, like a goddamned pit and pendulum opening wide. “Now, Howard.”

Howard groaned.

“You should know better by now. There’s really no sense in keeping secrets from me,” Peggy said. “Industrial or otherwise. Sooner or later, I always find out.”

Howard let out his breath through his nose. It wasn’t too late to take off running the other direction. Probably wasn’t even too late to radio Mister Jarvis to refuel his plane. He could be in Cuba in five hours, or Venezuela in ten . . . “You’re not gonna like it, Pegs.”

The look she gave him, venom-tipped, assured him that there was no outcome of this conversation that anyone would like.

“Fine.” He dropped his shoulders. “I call it Project Phoenix.”

Her smile wavered. “Something rising from the ashes, then, is it?”

“Y-you could say that.”

“Go on,” Peggy said, her grip on his arm tightening.

She knew, or at least had a good guess. Goddammit, she’d already figured out. There was no keeping a damned thing from Peg. “Look.” Howard stopped, pulling Peggy to a halt in the corridor with him. “You know as well as I do that the landscape’s changed plenty since the war.”

Peggy tipped her head to one side. “And yet so much seems the same.”

“In name only. There’s a new storm on the horizon, Pegs. The Soviet Union, the Chicoms, North Korea, all that. You gotta look at the way all this stuff’s going. These cold wars? They could go hot at a moment’s notice. And a moment’s notice? That might be too late.”

“You’re talking about nuclear armament?” Peggy asked. “Please tell me you were not storing designs for a new nuclear weapons system in your home office right next to your best scotch.”

“Aww, come on, what do you take me for?—Never mind, don’t answer that.” Howard tugged at the suddenly too-tight collar of his suit. “The thing is, it’s great that we’ve got Steve back and everything, but as last night showed, he just ain’t enough.”

Peggy pressed her lips together. “Perhaps if we permitted him to, he could be.”

“He’s a start, just like he was always meant to be. But there’s so much more we could do. With his blood sample now, especially, and my reworked formula—”

Peggy stopped cold with a clatter of her heels. “Howard Alexander Stark.”

“My middle name’s not—”

“I don’t give a damn what your middle name is.” Peggy dropped his arm and whirled on him. “Steve or no. We’ve had this conversation, and it only ends one way.” She gritted her teeth. “Shit.”

Howard shrank back as she kicked at the side of the hallway.

“You’re restarting the program.”

“I’m thinking about it,” Howard said.

“You’re bloody trying to make more of him. Without giving a damn as to the consequences, not a thought as to what it could mean for SHIELD or anyone else—”

“What’s the matter?” Howard asked. “You afraid someone else is gonna steal Steve’s limelight? Wake the fuck up, Pegs. Steve doesn’t even want this. He’d be relieved. You both should be relieved. If you’re scared they’re gonna turn out even better than Steve, well, you better get over that real quick, sister—”

She shook her head, red-faced and raw. “No, you bloody idiot,” she snapped. “I’m scared they'll turn out worse.”

Howard swallowed, because it was a hell of a lot easier than conceding a point.

“And if the Russians, or—or whatever they are—if they’ve got their hands on it, if they’re able to use it—”

“Come on. I’m trying to do the right thing here. Three years ago, when the North Koreans split off from the South—you know how much we could’ve used Steve then? How many good guys are still prisoners right now? They’d be home if we’d just had Steve, or someone—someones—like him.” Howard grimaced. “We need Captain America.”

“We need Steve Rogers,” Peggy said, folding her arms. “And that is far from the same thing.”

“My point exactly! You can see it for yourself how little Steve wants the job. He’d be cheering me on, if he knew. A chance to hang it up, ride off into the sunset with his dame . . .”

“You don’t know the first bloody thing about Steve Rogers,” Peggy snarled, “if that’s what you think he’s about.”

Howard shook his head. “I’m trying to do the right thing here. You always told me I was too damn selfish, but now, I try to recreate my greatest gift to the nation—”

“And in no time at all, you hand it over to an enemy agent. You nearly get yourself—and Steve—killed.” Peggy glared at him. “You’re damned lucky you’re still alive. That you didn’t turn up like the last scientist of ours they came across.”

“I’m sure they had their reasons,” Howard said.

“Your bloody encryption scheme?” she asked. “Believe me when I say that’s about the only thing keeping me from killing you myself. Trying to recreate the serum, when you promised me you wouldn’t—”

“I promised you eight years ago. Wake up to the world we’re living in now, Peg. Or are you that determined to live in the past, just like Steve?” Howard asked.

“How dare you—”

“The world’s changed. Even he knows that. Maybe it’s about time you accepted it, too.”

Peggy’s mouth twitched. “Perhaps not all change is for the best.” She whirled away from him, heels clanging down the hall.

“Pegs—come on, buddy, wait—Don’t go to Fury, let me talk to him myself—”

Peggy responded with a single finger lifted over her shoulder. Her one concession to American convention, Howard noted with a scowl. “They won’t crack it,” he called.

“You might be surprised.” She turned back to face him. “We didn’t know they could crack Barnes, either.”

Howard’s stomach churned at that. He’d read Pegs’s writeup on the Barnes situation. Mind control or psychotropic substances or a total brain wipe. Another area he’d promised SHIELD that he’d never explore.

But Howard Stark was good at being the exception to every rule.

*

He had perfected this system, but perfection did not mean complacency. Sometimes even the most flawless procedure had to be adjusted, and for a challenge such as this, they could not afford the risk of even the tiniest flaw. Flaws had a way of spreading, spiderwebbing like a shattered glass. He must eliminate the chance for—inconsistencies—before they began. Only the most hardened, iron-clad, guaranteed protocols would do.

If that meant pain, so be it. The soldier was used to that. The soldier was used to whatever he asked of the soldier, in fact. Pain, isolation, suffering—he’d learned to accept all of these things and more, breaking so quickly from a place of rebellion to a place of total acceptance. Of craving, even. These new commands—he would crave them, too.

Who are you? the question went. For days, for weeks, for months.

For too long, the answer came: Sergeant Barnes.

But he’d found the weakness in that armor. He was good, so good at finding weaknesses. He located them and dug at them and pried at them until they bled. Until a person could not imagine anything but the pain that weakness brought. Until they could not imagine any life that would make that pain stop. There was no longer any point in resisting, for they would suffer either way.

Weakened and exhausted and battered, the man had traveled the path of least resistance, the only possible chance he had of reprieve.

I am a soldier, he’d said at last.

It had been a beginning. A fresh slate. And from there, endless possibilities awaited.

The crackle of the device ceased, and the soldier’s anguished cries faded. His chest still heaved, yes, there were elements of physiognomy that could not be avoided—but in all other respects he was prepared, he was nothing but a machine awaiting a new batch of instructions to process.

The primer. The codewords, designed to grind down on any lingering feistiness, any resurfacing memories that might spark and flare like dust shook free. He walked through this with the utmost patience, as—after all—they had been his design.

And then the cold silence of stillness. This was what he loved most, what he missed most since he’d been reassigned. There was the soldier and the question in his eyes, a question that could go unanswered in perpetuity, and no matter how long the soldier waited, he did so with a beautiful blankness and machine-like stillness that would make any master weep with pride.

He savored it. But not for too long. There was too much else for them to do. A perfect confluence of his design and a miraculous circumstance they could exploit.

“I have a new mission for you, soldier.”

The soldier’s gaze met his, silent, unquestioning. He wondered if the soldier remembered any of the other times he had felt like this. He wondered if he remembered the line of questioning that had brought them to this point: the confession he’d given as a broken man, begging and pleading for clemency.

Not for himself. He’d surrendered that first. But for another man. That’s when he’d begged most of all. It had been symphonic, if he was being honest. The soldier had as much as handed him the keys to his soul.

And he’d driven that soul right over the cliff. What a beautiful sight it had been.

He reached for the soldier’s face and turned it to him, a flower twisting toward the sun. A frisson of delight ran through him to see his creation obey. “Activate protocol,” he said, forcing himself to measure out the syllables. It had been so long since he’d spoken these words—so long since Lukin had taken control of the soldier, and squandered him on nothingness. “James Barnes.”

The soldier fell into line.

“Hey, boss.” James smiled at him, as enraptured as if he were meeting an old friend. “Boy, it’s been too long since I’ve seen your face.”

He let his fingers trail against James’s cheek for a moment too long before he drew his hand back. “We have both been very busy. But you, I fear, less busy than you deserve.”

James shrugged, an easy gesture, but perfectly calculated. Any personality could be boiled down to an algorithm if one could only see the underlying math. “I can’t complain. But if you’ve got something useful for me to do, believe you me, pal, I’m all ears.”

“Yes. I think the time of wasting your skills has passed. In fact—I have a new trial for you.” He barely managed to bite down on a delighted laugh. “One which I’m certain you’ll enjoy.”

James considered, algorithm churning and churning. “I’m always happy to comply.”

He let his breath out with a shudder. The irony was so delicious, a delightful thing, something his education begged him to draw close and study from every angle and dissect. But this was no Roman tract or classical stanza. This was art in its highest form: the human condition stripped bare.

“I have a new target for you.” He flipped open the folder to the glossy headshot, outdated though it was. “His name is Steven Rogers. I believe you’ve studied him before.”

James squinted at the photograph, and a telltale tic at his throat betrayed him. He was recalling his previous mission, or so the man hoped. But hope was never enough.

“What do you know of him?” he asked.

James eased back in the chair. “Steven Grant Rogers, also known as Captain America, born on July fourth, 1918—”

“No, no.” He leaned forward. “What have you learned of him?”

“Well, if you can distract him good enough, you can slip a knife into his chest.” James smiled, cold and toothy. “That’s what we did last mission, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, indeed it was. An excellent ploy. But why did Captain Rogers permit you this chance?”

James hesitated, tongue running across his upper teeth. “He said something to me. Like he knew me,” he said, without the faintest change. “He called me Bucky.”

“And how did that feel?”

James paused, but not long enough for it to be calculating. “It sounded familiar. Like something I’ve read about.”

“Indeed it was.” He handed James a folder, fattened with photographs and notes. “Captain Rogers’ closest friend in the Great Patriotic War was a man named James Barnes. A man you’ve been training for some to replace.”

“Replace?” James asked, expression guarded.

“Yes. Replace.” He smiled. “It is the point of your name. Your training. Your whole career has built toward this moment. And it is in this moment that you shall deliver the greatest coup yet.” He watched as James flipped through the folder, gaze unfocused. “Would you like to accomplish this task?”

“Yeah. I’d love it,” James said. His brow wrinkled, but smoothed again.

“Steven Rogers believes himself to be in love with the man called James Barnes.”

James looked up at him, expression blank. “Is that so?”

“He believes, in fact, that this man may love him back.” He linked his hands together, barely able to contain his glee. “And it shall be your job to convince him that you are this man.”

“Well, it does kinda sound like—as far as my handlers are concerned—I am this man.”

“Yes, indeed. As I have said, this is what you have been training for—for some time.” He smiled, thin and vicious. “I know you shall perform this task admirably.”

“Convince him I’m this man he loves.” James nodded, still flipping through the file. “And then? What am I supposed to do with him?”

He reached forward and turned to the last page of the folder. “And then you shall make him ours.”

Chapter Text

PART V: REUNIONS

Steve shuffled into Peggy’s office with his hair still damp from a post-gym shower. She’d been mid-sip of coffee, and the sight made her swallow it down the wrong way. After coughing and choking a bit, much to his utter bewilderment, she managed to look something like a bloody professional as she set her mug down and smiled.

“Steven. Feeling much better, I take it?” she asked.

Steve sank into the chair opposite her desk and crossed his arms, white t-shirt straining at the biceps. Not that she was noticing anything of the sort. “I feel ready to get to work.”

“Of course you do.” She reached for the file her assistant had prepared for him, but faltered. “Actually . . .” Deep breaths, Peggy. She looked at him carefully. “There’s something I must tell you first.”

Steve’s brow furrowed as he watched her.

“It’s about Howard. I’m afraid he’s—” She pursed her lips. Best to just get it over with. “He might have been . . . attempting to resume his research on the serum. Your serum.”

Steve’s face fell and he rolled his head back in the chair. “Jesus, Howard. What the hell is he thinking?”

“He . . . he attempted this after the war, also. Not to replace you, but to—”

“No. It was to replace me, wasn’t it.” Steve shook his head, his gaze somewhere distant. “The government lost their investment and wanted to recoup what they could. I get it.”

“I told him it wasn’t right. That you were—if you’ll pardon my saying so—a fluke. That men are far more likely to go the way of Schmidt with the serum than to turn out like you. Drunk on power, or serving some other sinister motive . . .”

“Unlike dropping atom bombs of civilians. Because that’s so noble,” Steve said.

Peggy winced. Leave it to Steve to find the weakness in any system and break it. “There is also that,” she said. “But in any case, I dissuaded him of it back then. The war was over, after all. We—we destroyed your blood samples so it couldn’t be replicated, and he told the DoD that the formula was unrecoverable. I assumed the matter was done.”

Steve watched her for a moment with his inscrutable soldier’s gaze. She admired that gaze in the field, and hated it off. Steve’s emotions never lived on his face, or in his words—they were always bundled up in his fists, or any other number of reckless actions he’d take. Maybe she’d romanticized that part of him during his apparent death. That he would never let his sentiments color him until it came time to act. But now that she was seeing it in action again, she remembered how outright vexing it was, not knowing what he thought until it was much too late.

“What changed, Peg?” Steve asked.

At first, she forgot he was talking about the serum.

“I—well, it’s about the Soviets, I’d wager.” She shook her head, blinking away her other line of thoughts. I changed because I was lost without you. I changed because you’d become my true north, and now my certainty of direction was gone. “We, um, the Western powers, we—well, for all that we believe ourselves to be at peace with them, it’s only that the war has taken other forms.”

“Sure. Spy games, stealing research, that kinda business,” Steve said.

“Precisely. They stole the formula for the atom bomb from us, after all. While it makes for an uneasy truce right now for both sides to have the bomb, there’s no telling how long it can endure. Everyone fears the moment that mutually assured destruction is not enough. We fear the day that warnings and vague threats aren’t enough. And if we must put troops on the ground . . . I suppose Howard and his friends would rather they be far stronger than any they might face on the other side.”

Steve shook his head. “It shouldn’t exist at all, Peg. None of this . . .”

But you wouldn’t have survived without it, she thought. A selfish thought. Instead she said: “It might be what saved your friend’s life.”

Steve nodded, eyes downcast. “Yeah. I guess so.” He glanced back up at her with a tightness in his jaw. “And now whoever he’s working for has the research notes.”

“Encrypted,” Peggy said, “but that only lasts so long.”

Steve laughed, a bitter, dry sound. “Jesus,” he said. “I don’t even know what to think about that.”

“I think we’d better find Barnes and his friend before they can take it to their superiors,” Peggy replied. “If we aren’t already too late for that.”

Steve drew a slow breath. As it filled him, he sat up straighter, returning to the captain she knew and loved: serious, committed, and never once giving her any reason to doubt that he could accomplish whatever he set out to do. “All right. What’s the plan?”

She scooped up the folder and moved to sit in the chair beside him. “We haven’t much to go on, I’m afraid . . .”

Steve sighed.

“—But we do have a few pieces. First is the facility they hit in Suitland. There are four different motels in its immediate vicinity. We sent one of our assistants to interview front desk clerks there, and this one—” she pointed on the map—“the Starlight Motor Hotel—did recall a red-headed woman traveling with a man who didn’t speak to them. Unfortunately, their room was emptied out when they unlocked it for us.”

Steve grimaced.

“Then there was this bit, passed to us by the District coroner concerning a body recovered in Rock Creek Park yesterday. The victim, a driver with the Washington Cab Association, had marks on his throat consistent with manual strangulation. According to the medical report, the force used far exceeded any known human capacity, which is why they thought we might wish to take a look.”

“Someone excessively strong . . .” Steve’s face went ashy. “Like someone with a metal arm, you mean.”

“It’s a remote possibility,” she said slowly, “but not one we can ignore, I think.”

Steve stared at the coroner’s report, eyes glassy. Peggy opened her mouth to continue, but then thought better of it. They were shoulder to shoulder, his warmth radiant through the silk sleeves of her blouse. Gently, she placed her fingers on his forearm, meaning it to be a comforting gesture. So she told herself.

“A cab driver,” Steve said. “But no mention of what happened to his cab?”

“We’ve put out an all-points bulletin for it. It’s been twenty-four hours since the body was found, so they’ve surely discarded it by now, but it could at least point us in the right direction when it’s found.”

“If it’s found, you mean.” Steve turned toward her, face inches from hers. She felt a tightening in her center, and stiffened. “Thank you. That . . . that gives me somewhere to start.”

“Steve . . .”

His gaze flicked toward hers; his breath was warm against her lips.

“I’m—I’m so sorry you had to come back into the world this way,” she said at last. Not at all what she’d meant to say.

She hadn’t known what she’d meant to say, in fact. That she still loved him, that she couldn’t love him anymore. Both were true, and both pulled inside her in a tug of war. If he was serious about what he meant regarding his feelings for Barnes, that she had no right to interfere. Did she? She was tired of not knowing, of never knowing where any of them stood, and in nine years nothing had changed. She herself was only waking up once more—

“If I had to come back at all,” Steve said slowly, “I’m glad it was to you.”

Oh, bloody hell.

Peggy brought her free hand around to cradle his head and pressed her lips to his.

His mouth opened, surprised at first, but he welcomed her kiss, invited her in. He tasted just as she remembered—like a warm summer breeze. His lips worked so gently; his hand brushed against her cheek. Always too gentle for his size. But she wasn’t looking for his comfort. She was looking to believe.

She sucked at his lower lip and caught it in her teeth. And then he was scooping her up from the chair. And then he was gripping her by the backs of her thighs. And then he was pressing her against the wall, kissing her throat, her collarbone, and as she wrapped her legs around his waist, she was suddenly very glad she’d worn trousers instead of a skirt that day—

No, she was very disappointed she hadn’t worn a skirt—

He gasped for air, his forehead against her cheek, and whispered something she couldn’t quite make out.

Two syllables.

The only thing she knew for certain was that it hadn’t been her name.

“I’m sorry.” Steve eased her legs back down to the floor, and she unsteadily shifted her weight. “I—I shouldn’t have—I’m not trying to make things—”

“No—I’m the one who should be sorry.” She swallowed. Her whole face was on fire, and yet she was still hungry for his warmth. “You’re—this is confusing enough for you, and I shouldn’t—”

Steve flinched, and laughed at himself again. God, but he used that laugh like a shield sometimes. “Confused. Yeah. That’s—that’s what I’m feeling, too.”

She tugged at her blouse to straighten it. Deep breaths, Peggy. Deep breaths. “Barnes,” she said.

He reeled back for a moment, gathering himself up, then nodded. “Always.” His lips twisted down as if it were a confession. “I always knew what I felt for him, but . . . We never got a chance to make sense of what we really were. To each other, I mean. And then I found you in the war . . .”

She’d meant the name to remind him of the task at hand, but she wasn’t about to interrupt.

“I don’t even—I mean, is it possible to . . .”

“To love two people?” she asked quietly.

He paused for a moment. “Yeah.”

“I don’t know.” But she was starting to wonder herself. “I—I loved you, truly, during the war—”

“And I—loved you too.” He emphasized it oddly, and she wondered whether he was only saying it to match her past tense. “But I never stopped loving him. Peggy, I swear, it didn’t take anything away from you and me, but—”

“No—please, I know exactly what you mean.” She bit her lower lip, still plump from his kiss. “I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving Angie.”

It was the first time she’d said it aloud. Even when Angie left, she hadn’t begged, hadn’t cried, hadn’t tried to convince her to stay. Oh, god. What if that’s all Angie had wanted? If she’d only wished for her to act as if it mattered to her either way? She was bloody terrible at this—showing too much of herself to Steve and too little of herself to Angie, and the truth of her feelings had gotten lost within the middle of it all.

At least Steve seemed to understand something of it. Even if he’d never quite been able to be honest with himself about his feelings, let alone with her.

Steve smiled with one side of his mouth, shaking his head. “We’re a goddamned mess, aren’t we?” he asked.

She reached up to smooth back a strand of his damp blonde hair. “Of the best variety.”

He took her hand in his and squeezed it, then stepped back. “I’m, uh—I’m . . . I’m going to go now.”

She tipped her head back against the wall, her pulse still racing. Face still flused with heat. She forced herself to focus her gaze.

“Find Barnes,” she said.

He looked back at her, dampness lining the edges of his eyes, and smiled. “I’ll do my best.”

She smiled, painfully, back.

When he opened the door, Peggy’s assistant was outside, clutching a folder. Steve held the door for her, then dismissed himself with a polite nod. “Chief?” the assistant asked, heels clacking against the tile floor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I knew the captain was meeting with you—”

Peggy tapped a fingertip, too late, against the corner of her lips. Bloody hell. Her lipstick must be everywhere. She spun away and dug around in her desk drawers for a kerchief. “It’s quite all right. We were—um, just concluding.”

The assistant stifled a cough. “We got something from the CIA. It’s an older report, at least three years ago, but it’s about a woman they think was KGB who matched the description of your redhead spy.”

Peggy finished wiping away her lipstick and stood up. “Is that so.”

“Some kind of incident with an investment banker in Manhattan,” the assistant said. “Real shady business. They were never able to prove anything, but they think he might have been turned by your friend Red.”

Her heart hammered against her ribs. “Then perhaps we’d better find out for ourselves.”

*

“Mister Stark.” Edwin Jarvis moved to physically block Howard’s path through the doorway. “I must respectfully insist that you return to bed and not occupy yourself with any further nonsense until—”

“This is not nonsense, my good man. It’s science. Of the highest order.” Howard snapped the goggles down over his eyes. Reluctantly, Jarvis shuffled out of his way. “Pegs needs my help, and . . . seeing as I’m kind of in the doghouse with her right now . . .”

“An understatement of impressive proportions, I have no doubt,” Jarvis said.

Howard glowered at him. “Point being, I think I’d like to get cracking on this new project sooner rather than later.”

“Something for Captain Rogers, I presume?” Jarvis asked.

Howard pressed his lips together. “After a fashion.”

Jarvis made a soft hmming noise. “Shall I at least fetch you some assistants? In case you find yourself suddenly faint from a delayed concussion, or—”

“For god’s sakes, I’m not concussed. Just a little banged up, is all.” Howard glanced out the plate glass window, one-sided, that gave him a view of the main research labs. “And I think I’d rather keep this one off the books for the time being.”

“Yes, that has clearly served you well lately,” Jarvis said.

“Let’s dial it down on the sass a little, how about?” Howard entered the combination on one of the many safes in his private portion of the lab. “Just trying to be cautious.”

He pulled a thick stack of graph paper, diagrams, x-rays, and other medical records from the safe’s shelving. On the Subject of Neural Augmentation, the label on the folder read. Now, if he could just make sense of this all before Pegs even learned he’d compiled it in the first place . . .

He looked back up in surprise to see Jarvis strapping on a pair of safety goggles, as well. “What are you doing?”

“Well, I’m going to assist you, of course.” Jarvis scoffed. “I’m not letting you work alone in your condition. And you don’t wish to call in any of the others . . .”

“Can you blame me?”

Jarvis peered out the window. They were certainly an eclectic mix: Midwestern dweebs culled from the state schools, Manhattan Project cast-offs, and no small amount of ex-Nazis nabbed via Operation Paperclip and other, less glamorous arrangements.

Howard pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay. Suit yourself.”

But even with the double-plated glass between them, he could almost swear he felt Arnim Zola staring at him from the electronics station in the main lab.

*

Dot’s voice was no less cheerful and no less terrifying with three encryption protocols and ten thousand miles between them. “Tashenka. I’m so glad to hear everything’s going well.”

“‘Well’ might be overselling it a bit, but—”

“And how is our soldier doing? He’s terribly charming, don’t you think?”

Natasha released the transmission button the radio and ground her teeth together. All anyone gave a shit about was the soldier. She was busting her ass out here, covering for herself and the soldier both, and all they could do was coo over the perfect little freakshow they’d created, or whatever the real story was. She took a deep breath and forced herself to smile. “He’s doing great. He knocked Captain America on his ass, soooo . . .”

Dot giggled; Natasha recoiled from the tinny sound of it on the shortwave speakers. “I’ve heard. I’m so sad I couldn’t see it for myself.”

“Well, your contact’s running him now. I guess I’m not invited along.”

Natasha cursed herself as soon as she said it. Stupid, stupid. She couldn’t let this woman sense one ounce of her doubt and suspicion. And probably she was just being paranoid, like the Red Room madam always told her—not that there was anything unhealthy about watching her back at all times. But she couldn’t go second-guessing everything Dot did. For better or worse, she ran Department X now, and using the department’s assets to best serve the motherland was her business, not Nat’s.

“You’re doing wonderfully too, molodtsa. Just a real bang-up job.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes. Transparent flattery—one of the first tools the Red Room girls put in their kit.

“In fact, I’ve got something new for you to handle while the soldier’s on his next assignment. A solo project.”

Now that had her attention. She folded her arms and leaned forward on the rickety desk. God, someone needed to get this safehouse some new furniture. And thicker walls, she amended, remembering the soldier’s awful screams.

“The Soviet ambassador to the US . . . well, you see, Premier Malenkov just isn’t too happy with him.”

Natasha was pretty sure Stalin’s successor wasn’t too happy with any of the old Soviet guard, but she kept that opinion to herself.

“The Americans have raised a little hissy fit to him about that dreadful bombing in West Berlin, and now this episode at Captain America’s welcome banquet. And he’s being far too kind and understanding with their concerns. As if we—we—have anything to be guilty for!”

“Isn’t this something the Ministry of Foreign Affairs should handle, then?” Natasha asked. “Maybe they could recall him, or remind him how the KGB likes to handle these things . . .”

“Oh, yes, I think a reminder is certainly in order!” Dot’s voice was so sharp and bubbly it made Natasha cringe. “We don’t want our ambassador making any promises the Soviet Union isn’t prepared to keep, after all.”

Natasha went very still. She’d learned long ago how to read between the lines—all Russians did. But that trick only worked when you knew the speaker’s real motive. And Dottie Underwood’s motive was a mystery to Natasha. She was having a harder and harder time believing it matched the KGB’s.

Time for a little experiment, then. Dottie was testing her? She was going to test Dottie right back.

“I know just what you mean,” Natasha said. “Some people just catch on slow to our changing priorities.”

“Yes! Yes, you see how things work. The war’s over, after all, and we can’t let the Americans think it’s their place to keep bossing us around.” Dottie laughed again to herself. “Now of course I’d hate for anything ugly to happen to him. That just makes everyone suspicious.”

Natasha let out her breath. Not assassination, then.

“—But he is an old man. Doesn’t take such great care of himself, you know?”

She cringed. Assassination, then.

“It’s really awful for his health.”

“I agree, comrade. I’m so glad the Red Room taught us to take better care of ourselves.” The Red Room was their common ground, and the more Natasha could remind her of that, the more camaraderie she could build between them. Not that it was easy to get a Red Room girl to let down her guard.

“Ourselves and others,” Dottie agreed. “I’m so glad you understand.”

Natasha’s gaze returned to the copy of the Post she’d been browsing, with its coverage of the Captain America banquet. No mention of the kidnapping and fight alongside the Potomac; just endless black and white photos for the Society page. She recognized James’s back in one of them, from when he’d quickly turned her away from the camera’s lens. She shivered.

Then on the next page, she studied the photographs of Captain America from the wartime, surrounded by his Howling Commandos.

That’s where she’d heard the name before—in the American History books the Red Room had drilled her on as a teen. Sergeant James Barnes, the captain’s right-hand man. The resemblance really was uncanny. Not that the KGB was above impersonation—she’d done it herself plenty of times—but this lengthy of a setup was new. He hadn’t borne any of the telltale marks of plastic surgery like the other girls she’d seen dolled up for long-term infiltration. But then, she hadn’t been looking.

Reeducation, reconditioning . . . Usually they were a punishment. A political prisoner’s last stop, last chance to redeem himself before heading into an unmarked grave. But for the soldier, it seemed to have served an altogether different purpose.

Interesting that he should only surface around the same time Dottie took over Department X.

“So! Anything else you need, my little belka?” Dottie asked. “You really are doing an outstanding job.”

“No.” Natasha crumpled the newspaper up. “I’m ready to get to work.”

And she was starting, she decided, with the soldier and his new handler.

*

New York City still gave Peggy a sense of claustrophobia. Washington, like London, was a low-slung city, full of stout, gleaming marble and a wide-open sky above. But Manhattan’s skyscrapers pressed in around her, crowding around her shoulders and breathing down her neck. She felt eyes on her from every direction and smelled an undercurrent of dread.

Not least because of one New York resident in particular whose path she didn’t want to cross. At least it was a city of millions. And she knew exactly the area to avoid: the quadrant around Times Square and the Saint James theatre. Not a chance she was dealing with that amidst all this other nonsense.

With luck, she’d be back in Washington in time for a late dinner. (With Steve? she caught herself thinking, but quickly banished it.) With luck, Steve was tracking down their assailants even now. (Will Barnes remember him? she wondered, then felt guilty for wishing for any answer but yes.) With luck, this trip would yield up everything she needed to know, and they could put an end to the redheaded woman’s reign of terror once and for all.

Peggy unfolded the pair of cats-eye glasses from her blouse’s breast pocket and entered the foyer of the tower that housed Anderson Investments. It was always far too easy to slip into a role. Getting back out of it was the real challenge, she thought.

The elevator discharged her on the forty-fifth floor, and Peggy made a show of looking every which way, double-checking a scrap of paper in her hands as she cautiously approached the front desk. The woman waiting there set down her book and looked at Peggy with no small amount of irritation. “May I help you?”

“Oh, gosh, I hope so,” Peggy said, in her American accent. “The temp agency sent me to help file Mister Anderson’s reports, since I guess someone called out sick? Is this the right place?”

The woman frowned. “No one told me they called the temp agency.”

“Are you sure? I spoke to . . .” Peggy glanced down at the In/Out book open on the desk. “Doris Williams.”

“Doris is out to lunch right now. But yeah, I guess they did need help with all the tax receipts. That time of year, you know how it goes.” She shrugged, the cardigan draped over her shoulders threatening to slip. “Go look for Alice. She’ll help you get started, hon.”

“Thanks so much!” Peggy chirped, then made her way in the general direction the woman had pointed toward.

Unfortunately, Mister Anderson was out for the day, which wrecked one half of Peggy’s plans. “Oh, honey, he’s always gone by noon,” one of the other secretaries said. “But here—you can file these in his office.”

With a grunt, Peggy hauled the banker’s box into the marble-lined, gold-strewn executive office and studied the key ring she’d been given. Now, if she were passing secrets to a Russian spy, where might she keep documentation . . . Peggy began methodically searching the filing cabinets, but without anything more than the CIA’s scant report to go on, it all looked on the level to her.

Anderson contacted New York Office with complaints that he’d been approached by a probable Russian agent, approximately 5’8”, with long red hair. The woman produced photographs of Anderson engaged in various acts of coitus with some of the women from his secretary pool. In exchange for providing access to his client list and their investment information, the woman told Anderson she would not show the photographs to his wife.

Peggy eyed the black leather and wood Eames chair where she’d been about to sit, and thought better of it.

Once New York Office commenced investigation, however, Anderson recanted his story. Said it had been a misunderstanding—the woman was from a rival firm, not a foreign agent, and furthermore had been sent to him as a prank by one of his fraternity brothers at the rival firm. New York Office set surveillance on Anderson for an additional month afterward, but could find no further evidence that he was colluding with any alleged spy.

A likely story, Peggy thought. Well, if she couldn’t locate any information indicating he had been or currently was complicit in some manner of espionage ring, then she’d just go straight to the source.

Peggy smirked to herself. Not as if it should be difficult. It certainly seemed as if Mister Anderson had a type.

“Say, do you happen to know where Mister Anderson keeps his schedule?” Peggy asked, heading back out to the typing pool. “I want to make sure I get all these meetings entered right.”

“Sure, hon, it’s right over here. He never misses an appointment,” the girl said, then shared a knowing look with her friend, both of them giggling. Peggy forced herself to smile and concluded she didn’t want to know what they meant.

Dinner at Del Frisco’s later in the week . . . Meetings all day with stock brokers tomorrow . . . Theatre tonight.

Peggy made a choked noise in the back of her throat.

Box seats for The Pajama Game at the St. James. Because of course it was.

Peggy took a deep breath, rolling her head back, and swallowed down her frustrated scream. But if she didn’t want to wait until later in the week to track him down, or arrange an awkward bump in the middle of Manhattan streets, where he could easily flee . . .

Peggy retreated to the private office and tried to find the steel buried somewhere beneath her soft layers of exhaustion and stress. Her hand shook as she picked up the receiver and read out the numbers to the switchboard operator. It rang once, twice, and she squeezed her eyes shut, praying it would go on ringing still. But then there was a click, and a rushed “Hello?”

Peggy braced herself against Anderson’s desk. “It’s me,” she said, her tone wretched. “I’m afraid I have a favor to ask.”

*

Natasha knew a KGB-trained agent when she saw one, and this man was most certainly not KGB.

It wasn’t that he was untrained, exactly. He knew how to shake a tail—at least, a tail less clever than her—and took a circuitous route everywhere he went. Stopped into stores to browse and scout the landscape behind him. But these precautions only seemed to apply when he was going into or out of the safehouse where she and the soldier had met with him. When he was headed anywhere else—back to what she found herself thinking of as his ‘normal’ life—he was as artless and obvious as anyone could be.

Maybe more so, considering that he seemed to work for SHIELD.

That had been a surprise. Not pleasant or unpleasant, just unexpected. As Natasha followed him in her stolen Ford, she’d barely realized where he was leading her until the concrete leaves of the Triskelion unfolded along the Potomac’s banks. She’d sworn and had to pull a hasty maneuver not to get trapped on the employees-only bridge across the river.

SHIELD. Well, Department X must have been pretty proud of themselves for that one, getting a mole embedded deep in there. But it still struck her as odd. Department X focused on intelligence at all costs, yes, but scientific research was not their primary focus by far. They preferred blackmail and games of political and military chess. Natasha had done plenty of that herself, pressganging investment bankers and Congressmen into her service, seducing generals, teasing troop movements from buttoned-up commanders . . . But not scientists. Another piece of the puzzle that wasn’t adding up.

And then the man was leaving SHIELD, hunched over the wheel—too short to see over the dash otherwise—and making his way toward the nondescript garage apartment he rented down Highway 50 in the nebulous suburbs of northern Virginia. She wanted to search that apartment next, but didn’t trust him not to have booby-trapped it extensively. His paranoia seemed to rival hers, which was saying something—not anything good.

Day turned toward night, and the light inside the garage apartment clicked off. Natasha groaned. She could be quiet, quiet as a secret, but even she knew better than to tempt fate around someone as paranoid as she. Maybe tomorrow she could investigate his apartment, while he was off working at SHIELD—or whatever it was he really did.

As for tonight . . .

She brought the Ford back to life again, adjusting her hotwiring job, and roared back into the District, heading straight for the safehouse where she’d first met him. Time to snoop around without the scientist and the soldier watching her.

There was just one problem with surveillance-avoidance routes, one that Natasha had briefly forgotten: they could fool people on land, but the air was another matter entirely.

As she tucked the Ford in an alleyway and wove toward the safehouse entrance, a shadow darted overhead. She looked up, searching for the bird or plane or whatever it was that had momentarily blotted out the setting sun. But it didn’t happen again; after a few more minutes watching the alley’s entrance, she had to carry on.

She entered the code, and made a mental note to see if the safehouse’s security system had any way to log her comings and goings. She’d need to erase it if so. Natasha slipped inside, and started to pull the door shut, until a gloved hand shot out and caught it. Pried it out of her grip.

“Don’t need your metal arm buddy for breaking and entering anymore?”

The goddamned man with the wing suit from the other night. Natasha charged forward, ready to swing a punch, but he easily caught her grip and spun her around until she crashed face-first onto the alley ground. The door shut partly on her legs, propping it open and pinning her in place.

The man smiled, white teeth gleaming. “That’s much better.”

She tried to wrench her arm out of his grip, but he knew what he was doing—she’d give him that. Worse, he had a strength advantage, and had managed to wedge her just so, preventing her from using her agility to her advantage.

“What do you want?” Natasha snapped.

“Same thing it looks like you’ve been hunting for all goddamn day,” he said. Narrowed his eyes behind his flying goggles. “Answers.”

*

Steve unlocked the door to Peggy’s townhouse and entered the darkened foyer with an awful weight in his heart. She’d given him the keys out of kindness, not with any specific intent, or so he thought. An alternative to getting away from the barracks and SHIELD’s prying eyes. But after their encounter this morning, he could no longer be sure what Peggy really wanted. He didn’t think she knew herself.

Nine years—it had been nine years since they’d been together. There was no reason for him to feel as guilty as he did. He’d told her the truth, that there’d been nothing between Bucky and him, but there was a difference between truth and honesty. If he’d been honest—if he’d been honest with Peggy and Bucky both—

He shook his head and laughed at himself. He’d lost them, and now he’d found them, but nothing ever stayed the same. Peggy had a whole other life she’d lived in his absence, and then Bucky—

Steve’s heart sank.

Whatever had happened to Bucky, he didn’t know if it could be undone.

He moved into Peggy’s kitchen and found a bottle of vodka in the freezer. It was the cheap stuff, nothing like the smooth scotch she kept in the decanter in her parlor, but he didn’t care. Maybe it was strong enough to give him a faint buzz, if nothing else. Anything to sand away the sharp edges of his frustration and ache. It had been a long day of chasing after ghosts, and with Bucky’s trail growing colder by the minute, he was beginning to lose hope.

After making a note of the vodka brand to replace it, Steve began to swallow it down, trying to ignore the wretching, searing reaction in his throat and gut. He paused halfway through and shuddered, his entire body on fire. Then felt the faintest swirl of liquor in his thoughts as his ultra-fast metabolism slurped the alcohol up. At least it acted quick. With a deep breath, he drank the rest of it down.

When he set the bottle down on the kitchen counter, he saw a shadow cross the doorway that led into the parlor.

Steve froze, but his head was fizzy now, like someone had packed his brain in wool. Peggy? He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. What if it was Angie, Peg’s ladyfriend? Girlfriend, he corrected himself, feeling embarrassed. Almost wife.

But she would have announced herself, wouldn’t she? Or at least made some kind of noise while she came inside. Steve reached for the knife block on the kitchen counter and pulled the cleaver out. Not as useful as his shield—which they still hadn’t returned to him—but he could improvise. Moved slowly through the doorway into the darkened living room, his chest wound tight and his heart in his throat—

A man stood in the middle of the dark parlor, hands tucked inside the pockets of his slacks. The cleaver clattered out of Steve’s hands, probably gouging the shit out of Peggy’s hardwood floors. Not that Steve gave a damn right now.

It was Bucky. It was Bucky, and at the noise, he turned to look right at Steve.

Bucky swallowed, a muscle rippling along his jaw. “Sorry if I . . . scared you.”

Steve’s heart was racing, his mind was spinning on a whirlpool of vodka, and every inch of his skin felt like it was on fire. Some small part of him had still been convinced that Bucky was really dead. That somehow this would all be a cruel joke. But there was no mistaking the gray darkness in Bucky’s blue eyes, the faint half-smile he made even when he was nervous or afraid, and the easy way he held himself, like he belonged anywhere he pleased.

But Steve also remembered Peggy’s warning. That he could be under some kind of control.

“Sneaking into someone’s house will kinda do that to a guy,” Steve said. Pretty far down on the list of all the things he wanted to say to Bucky, but he didn’t want to spook him.

Bucky didn’t look spooked, though. He looked completely in control, with only a twinge of sadness at the edges of his expression. “I’m sorry. SHIELD is watching you, and I didn’t know any other way.”

“Any other way to what?” Steve asked.

Bucky tried to smile, but it faltered. “To speak to you alone.”

He might as well have grabbed Steve’s heart and squeezed. Nothing was making any sense and Steve didn’t know where to begin. “You nearly killed me the other night,” Steve said. “And now you want to talk?”

Bucky closed his eyes, wincing. “I didn’t . . .”

“You didn’t know it was me?” Steve took a step toward him. “Why? What have they done to you?”

“I mean—I knew it was you once I saw you,” Bucky said quickly. He spoke so fluidly, the same easygoing, all too charming guy he’d been in Brooklyn, twisting girls around his finger as Steve watched with a bone-deep ache. “But it was dark, and they didn’t warn me that you’d be there. I just thought you were some tenacious asshole . . .” He laughed at himself. “Which, now that I think about it, probably shoulda been a dead giveaway . . .”

Steve caught himself smiling. Shit. It was way too easy to fall back into his old pattern with Bucky, the one they’d shared—in Steve’s mind, anyway—only a few months ago. Nine years, nine years, he had to remember those nine years driven between him and everyone else, like a sharp wedge. Bucky could be anyone now. He could be working for—

“Who’s ‘they’?” Steve asked.

“Well, the Soviets, of course.” Bucky’s smile came more readily this time, and he looked—relaxed. More peaceful than Steve had seen him, in fact, ever since the war began. “But you already knew that.”

“I didn’t know my best friend was a Communist,” Steve said. Grimaced. “I didn’t know my best friend was alive.”

That erased some of the charm from Bucky’s expression. “Stevie.” Bucky’s arms fell to his sides. “Babydoll, I’m so sorry. But in fairness . . . I didn’t know you were, either.”

Steve didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Bucky was right. Bucky was always right. As much as Steve had begged for them to search for Bucky’s body, he’d gone and gotten his own ass killed, or as good as, shortly afterward. But now he was awake, and Bucky was standing here in front of him, calling him the same damn nicknames he’d called him when they were just dumb teenagers, when it had been Steve and Bucky against the world, or at least, against Brooklyn—

“Why?” Steve asked. “Why the Russians?”

“Stevie, it’s really not a good time for me to explain.” Bucky smiled again, more strained this time. “I’m just—more than anything, I want to make sure that you’re okay—”

“No.” A warning trilled at Steve’s spine. “Now’s a great time for you to explain.”

Bucky had been taking a step toward Steve, but at the sharpness in Steve’s tone, he stopped. Stuck his hands back in his pockets and shook his head. “Just tell me you’re all right. Tell me you’re happy—”

“In the last week, you’ve stolen United States government secrets, attacked a research facility, and kidnapped one of the greatest inventors of our time.” Steve took a deep breath. “So you can call me Stevie and Babydoll all you want.” Please call me those things, Steve’s brain said, and it twisted inside his belly with wanting. “But you better start giving me some answers. And now.”

Bucky squashed his lips together, turning them a ripe shade of pink, and after a moment, he nodded. Resigned. “Okay. That’s fair.” He moved toward the picture windows at the front of the parlor that looked out on twilit C Street. “But do you mind if I close the curtains? Maybe pour us both a drink?”

“You go right ahead,” Steve said. “But if you don’t give me a good reason in the next five minutes not to call up Director Fury and send the full force of SHIELD after you . . .”

Bucky tossed him a wry grin, and it made Steve want to melt. “I’ll do it in three.”

Surely it was just the vodka talking, but Steve felt a sudden need to sit down before he said or did something truly embarrassing.

Bucky reached up and snapped the curtains shut—no small feat, with the ten-foot ceilings. Peggy’s ten-foot ceilings, Steve reminded himself as he sank into a too-small divan. The metal arm peeking from Bucky’s rolled-up shirt sleeves clicked faintly as Bucky moved. It suited him, somehow. Its lines were every bit as sleek and elegant as the rest of Bucky’s body—the lithe lines of his torso and the curving muscles, his broad back that tapered ever so slightly to his hips. Not that—that Steve had spent a great deal of time studying those hips. Thinking about how they’d feel in his hands, or pressed against his own. Steve hadn’t even considered—

Oh, god. This was all wrong. Bucky was a foreign agent and Steve had spent a decent part of the morning pressing Peggy Carter to a wall. Peggy, who practically had a wife—except for the part in Steve’s brain where he was sure, when the war was over, Peggy would be his wife—and he and Bucky would be—

Jesus Christ, what a mess. They said time healed everything. In that moment, though, it sure seemed like time had only aged Steve’s problems. Fermented them into a too-strong wine.

Bucky finished pouring out two glasses of scotch and held one out to Steve. As Steve took it from him, his fingers brushed over the metal tips of Bucky’s own, cool to the touch. Steve’s grip trembled and he sloshed some of the scotch out of the glass.

But Bucky just smiled at him. He sat down beside Steve on the divan, their sides not touching, but close enough that if Steve scooted to his left only a fraction, they would. “It’s kinda nice, isn’t it?” Bucky asked. He took a sip of scotch and turned the metal arm side to side, letting the dim light from the foyer glide over it. “A technological marvel, they called it. Well, they said it in Russian, but you get the idea.”

“Start from the beginning,” Steve said.

Bucky nodded, his expression turning serious. “When you—when we . . .”

Steve wrenched his eyes shut, but it didn't help. He could hear the wind whistling against the side of the train as Bucky’s screams rang and rang inside his skull. He might have dreamed about it, when he was in the ice. An endless train ride in the bitter cold, the hollow in his chest reminding him of everything he’d lost.

“I landed at the bottom of that ravine, and somehow—I still don’t know how, really—I survived. The Russians think maybe it was something to do with whatever Hydra injected into me at Azzano. I dunno, I guess it makes sense if Hydra was trying to—well, to make someone like you.” He twisted the glass of scotch around between his hands, staring down at it. “But the Red Army came across me on one of their patrols. My arm was too badly mangled, but they thought they could help with that.”

“Russia was our ally in the war,” Steve said. “Why didn’t they turn you back over to us?”

Bucky exhaled slowly. “The truth is . . . I didn’t want to go back.” Bucky glanced at him, fleeting, his gaze wounded. It made Steve take another gulp of scotch. “I was feeling pretty disillusioned then, you’ve gotta understand. I’d seen just what the United States put you through with all this Captain America bullshit. Treating you like a lab monkey, and then a chorus girl, and then trying to turn you into some kinda patriotic rallying point, when all the while they were exploiting you, and doing the exact same horrible things we accused Hydra of.”

“Like what?” Steve asked. Though he suspected he already knew.

“The bomb.” Bucky looked away again. “And there’d been the internment camps, and so much more. And they let you sacrifice yourself—Steve Rogers, the best man I’ve ever known, giving up his life for what? For American pride? You and I both know that wasn’t true.”

Steve couldn’t deny it, so he didn’t respond.

“Now, I’m not saying the Sovs are perfect. Stalin . . . he had some issues of his own. But by god, do they ever learn from their mistakes. And so much of what they’ve done—stealing the plans for the atom bomb, and so on—it’s only been in self-defense. Gotta keep the cowboys in check somehow, you know?”

“I suppose I do,” Steve said. The logical side of his brain told him it was important to keep Bucky talking to get as much information to relay to Peggy as he possibly could. The other side was mesmerized, wound up in the music of Bucky’s voice, letting it flow over him and never wanting it to stop.

“But most of all, the Russians . . . they just took care of me. After everything they’d done for me, saving my life, giving me this prosthetic, protecting me and giving me a chance to start over, then sure. I thought about going back. But I didn’t see the point.” His teeth clicked together as he turned toward Steve again, and his right hand slid across the divan to rest millimeters from Steve’s thigh. “Not without you.”

Steve’s muscles tensed. “You don’t mean that.”

“Stevie. Of course I do.” Bucky smiled, watery and sad. “And it looks like I was right. Don’t you see how they’re treating you now that you’re awake? Like some fucking jingoistic puppet, parading you around at all the fancy balls while good people suffer.” He shook his head. “That’s not how it is for me. They let me have meaning. A real purpose.”

“Like kidnapping Howard Stark?” Steve asked pointedly.

Bucky laughed, a dry sound. “Like stopping Howard Stark from making more human weapons in a bottle? You fucking bet.”

Steve propped one hand on his thigh. His fingers were practically touching Bucky’s; if he moved them down just by a fraction . . . Christ, what the hell was he doing? He jerked his hand back with a grunt. “So why come to me now? What are you hoping to accomplish here?”

“I just . . .” Bucky’s voice shattered. “I had to see you again.”

Steve’s heart was thudding so loud, surely Bucky heard it too.

“I—I’ve had a lot of time to do some thinking, Steve. Think about things that it never seemed right to think about, back in the war. Or even before.”

Steve opened his parched mouth; darted his tongue across his lower lip. “What sort of things?”

Bucky turned, his right thigh sliding onto the divan as he faced Steve. His face was perfectly motionless as he regarded Steve, eyes cool and absorbing as ever. Steve felt embers stoking inside his chest, the heat spreading across his body. He had to get a grip. Nothing about this day was going how he’d intended, and if he didn’t pull himself together, he was going to say—or do—plenty of things that would only make it worse.

“Missed opportunities,” Bucky said. He leaned forward with a faint shift of gears, eyes not straying from Steve’s. “Lives we didn’t live.”

Steve tried to speak, but his mouth was all dried out. His body was tight, too tight, like he was going to split open if he moved too fast.

“I know it was tougher when we were kids. When we were—well, technically adults, but only in name, you know?” He smirked. “A lot of things were different back then. We didn’t have much control.”

Steve’s chest was rising and falling in cadence with Bucky’s words. “I’m not sure I have much control over my life still.”

“Right. Captain America, fist of justice, shield of righteousness, beacon of hope for capitalism and democracy, all that bag of bullshit, am I right?” Bucky shook his head, a sad smile on his face. “When they asked you if you wanted to serve your country . . . I don’t think this is what you meant.”

Steve glanced down, ashamed, but the truth of it was hot on his face.

“There are places,” Bucky said. He was laying his words out carefully between them, like cards in a poker game. “Places where you don’t have to hide who you are.” His bowed his head, but his gaze flicked up toward Steve’s, deep blue hidden behind dark lashes. It made Steve’s breath hitch. “Where we wouldn’t have to hide.”

“I’m—I’m not sure what you mean.”

Bucky reached forward; curled his warm right hand around Steve’s left. Possessive. Steve’s skin blossomed where they touched. “C’mon. Dollface. Don’t tell me I’ve been wrong all these years.”

Steve’s fingers tightened beneath Bucky’s. Look at you, Stevie. You’ve got a face as pretty as a doll’s, but the heart of a fuckin’ junkyard mutt. And I wouldn’t want you to be any other way. For days and weeks he’d played those words over and over in his head, face pressed into the mattress and teeth clenched around a pillow so no one—especially not Bucky—could hear what those words had done to him. What he did to himself, thinking about those words.

But Bucky had never acted on any of those teasing things he’d said.—Not outside a few stolen, drunken kisses, anyway. Stumbling home after a bad date, Bucky would climb into bed beside Steve, reeking of cheap bootleg rum and cheaper perfume, hands reaching for Steve’s hips automatically and lips sucking at Steve’s neck so hard it left a mark. Steve lived for those nights, even though Bucky never stayed awake long enough to finish what he’d started. It didn’t mean anything, and yet Steve had ascribed meaning to it all the same, so much that the guilt of it had threaded through him every time he didn’t confess it to Peg—

Oh, god, Peg—

“I was an idiot,” Bucky continued. “I was scared. I should’ve told you the truth, Stevie.”

Steve forced his fingers to relax beneath Bucky’s hand. “And what is the truth?”

Bucky laughed to himself, shaking his head. Then his stare returned to Steve’s. Something in it was so intense and yet so empty for a moment that it terrified Steve, and made him think he’d been wrong after all. But then Bucky softened, and he was warmth and springtime Brooklyn all over again.

Bucky raised the metal hand to brush against Steve’s cheek. It was cool, but surprisingly gentle; Steve felt a secret thrill at the caress. “That I’m in love with you.” Bucky smiled as he blinked back a tear. “Always have been.”

Steve sucked air in through his teeth. This couldn’t be happening. He couldn’t be sitting here—in Peggy’s house—with Bucky’s hand on his cheek and their faces drawing nearer and a lifetime of yearning unspooling inside him at last. It wasn’t real, he wasn’t actually tilting his face to one side and parting his lips and feeling a tidal wave pulling inside his body, surging him forward—

Bucky’s mouth met his, velvety and warm with just a hint of smoke from the scotch. He had the sugar-sweet taste of desire and the hunger of someone who’d been waiting for this moment for far too long. Steve knew the feeling well. His hand was lacing through Bucky’s and his lips were drawing Bucky in and his body was pulling closer, longing to feel every inch of Bucky’s lean body against his, longing to never be pulled apart again.

Bucky came up on his knees, mouth locked onto Steve’s, teeth grazing against Steve’s lip in a way that made Steve shudder and groan. He shoved Steve back against the divan. Smiled darkly. Then Bucky straddled Steve’s hips, face to face, sitting in his lap and clutching Steve’s cheeks, his mouth growing more ravenous by the minute. Steve’s heart felt like it would punch out of his chest, but he was too lost in the taste of Bucky and the weight of him against him and the perfect warmth of Bucky’s mouth closing around his.

“Steve.” Bucky’s mouth slid toward his ear, his breath like fire. “Steve. Come away with me.”

Steve gasped for air. It sounded crazy. It sounded like just the sort of reckless thing Bucky would try to convince him to do. “Where?”

Bucky kissed at the soft line where Steve’s jaw met his neck, and then sucked at the skin he found there. Steve whimpered again. The sensation was unbearable. Like being twenty all over again, only they were both mostly sober this time, and neither of them had to pretend.

“Anywhere,” Bucky breathed.

Steve managed a feeble nod as Bucky slid his right hand between their chests. Tugged at the waistband of Steve’s jeans. Tucked his hand inside.

“Jesus, Buck.” Steve shifted uncomfortably at the sudden sensation.

Bucky slid his hand back out partway and pressed his forehead against Steve’s. “I—I’m sorry. I just want you so bad, and you’re here—you’re alive . . .”

Steve worked his mouth. He knew this was a bad idea, but couldn’t quite remember why. His head was spinning, his thoughts fuzzy and useless.

“Y—you don’t have to stop.”

Bucky’s smile darkened, and his hand slid between them again, grasping at Steve. Oh, god, it was almost too much, but Steve never wanted it to stop. His hips rocked against Bucky’s, instinct and want taking over. Bucky’s body pressed into him in return.

“Come away with me,” Bucky said again. “So we can always be like this. No hiding. No more pretending.”

“Why can’t you stay here?” Steve asked. “Turn yourself in—I can smooth things over . . .”

“You know they won’t let you live this way.” Bucky’s fist tightened around him as if to make his point, and Steve groaned again. “It doesn’t have to be Russia. Although the Soviets have taken good care of me.” He glanced away for just a second, the way he had when he’d said the same thing earlier. “But we can go somewhere, anywhere that we can be together . . .”

Steve managed a weak nod, because he didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t thinking much of anything except how incredible Bucky felt and looked, and how much he wanted more. Steve’s thumbs nudged the hem of Bucky’s dress shirt out of his slacks and traced slow circles against Bucky’s warm skin.

Bucky nibbled at Steve’s chin with a soft laugh. Rocked his hips forward. Steve swore under his breath. He couldn’t take this much longer. He was drunk, if not on alcohol, then on Bucky, on this incredible feeling. On the promise of a life like this. Free from the government’s chains, able to do as he pleased, fight for what was right instead of what was ordered—and to do it with Bucky at his side—

Steve shuddered, his whole body convulsing, and rocked back against the divan. Bucky’s mouth shoved onto his again as white-hot bliss enveloped him. The kiss swallowed up the desperate groan that rose from them both. For a moment, Steve couldn’t remember anything. Not his name, not Bucky’s, not anything else. He was panting, burning up from inside, and he never wanted to cool down.

“You sound beautiful when you do that,” Bucky whispered in his ear.

Steve mustered a weak laugh. But it faded as he came back to himself. To the fact that his best friend—no, a Russian spy, wanted by SHIELD and probably every other agency besides—was sitting on top of him in his ex-girlfriend’s house and trying to convince him to run away. Steve was—

Screwed. Well and truly screwed.

“Will you do it?” Bucky asked. “Please, Stevie.”

It was the worst possible idea in a long string of terrible ideas. But with everything Steve had experienced since waking up . . . it was almost impossible to say no.

“What would I need to do?” Steve asked.

Bucky pressed a lazy kiss to Steve’s lips as he pulled his hand back out of Steve’s jeans. “I could arrange something quick for us. Tomorrow afternoon, probably.”

That was good. That gave Steve to think about this more clearly and decide on his own. Sometime when he wasn’t feeling so . . . compromised. “So not right away.”

Bucky shook his head slowly. “SHIELD’s watching this place. I was able to sneak past them to get in, but I don’t think we could both sneak out without them noticing.”

Steve’s expression fell. Of course they were watching him. For a symbol of freedom, they sure didn’t seem to have any to spare for him.

“Are you safe here?” Bucky asked. “No one’s coming by that you know of?”

Steve glanced away. “She’s, um, away. On business.”

Bucky’s expression was inscrutable, but he nodded. “Go to work tomorrow like you would normally. But I’ll leave a note for you here—with an address—when you return.”

“Right.” Steve nodded. “Sounds good.” His stomach churned—was he actually going to go through with this? No, of course he wasn’t. He just needed time to consider. Time to think about alternatives. Surely there was a way he could bring Bucky in safely. But every scenario he tried to imagine ended with outrage, Congressional hearings, prison, execution for treason—

God. Maybe Bucky was right.

Bucky was quiet a moment, the side of his face pressed against Steve’s. “Depending on where we end up running to . . . we might need something to bargain with.”

Steve raised one eyebrow. He hadn’t been expecting that. But it made a certain sense. “What do you need?”

Bucky leaned back and bit his lower lip. “I don’t have much money, but . . . a handful of secret SHIELD documents would probably be worth a hell of a lot wherever we end up.”

Steve shifted, unsettled. “I—I don’t know if I should do that.”

Bucky blushed and glanced down. “No. You’re right. It’s too much to ask. I just thought, maybe if it would give us a head start . . .”

“I’ll think about it,” Steve said. He’d have to think about a lot of things. God, though, all he wanted was to kiss Bucky again. He ached to follow him to the ends of the earth.

Bucky smiled, and slowly, shyly climbed off of Steve’s lap. Brushed back the dark curls on his forehead where they’d fallen out of place. “Don’t forget. Tomorrow.” He stood, his face so open and raw that it stung. “I love you, Steve.”

Steve’s throat practically closed up on his words. He wanted to stand up and pull Bucky back into his arms, but something guarded in Bucky’s stance warned him against it. “I love you too.”

“Don’t forget,” Bucky whispered. “Please don’t forget.”

As he turned away from Steve, something flickered in his expression. That cold, hollowed-out stare Steve had glimpsed a few minutes before.

But it could have been a trick of the shadows.

Steve went to shower, his head full of everything and nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Part 6: Dissonance

“You got some kinda nerve, Margaret Carter.” Angie swept blush across her fine cheekbones with brutal efficiency. Though she was almost a head shorter than Peggy, the harsh dressing room vanity lights made her look larger than life. “Not a goddamn peep out of you for four months, and then when you do ring me up, it’s for work.”

Peggy folded her arms and tried to melt into the dressing room wall. “I didn’t think you’d wish to hear from me.” She didn’t have time for this conversation, truly. But then, she supposed that was rather Angie’s point. She never did make time for anything more than scraping by, merging Angie into her routine like a new pair of heels.

“It’s the thought that counts.” Angie made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “I wouldn’ta taken your calls, but it’d be nice to know you made them, huh?”

Peggy shook her head. “Angie, I’m not here to try to persuade you of anything.”

“You sure about that, doll?”

“You made your choice abundantly clear. You asked that I give you space, and I’ve done just that.”

Angie huffed. “You just don’t get it.”

“What’s not to get?” Peggy asked. “You had a job offer here. It’s a far better theatre company than the one in Washington—I understand that.” I took you for granted—I understand that, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to give voice to it. “I offered to go with you, but you said you’d hate to take me away from my first love—work—and then you were gone.”

“And you didn’t even try to stop me.” Angie blinked to settle her mascara. “Because you just don’t get it.”

“What am I supposed to be getting?” Peggy said hotly. She was fully aware that there was little time for this argument, which was the whole reason she’d not wanted to come to Angie in the first place, but duty was duty. And she was starting to suspect she needed a little space away from Steve to clear her head.

“That all the work you put in to pullin’ off your jobs . . . I just wish you woulda put the same into us.”

Peggy’s expression fell. “Angie. I’m so sorry. I was trying to do what you’d asked, honestly.”

“Maybe at first. But I know you. You thought about callin’ me for all of two seconds before somebody’s lab exploded or you caught some spy or whatever the hell it was this time, and then you got wrapped up in your work and just kept going.” Angie’s eyes narrowed. “Though I gotta admit, I’m surprised you’re working right now. What with Cap being alive, and all. You don’t want to give your Sleeping Beauty a kiss to wake him up?”

Bloody hell. Peggy’s face flushed immediately, recalling the way she’d kissed Steve just that morning. Like some lovelorn schoolgirl. “He’s not—I mean, Captain Rogers is—”

“Oh, god.” Angie set down her makeup brush and looked at Peggy directly for the first time. “You really are makin’ time with him again, aren’t you? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Peg.”

“We’re doing nothing of the sort!”

“Yeah, and I’m the damn pope.” Angie’s mouth crinkled at one corner. Something ached in Peggy at that sight; she wanted desperately to smooth Angie’s frown away, an instinct too deep. “I knew it. I shoulda known. I was always just a cheap replacement to you, wasn’t I?”

Peggy’s heart sank. “That’s not even remotely true.”

And what was the truth? Each of them held some vital part of her, something she’d thought she couldn’t live without. But she’d stumbled through without either of them, of late. Lord, but she wished she could do more than stumble.

“You’re a piece of work, Carter. I thought you were my piece of work.” Her perfect stage enunciation was emerging—a barrier she was building between them. “But I should’ve known. Duty first, Peggy second, everyone else a distant third.”

That isn’t true. I can’t stop thinking about you. I turn our fight over and over in my head, trying to find some way I could have made you stay.

But Peggy couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. She couldn’t speak to any of this. It was all too raw, too bloodied in her mind. She only needed a bit of distance, a bit of perspective to sort it out. Not that she’d done a great job of that, today.

Angie studied her a moment longer, then, with a huff, turned back to her vanity.

“Anyway, you’ve got your box key. Have fun playing your little spy games.” Angie twisted her lipstick up. “Nice seeing you, and all.”

“Angie . . .”

Angie’s eyes fluttered closed; she paused with the lipstick raised to her mouth. Peggy studied the delicate snub of her nose, the plump lips, the now-bleached golden curls that framed her soft face. She’d thrown herself into work to forget all those details, but it was useless. Another ghost she couldn’t escape.

“You deserve everything. Your leading role, your success, a dazzling and glamorous life.”

Angie flicked her hand at her. “C’mon, you don’t have to say all that—”

“It’s the truth. And I wanted to be able to give you that.” A lump rose in Peggy’s throat. “But I knew I couldn’t. And can’t. I can’t turn a blind eye to the world’s ills, even though I wish I could.”

“That’s why I loved you, babe.” Angie stood from the dressing room stool. “And that’s why I left. I didn’t want you to feel like you had to choose.”

Peggy bit her lower lip and stepped back to give Angie space. “You thought I didn’t care whether you stayed or went. But I did.”

Angie’s hazel eyes bored into hers. Slowly she reached up and tucked back a lock of Peggy’s hair. “Well, you got a funny way of showing it.”

“Angie . . .”

“Curtain call.” Angie unlocked the door to her dressing room to let them both out. “You got anything else you wanna say . . . you know where to find me.”

And once more, Peggy watched her retreat.

*

The world moved around James in a blur.

Somehow, his feet carried him to the safehouse near the DC waterfront. His body knew the route while his mind churned with endless white that crinkled like radio static. He was at the door. Hands were taking him by the arms. He was shoving them away. Collapsing in the grimy bathroom. Concerned voices around him, whispering, debating.

He curled over the toilet and heaved watery bile.

It had been going so well. He’d played his role perfectly—Captain Rogers had never for a moment doubted he was anyone other than Sergeant Barnes, and he let himself be strung up on each and every hook his handler suggested they use. It was, like they said, as if James had been preparing for this role his whole career. It came so naturally to him, in fact, that he’d had no problem inventing perfect answers to all the leading questions Rogers had asked. Like he’d studied “Bucky” so well that he knew his soul better than even Bucky probably did.

But it didn’t explain the strange thoughts that flickered in his head.

He could almost taste it, the memory that Rogers had mentioned—he practically felt the thick summer air of Brooklyn and the weight of the man in his arms. Not Rogers—not the one he’d met tonight—but who he’d been before, made of porcelain and twigs. He could taste the thick bootleg booze on his tongue as they’d kissed in secret, night after night—

But it didn’t make sense—

He threw up again, though there was nothing left in him.

Dollface. He’d never bothered himself with romance and seduction before, men or women. It would only distract him, his handlers said, and he agreed. Better to concentrate on his work—there was no pleasure greater than seeing their missions through. Yet the way Captain Rogers’s mouth fit against his, the smooth machinery of it, practiced and familiar and comforting—he must have done this before. Before he came to work for the cause. When he was—

When he was . . .

Every time he tried to reach back before that first day of training, when they told him of the value of his contributions, he saw only a blank nothingness. Like he was stumbling through a snowstorm. White on endless white, only the dimmest shapes to be found.

But now there were images of Captain Rogers lurking in the fog. Which couldn’t be right. And when they’d kissed, all he could think was how much he wanted to do it again.

Wanted. He wasn’t used to wanting anything. He didn’t need anything—only the satisfaction of a mission well done. But that’s what the feeling was, wasn’t it, the one turning his stomach inside out and crawling under his skin? He wanted.

It terrified him.

James curled over the toilet seat once more. But then shoes clicked on the bathroom tiles behind him, and someone seized him by his hair and jerked his head back.

“James?”

It was his handler, smiling at him, glasses gleaming in the harsh bathroom light. Relief unfolded in him. The handler would make sense of this all. There was a perfectly reasonable explanation he was missing. That’s why he needed them, after all. To keep him on course, to remind him of the value of their work.

James dredged up a weak smile, though he knew he must have looked like a disaster. “Sorry. I’m not feeling . . .”

“I need your mission report, James.”

James opened his mouth, trying to scrape all his thoughts into a coherent narrative, but he wasn’t entirely sure he could.

Then an impulse surged through him. He didn’t want to tell the man. He wanted to keep this for himself and let anyone else see. This wretched and wonderful feeling of belonging and all the uncertainty shrouding it and oh god he was going to be sick again because he wasn’t supposed to want, he shouldn’t want anything and

“James.”

The man seized his chin, squashing his lips together. James tried to focus on his face, but everything was swirling around him, just as jumbled up as his thoughts.

“Enact protocol: Winter Soldier.”

James sank into the hazy images, the glimpses of Captain Rogers and the smells of Brooklyn and he was

Going

Home

The soldier sat up straighter, despite the oily feeling in his gut. Looked into the eyes of his handler. Tried to ignore the shifting edges of his vision.

“Mission report, soldier.”

The soldier breathed slowly, but his lungs were hitching on something, something aching and thorny in his chest.

“Captain Rogers has been persuaded.” He tightened his jaw to fight off a wave of revulsion that came from nowhere. “He will meet us tomorrow.”

The man smiled, and released his hold on the soldier’s hair. He turned away, and for a fleeting moment, the soldier dreamed of fingers laced through his and a warm voice in his ear.

“Wipe him again,” the man said over his shoulder; then, turning back, he smiled at the soldier. “Come.”

The dream vanished. The soldier had an order to obey.

*

Peggy let herself into the private box halfway through the first act. Thick red velvet draperies and a row of seats, all empty save two figures at the front. She could hear Angie’s voice on stage, belting out a song and dance number, but didn’t allow herself to glance toward it. She had a job to do.

Whoever Andersen was seated beside, arm slung around her bared shoulder, it certainly wasn’t his wife—Peggy knew that much from the files. That made her job even easier. With a wicked grin, she slipped into the empty seat at Andersen’s other side.

“Hello, handsome.”

He turned toward her, startled. “We’re trying to watch the show.”

“No, I’d wager you’re trying to see how many mistresses you can run at one time. Maybe you and your rival firm are competing there, too?”

The woman shot Peggy a glower, then turned it toward Andersen. “You said I’m your only girl!”

“Well—yeah, you are, baby. As soon as I ditch the ol’ ball and chain, I mean. Which, I promise, real soon—”

“Darling,” Peggy said, “you probably aren’t even his only girl in this theatre.”

The woman stood up with a huff, flung her half-drank martini in Andersen’s face, and stormed from the box.

“Thanks a lot.” Andersen yanked a kerchief from his breast pocket and scrubbed at his face. “The hell do you want? I’ll shout for the cops—”

“Ohh, I very much doubt you want to do that. Seeing as how a mutual friend sent me.”

Andersen’s teeth clicked together. He wadded the kerchief up, stuffed it back into his pocket, and shrank back in his seat. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Peggy bared a grin. “Do you want to take that chance?”

He tried to hold her gaze, but Peggy was far too experienced for that nonsense; she stared him down until he shook his head. Even in the faint lighting emanating from the stage, his face looked sallow.

Peggy braced herself—here came the trickiest part of the deceit. She could be wrong; maybe the CIA was wrong about the Russian woman, or maybe it had been someone else entirely. But based on Andersen’s behavior so far, he certainly seemed the sort of cad who’d sell secrets to the Soviets if it would save his own hide.

“She asked me to meet you in her stead. So I’m here to take your reports.”

“What?” he whisper-shouted. “We weren’t supposed to meet for another two months—”

“Well, there’s been a shakeup back home.” Peggy had no idea whether this was true or not, but given the frequency of Soviet purges, it seemed a fair guess. “Quite a few things are going to change around here.”

He shook his head. “We usually set the meetings in advance. Sometimes it isn’t even face to face, I’ll just leave the documents in an unlocked storage bin at Grand Central. I don’t have any files with me or anything . . .”

“How did you arrange the meetings?” Peggy asked.

Andersen narrowed his eyes. “Shouldn’t you already know that?”

Peggy’s heart raced as she knitted together a fresh lie. “The shakeup has been very . . . thorough.”

“Aw, jesus.” Andersen wrung his hands together. “Did something happen to Natalie?”

Peggy fought back a smile. A single first name, almost certainly fake, wasn’t much to go on—but it was something. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

Andersen swore to himself. “Okay, look. If I wanted to arrange a meeting, then I’d call this number, right? I’m sure you know about it. Then I’d say this phrase. ‘The Bolshoi is looking promising this season.’ Then they’d answer me with a date and time, and I’d go wait at Union Square Park when the time came. Unless they told me to go somewhere else, but usually that was it.”

“And it was always Natalie who met with you?” Peggy asked. At Andersen’s narrowed eyes, she added, “It’s very important that you tell me honestly. If you want things to go well for Natalie.”

“Fine. No, it wasn’t always her. But they’d always identify themselves, saying the same thing about the Bolshoi season, right?”

“Mm. Yes. Very good.” Peggy spread her fingers across his arm. He was trembling, trying to look everywhere but at her. She almost needn’t have bothered with the blonde wig Angie’s propmaster had loaned her—he was in no condition to identify her. “Anything else you can share about our dear friend?” Her grip tightened. “About what kind of information she wanted, perhaps?”

“I . . . She started asking me to dig deeper into Stark’s financial holdings. Howard Stark—he’s one of my firm’s clients.”

“Yes, I’m aware who he is.” Peggy leaned closer, heart thudding. It would seem the Russians had long been spinning a web around Howard, far longer than she realized. “What did she want to know?”

“Where he was moving his money, what he was spending it on, what companies he was investing in . . .”

Peggy arched one brow. “Oh, yes. What companies was he investing in?”

“Lots of pharmaceutical outfits, biological research facilities, stuff like that. I didn’t take him for a healthcare kinda guy, but what the hell do I know?” Andersen shrugged. “Past year or so, that’s how it’s gone, and she wanted to know all about it.”

Peggy curved her nails to bite into his arm. “And you’re certain that’s all.”

“I—jesus, lady—yeah, that’s it. Sometimes I get the reminder from her, you know, ‘Tell anyone you’re working with us and you’ll get your photo on the front page of the Times,’ all that jazz. But that’s it. I swear.”

Peggy studied him for a moment longer, then released his arm. “Thank you for your cooperation . . . comrade.”

He tugged at his collar. “Natalie’s gonna be okay, right?”

“Oh, yes.” Peggy grinned. “I’m going to take very good care of her.”

*

Natasha woke up in handcuffs.

That in itself wasn’t unusual—most Red Room girls did. It felt wrong not to sleep with one hand chained above her head, the same way she imagined other girls might get accustomed to sleeping with a teddy bear. But waking up with her hands cuffed behind her, and sitting in a chair in some kind of badly lit warehouse . . . this was new.

But, she supposed, she was always open to trying something new.

“Morning, sunshine.”

She raised her head to find the bird guy seated opposite her, watching her with a feline grin. He was right at the edge of the halo of light cast from a single bulb overhead. Morning? He had to be lying. Natasha ran her tongue against her teeth and spat to one side. Blyad. Okay, maybe not. How long had she been out?

“You ready to talk now?” he asked. “Coz if not, I’m gonna have to find someone who can persuade you. And they won’t be nearly as cuddly as me.”

“You don’t scare me,” Natasha said.

He shrugged. “Yeah, maybe not. But my friends might.”

“Who? SHIELD?” She snorted a laugh. “Please. They don’t know the true meaning of intimidation.”

“Are you saying you do?” he asked.

She returned his smile, thin and icy. “I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”

He stood up and folded his arms, then paced a slow circle around her. It was her first chance to really study him since their poorly lit encounter along the river road. He was muscular, but in a leaner way than Captain Rogers and the soldier were. Aerodynamic, she supposed. He kept his hair cropped close to the scalp—a military affectation, maybe, though it could be something else. His goatee tapered along a pointed chin, and his dark eyes glinted playfully. He was probably the sort of person who used humor to disarm others even as he used it to shield himself.

“If we’re going to be getting to know one another well,” Natasha said, “you could at least tell me your name.”

He made a mocking grin and bowed. “Oh, no, ladies first. I insist.”

Let the games begin, Natasha thought. Part of her actually hoped the poor guy could keep up.

“Who do you want me to be?” She shrugged one shoulder, making her red waves cascade forward, then batted her eyes. “What about a sultry Svetlana?” she asked in a husky voice. Then, tossing her hair back, she said in a high pitch, “Or maybe a bubbly Katya!” Then she narrowed her eyes and leaned forward, giving him a devious grin. “Or maybe Natalia, spinning you up in her web.”

“So Russian, then,” he said.

She arched one brow. “But you already knew that.”

He leaned back on his heels with a smirk. “What else do I already know? Go on. I wanna hear this.”

Not a bad play—she’d give him partial credit for the effort. “Nothing, probably.”

“Ohh, we both know that’s not true.”

She could stop talking now. Clam up and wait it out. He was a soldier, based on what she’d seen, and not an interrogator. He might make a good show of threatening her, but she didn’t think he had the stomach for following through on that threat. Not in any way that could possibly scare a Red Room girl.

But she could be terribly, horribly wrong.

“All right, fine. I’ll share a little something.” Any real interrogation was actually a negotiation. And Natasha liked to drive a hard bargain.

He crouched in front of her, so they were eye level. If she wanted to, she could flip the chair, and crash it down on him right now. Maybe get her arms swung forward so she could choke him out. If she wanted to, she could get away right this minute.

But she wouldn’t be any closer to the answers she wanted.

“You know who I work for, right?” he asked.

She hesitated, but then nodded. “You’re SHIELD. Obviously. You all wear it on your faces,” she added with a sly grin.

“And—this is just a stretch here—but I’m pretty damn sure you’re KGB. Red Room, even.”

Her mouth worked open—the Red Room’s existence was a carefully guarded secret—

“Now, now, I’m sure you think you all were so sneaky. But Chief Carter—she’s been there. Seen your training grounds. We know all about your Department X. Even knew one of your agents pretty well, before she went rogue.”

“Oh, I’m betting you don’t know all about it,” Natasha said. But her tone was a little more shaky.

“Plus, that nasty scar tissue on your wrist kinda gives it away.” He waggled his eyebrows. “So here’s the conundrum I’m wrestling with, and please feel free to chime in at any point.” He steepled his hands in front of his face and looked at her squarely. She’d been wrong earlier about his eyes, she realized; they were edged in the faintest shades of green and gray. “Why would a KGB spy feel the need to go breaking into their own safehouse?”

Natasha pressed her lips together while she thought. No matter what she thought about Dot’s erratic behavior, she couldn’t let any outsiders see anything but a unified front. The KGB was supposed to be a fortress, impenetrable. Even if she thought he might have something to share.

“What do you care?” she said finally. “It doesn’t affect SHIELD. And speaking of . . .” She craned her neck around, scanning the dim warehouse. “Where are their security personnel, anyway? They’re being uncharacteristically competent.”

He pressed his fingers against his lips. And in the chess game fixed in Natasha’s mind, he’d just left her quite the opening. “So,” he said, drawing out the vowel. “Here’s the deal.”

Natasha settled back in the chair with a grin. “Oh, this is going to be good.”

“Well, first of all, I noticed your little metal-armed buddy is gone. Bucky, right?”

Natasha’s grin faded. So SHIELD knew who he was, or at least who he was supposed to be. That gave her some clue as to what kind of mission the scientist had prepped him for, then. “Why?” she asked, trying her best to sound calm. “Is he giving you problems? Poor thing.”

He shook a finger at her. “No, no, I’m not done talking about you yet.”

“Oh, you really know the way to a girl’s heart,” she cooed.

He rolled his eyes. “So the KGB’s left you all on your own to go sneaking around, even though you’ve got to know that, now that you’ve tried to kidnap Howard Stark, you’re probably public enemy number one. But are you gonna let that stop you? Of course not.”

“What can I say? I’ve got big dreams.”

“And yet instead of doing, I dunno, sneaky KGB things, I notice you heading toward what looks like a KGB safehouse. Only you’re not using it for that. You’re breaking and entering. Which makes me think you’re just as curious as I am to see what the hell your superiors are up to. Am I right?”

Natasha ran through his words, doing her best to get her story straight. He didn’t know about the man she was tailing. He thought the soldier was really James Barnes. Okay. She could work with that.

“So what is it, Svetlana-Katya-Natalia? You think they’re up to something fishy, too? Coz I’m gonna give you one minute to explain yourself, and if I don’t like the answers, that’s when I give my boss a call.”

So he hadn’t called in the Strike team yet. Oh, you silly little boy. Natasha smiled to herself. I’m gonna eat you for lunch.

“Just trying to clarify my orders, is all.” She shrugged her shoulders, handcuffs clanking. “No big conspiracy. So you might as well call SHIELD up. I’m sure they’d love to hear about you conducting an unsanctioned interrogation.

He watched her a minute longer, and she stared right back. Unblinking. To his credit, he didn’t flinch, either.

Not until she swung her legs forward, catching him in the chin, and then tipped the chair over onto its back.

The metal frame clattered against the warehouse’s concrete floor, rattling her teeth. She kept rolling back, feet over head, until she rolled onto her knees, and forced herself to her feet. He was already scrambling to stand up as well, but she had a little space between them to work with. She wrenched her hands up, but he’d at least been smart enough to fasten her cuffs through one of the bars of the chair. The chair made for an unnecessary bulk, but she could use it as a weapon. As he tried to reach for her, she swung the chair around, and its legs cracked against his torso.

“The hell is wrong with you—”

“Sorry, handsome. But I work better on my own.” Natasha swung once more and knocked him to the ground. He groaned, rolling onto his back, as she swung her pendant necklace up and caught it in her teeth. She flicked her tongue against the latch on the vial’s front and dumped the contents into her mouth.

“Oh, come on, not cyanide—”

She spat at him, spraying the paralytic over his face.

“Please,” Natasha said. “Give me a little more credit than that.”

Then she took off running for the warehouse doors as he started to go numb.

“Dottie Underwood,” he shouted, speech slurring as the paralytic took effect.

Natasha skidded to a stop on the balls of her bare feet. Her own tongue was going numb, but she was more or less immune to the paralytic’s effects. Now, anyway. After years of building up a tolerance.

“That name mean anything to you?” he slurred. “That’s the . . . Red Room dame’s name. Who went rogue.”

Natasha’s pulse hammered in her ears. He was grasping at straws, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Rogue agents didn’t wind up in charge of Department X.

So she told herself as she slipped out of the warehouse and vanished into the watery gray dawn.

*

“The Bolshoi is looking promising this season,” Peggy said, pitching her voice low. Her finger tangled around the phone cord and she sagged against the vanity in Angie’s dressing room.

The woman on the other end of the line said nothing for a long time. Each second of silence screwed tighter and tighter in Peggy’s gut. Across the dressing room from her, Angie was raising her hands and arching her brows, looking increasingly vexed. But Peggy waved her off.

“Thursday. Nine a.m.”

Peggy dropped the phone into its cradle and let out a weary breath.

“Well?” Angie asked.

“It’s done.” She propped one hand against the edge of the vanity. “Two days from now.” How she wished it could be earlier—the longer she had to wait, the more likely it became that Andersen might spill the beans, or any number of other things might happen to tip this “Natalie” off. But she wasn’t in a position to negotiate.

“You got everything you need, then?” Angie asked. “It’s gettin’ late, even for us theatre folks.” She carried her jacket slung over one arm, and had scrubbed away all her makeup after the curtain call. She shifted her keys from hand to hand, impatient.

“I—For now, I believe so. Yes.” Peggy drew herself up and turned to face Angie head-on. Really permitting herself to look at her, even though it ached like a still-fresh bruise. “I can’t thank you enough for your help.”

Angie waved her off. “Oh come on, Peg. I can’t say no to you.”

“We both know that’s not true,” Peggy said under her breath.

Angie hovered in the doorway, watching her for a moment like she was some strange piece of abstract art. “Yeah, well.” She looked away. “Maybe you just ain’t asking the right questions.”

Peggy’s nails dug into the vanity edge. “Angie—”

“You got somewhere to stay?” Angie said, swift as a door slamming shut. Discussion over. Peggy unclenched her hand.

“There’s a SHIELD apartment down in the Gramercy District. It’s nice enough.”

Angie nodded slowly. “Right. Yeah, of course. Makes sense.” She turned toward the door, and Peggy’s breath rushed out of her, an anxious thing, but then Angie looked back. “Y’know, though, if you need any help on Thursday—”

Peggy peered down her nose at Angie. “I thought you detested my work.”

“Not the work itself, babe. Just what it does to you.” She shook her head, curls bouncing. “Never mind. It was just a thought . . .”

“Perhaps we could grab a late lunch tomorrow,” Peggy said. “Split the difference?”

Angie eased into a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d like that a whole lot.”

*

Steve splashed water on his face and stared at the man in the mirror.

His face, and yet not. His body, but distorted beyond recognition. He was not his own person. And maybe he never had been.

Deep in his heart, he’d belonged to Bucky Barnes, and so much of him had been lost the day that Bucky fell. And then Steve had been property of the United States Army. He gave away a part of himself to Peggy, but then he belonged to the deep, and maybe Peggy had kept some of him, maybe not, and maybe she didn’t even know for sure.

It might be nice to be free. It might be the right thing to do.

But it wasn’t really freedom Bucky had offered him. It was belonging to Bucky again, a Bucky he barely knew, with all kinds of allegiances and motivations that didn’t really make sense. Not when he stopped to think about them—when he wasn’t drowning in the cotton-candy taste of Bucky’s mouth and his touch like a hurricane—

Good lord, but he needed to get a grip. He needed to think this through. There had to be some middle option to what Bucky was talking about. But if Bucky were really working for the Soviets now (and god, that still made no sense in his head; none of this made sense) . . . If Bucky were really a Communist, there was no way Steve could get him safe harbor in the States. And anywhere Steve followed him would get Steve branded a traitor, or worse.

And then there was Peggy. In his mind, two weeks ago he’d been daring to think about a life with her after the war. Now—it seemed to change day to day. He felt for her, of course he did, but the minute Bucky came back from the dead, it was like he was a teen all over again, hopelessly and foolishly in love. He’d basked in what he had with Peggy. But he’d drowned himself in Bucky, once upon a time.

A middle option. There had to be one. There had to be something he could do.

Steve shoved away from the sink and patted his face dry on a monogrammed hand towel—a looping, curly letter A. He was pretty sure it didn’t stand for Agent.

Steve pulled on his leather jacket and headed toward the Triskelion. Maybe, just maybe, he could find an answer there.

*

“—Agent Romanova to HQ. Agent Romanova to HQ. We’ve been compromised.”

“Repeat dispatch.”

“We’ve been compromised. A SHIELD agent has visual identification of myself and . . .” Hesitation. “The soldier.”

“Thank you, comrade. Please remain by the radio set. The commander will be along shortly to provide further instructions.”

The longer Natasha waited, the more her nerves crackled: a lit fuse quickly reaching its end.

Dottie. Rogue agent. Well, wasn’t every higher-up in the KGB out for themselves, in one way or another? Natasha remembered the first time she set up another girl to take the blame for her. She’d been nine years old and needed a scapegoat for the chocolates that had gone missing from their instructor’s locked desk drawer. She was never even sure if her subterfuge had actually worked, or if Madam had just been so pleased she’d attempted it at all that she chose to let it slide.

Yes, the Red Room girls could get away with all kinds of cruelty to each other, jostling their way toward favored status.

But they could never turn against the Room itself.

“Tashenka, my darling!” The radio crackled to life. Dot’s voice. “I’m ever so sure we can smooth this all over.”

“I hope so too, comrade.”

“Truth be told . . .” Dottie’s tone turned conspiratorial. “I don’t care if SHIELD knows who we are or not. It was bound to happen eventually.”

“It was?”

“Oh, yes. Chief Carter’s too clever for all that. What’s important is that we have what we need. Or we will, very soon.”

A fuzzy feeling spread through Natasha’s body, like an adrenaline dump. She was primed to run. This was all wrong, everything was so wrong.

Maybe Bird Guy was right. Blyad.

“In fact, I have just the thing to take your mind off your troubles down in Washington.” Dottie laughed to herself. “How about a little trip up to Manhattan to meet with your old asset there?”

*

Peggy drummed her nails against the desk as she listened to her secretary run through a list of all the issues that had cropped up overnight. For all that Steve and Barnes and “Natalie” had consumed Peggy’s thoughts and operational resources, there were still other missions to be managed. Within the span of seconds, she had to make decisions that could have devastating consequences for the SHIELD agents she commanded in the field. No, Billingsworth should not pursue recruitment with the French Vietnamese industrialist. Yes, they should agree to the meeting with the Wakandan delegation, but conduct their due diligence to arrange for favorable trade arrangements . . .

And all she could think about was the wounded look on Steve’s face and the hope in Angie’s eyes and the frightful, chilling certainty of the Russian spies as they carried out their work.

“—And I think that about covers it for your morning brief,” her secretary concluded. “I’m sure I’ll have updates for you this afternoon. Anything you need from us?”

“Yes, actually.” Peggy peeked out the curtain at the Manhattan streets below. “Did Parsons turn anything up connected with the name Natalie for our mystery guests?”

There was a shuffling noise as her secretary covered the mouthpiece, then shouted, muffled, across the office. After a few moments, she returned. “There was a Natalie Rushman on the guest list for Mr. Stark’s banquet. She attended with . . . James Rushman?”

James. Peggy sank back into her chair. “Anything more?”

“Allegedly, they own a contracting firm called Rushman Industries. I’ll see what we can turn up on that business.”

“Contact the police and update the all-points. Tell them our persons of interest might be using those aliases.”

“You’re sure, ma’am?”

“Quite.” Peggy pinched the bridge of her nose. “Has Wilson reported in this morning?”

“Not yet, ma’am. I believe he was conducting aerial reconnaissance yesterday evening. Want him to ring you when he arrives?”

“If you would, please. And . . .” Peggy winced. “Captain Rogers?”

The secretary couldn’t quite suppress a giggle. “Captain Rogers is down in the labs. He wanted to speak to Mister Stark first thing. I’d be happy to have him ring you, too,” she added, in a sing-songy voice.

Peggy’s face burned red—with embarrassment or shame; she wasn’t sure which. “That won’t be necessary. Thanks all the same.”

“Take care of yourself, Chief.” Her tone turned serious.

Peggy slumped forward. “I’ll do what I can.”

*

“It’s simple, my friend.” Howard leaned back against the chalkboard in the research lab and folded his arms. “The hard math of politics. No one can afford to be last, so we’ve gotta spend every dime we can to ensure that we’re first.”

Steve balled his hands into fists at his sides. “I don’t think these are things we want to be first at.”

“Yeah, I know you’ve got your star-spangled tights all in a wad about the A-bomb. But did you know the Germans were developing it first?” Howard asked. “The Nazi Germans. If we hadn’t made off with their top scientists, they would’ve had it. You can’t tell me they would have used it more responsibly than we did.”

“That doesn’t mean we had to use it at all,” Steve said.

“Which is the whole point, going forward. We don’t have to use any of these toys. Just the threat should be enough to make these rogue nations fall into line.”

Steve closed his eyes, trying to calm his breath. He’d come to Howard in hopes of getting some reassurance that helping SHIELD was the right thing to do. That no matter how badly he wanted Bucky in his life again, he couldn’t go throwing away his duty on nostalgia. On—well, hormones, if he was being honest. God, the more he thought about it, the more embarrassed he felt for letting Bucky woo him over so easily. Bucky said Stevie and he was sixteen again, a hunger welling inside of him as he watched Bucky strip down for a late-night swim along Rockaway Beach.

But there was plenty else Bucky had said, too. Hard truths about what the country Steve gave his life for had become while he slumbered away in the ice. If what Peggy was saying about her and Angie was true, then it sounded more dangerous for him to love Bucky now, not less. A pacifist, a Communist, and a fairy—being any one of those things was deadly, and between the two of them, they covered all three.

“Indulge me,” Steve said. “What else are we trying to beat the Russians to?”

“Well, Russia is a big threat, but hardly the only one—”

Steve shrugged. “Fine. Whoever it is we’re upset with today.”

Howard watched him for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “You’re a real piece of work, Cap.”

Steve furrowed his brow.

“You never did worry too much about repercussions, did you? You’re always acting first, then thinking about the consequences later. Well, we can’t afford to live like that anymore. We have to plan for every contingency.”

“I’m surprised you want to make more of me, then,” Steve said.

Howard huffed. “I want to make soldiers. Not renegades. Loyal soldiers who’ll serve their country unquestioningly. That was never what really drove you, was it?”

Steve studied Howard for a minute; the slick mustache and wavy hair and dapper suit. He was one to talk about patriotic intent. It was all about ego and money for him—the thrill of a new discovery and the renown it would bring him. And nipping at his heels were dozens of other men looking to do just the same, Peg had said. The industrialists were squabbling for scraps from Uncle Sam to build their planes and tanks and bombs and ships. The massive economic machinery that spun to life during the war had never really stopped. Sooner or later, someone was going to want another excuse to use all of it.

“I don’t like bullies,” Steve said. “All this . . . weaponry, all this determination to be the first guy who pulls his gun in the Western standoff . . . It looks like bullying to me.”

“If you think the other side’s any different, I got news for you, pal.” Howard held his hands out at his sides. “At least we believe in freedom and all that jazz.”

“Yeah. All that jazz.”

Steve’s gaze swept across the lab as he felt his insides knotting up. He didn’t think he could go through with this—but he was starting to wonder if there was any other way. If he wanted to be true to himself, rather than be just another lab monkey on a leash . . .

Maybe it meant giving up the stars and stripes after all.

“Listen . . .” Howard stepped toward him. “It isn’t all war and weapons.”

“No?” Steve raised one eyebrow.

“We cured polio. Well—I didn’t—but still. We’re engineering foods so that crops can feed thousands instead of hundreds. That’s all for the greater good, yeah?”

“Sure,” Steve said.

“And next year, if I can get the permit for it, I’m gonna test a new electrical current at my station out in Nevada . . . with polarity switches that’ll . . .”

But Steve had stopped listening. His gaze had landed on one of the scientists hunched over his notes at the far end of the room. A slight man, unassuming; his blonde hair was wisping away to nothingness, and his eyes hid behind thick round glasses frames. It was the smile, though, that Steve remembered most. Thin, tight-lipped, and slippery with self-assuredness.

“Hey.” Steve charged out of Howard’s observation room and ran down the stairs toward the lab. “Hey. What the hell do you think you’re doing—”

“Cap! Wait!” Howard called, trotting after him.

Steve wrenched Arnim Zola out of his seat and slammed him up against the wall. “What did you do to him?” Steve shouted. “What the hell are you doing here—”

Zola raised his hands in surrender. “Captain Rogers—I assure you I have as much right to be here as you—”

“Bullshit.” Steve was scalding inside—he couldn’t get the anger out of him fast enough. “You experimented on him. Tortured him. You should be in the same unmarked grave as every other Hydra bastard we killed—”

“Cap!” Howard shouted. “Please put my lab assistant down—”

“Not until you explain just what the fuck a Hydra Nazi asshole is doing in SHIELD!”

The look on Zola’s face was the worst part of it, Steve thought. Smug and calm and superior, despite Steve pinning him against the wall. As if he already knew he’d win this battle, long before it ever began. Steve’s grip faltered. But he wasn’t letting Zola off that easy.

“If you’d kindly set Doctor Francis Slattery down,” Howard said, biting into the name, “I’d be happy to explain.”

Steve’s chest was heaving. He wasn’t about to let Zola out of his grasp—not after he’d hunted for him for so long during the war. Bucky never spoke about it, whatever horror Zola had wrought on him while he was a prisoner in Hydra’s camp. But he didn’t have to. The nights he’d woken up screaming, the anguished cries ringing through the mountains, had said plenty.

“Better make it quick,” Steve said.

Howard sighed. “Toward the end of the war . . . we instituted a program. Operation Paperclip. Very hush-hush, but it allowed us to capture or convince select Hydra and Nazi scientists and engineers to come over to our side. Under aliases, of course. The A-bomb was one of the projects we recruited them for, but there were plenty more.”

Steve’s glare blunted as the satisfied grin on Zola’s face widened. “Your friends made a very compelling case,” Zola said. Some of the points of his German accent had filed away, but not all of them. Not nearly enough.

“Doctor Slattery here, he served his time—about five years, wasn’t it?” Howard said. “We made sure he understood our way of thinking. But we’re all square now.”

Steve narrowed his eyes. “Is that so.”

Zola shrugged his shoulders. “It should come as no surprise to you, Captain. Once I saw how things are handled in America—the rigidity of Hydra simply could no compare.” He glanced at Steve’s hands, still clutching his shoulders. “Now, if you could kindly set me down . . .”

Steve let him slip down to the floor, then released him.

Zola straightened his dress jacket where it had rumpled. “That’s the spirit, Captain.”

Steve’s vision was edged in blackness. This was wrong, so wrong. Zola was a monster. He’d experimented on Bucky, and countless others—no amount of time in prison would guarantee he wouldn’t do so again. And for him to be one of many such monsters America had willingly invited into SHIELD and who knew what other hals of power . . .

“C’mon, Cap.” Howard beckoned Steve away from Zola’s workstation. “Let the man work, all right?”

Steve ground his teeth together and backed away, casting one last disgusted look in Zola’s direction. Then he stalked after Howard.

This wasn’t the future he’d been promised, years ago, looking up at Howard Stark and his flying cars and his promises of a world without war. This wasn’t the victory Doctor Erskine had spoken of, keeping evil in check because good men were willing to call evil what it was. And it sure as hell wasn’t the fight Peggy had told him to fight—fighting for what was right rather than what was correct.

“I suppose Peggy gave you an earful about this ‘Operation Paperclip,’ too,” Steve said. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Howard straight on. He wasn’t sure he could bear to look at any of them.

Howard laughed to himself. “Buddy. Come on. Peg’s the one who came up with it.”

It was like a stormcloud breaking. Sudden, violent, and cleansing. He’d seen it coming, he’d felt the electricity in the air and the shadows surrounding him, but pretended he could ignore it.

Now, though, Steve was certain.

He knew exactly what he had to do.

*

The soldier sat in the back of the van and waited in silence. Ignored the crackling headache at his temples. It wouldn’t interfere with his mission, so he would pay it no mind.

Behind him, the guards argued between themselves. Placing bets on whether or not their target would show. But that was someone else’s problem. The soldier flexed his fingers, testing his reflexes. As long as his skills were on his side, he’d handle his task.

A soft rain beat against the roof of the van, ticking down the seconds and minutes as they waited. The soldier stared ahead and cleared his mind, pushing past any thought that tried to bubble up to fill the void. Inconsequential. He was focused. He was ready to act.

And yet the headache was throbbing, throbbing; it was like a heartbeat when he crouched in silence and readied for a kill. It was like a new order, whispered from the darkness. It was like a—

Fragment. A shell casing tumbling to the ground. A glimmer of blue eyes and a thin curtain fluttering in the breeze. And then it struck the ground and was spent and he kicked it away. He had to kick it away.

Your target will trust you. All you must do is lure him in. If he resists, you can subdue him. I know you will serve us well.

He had to serve them well. It was the only choice.

Another crackle in his skull, and his eye twitched. He reached up and tried to smooth the twitch away, but his forehead stayed wrinkled.

“Target is approaching,” one of the guards said.

They opened the doors of the van, and the soldier stepped out into the alleyway where they’d parked the van as the guards melted into shadows. He felt exposed in the dress slacks and shirt instead of his usual armor, but he’d find a way. He could handle any scenario they gave him. There was no other choice.

“Bucky.”

The target approached him, moving cautiously. The soldier rolled his shoulders back and braced himself for a strike. Keep the target quiet. Subdue him. Above the alley, just out of view over the lip of the rooftops, the support team was covering him, but he preferred to handle this himself, so he raised one finger to his lips to motion the target to be quiet.

The target nodded and hunched down. “I wasn’t sure you’d be here. I wasn’t sure I could, either, but I thought about what you said, and . . .” He exhaled slowly. “I’m ready. There’s nothing for me here—hasn’t been for a while. But you . . .”

The target stretched out his fingertips and brushed them against the soldier’s cheek. He flinched at first, reflexes telling him to take the opportunity to wrestle the target’s arm behind his back.

But another casing fell—

—don’t want to do this without you, Buck, don’t want you to go alone—

and the headache drilled deeper and the soldier faltered and then the moment was gone.

“We need to go.” The soldier gestured to the dark recesses of the van.

The target rocked back on his heels, a line creasing his brow. “Maybe we should . . . talk this through first.”

—just don’t do anything stupid—

The soldier grimaced as another fresh wave of pain crashed against his skull. “We don’t have time.”

Something shifted, then, in the target’s face. So subtle he might have missed it, or at least missed its meaning. But it sliced into the soldier like glass. He knew he knew he knew and then another needle of pain pierced his brain and seeing the mission through was the only way to make it stop, he had to make it stop, he had to

Seize the target by the throat, yank him forward, fling him into the van

And hope

The reinforcements were pouring in, because

They weren’t shell casings falling. They were pieces of the soldier.

There was shouting, there was the tang of sleeping gas tickling at the soldier’s nose, there was the brutal crunch of bone against thick metal walls. Maybe it was coming from him, he couldn’t be sure. A chaos all around him, and yet he felt and saw and heard nothing. Did he? No, wait, that was his fist, dampening with blood, but it was slower, so much slower than usual, shouldn’t his target be dead—

No, wait, he wasn’t supposed to kill—

“Bucky—please—I know you’re in there somewhere—”

He wasn’t supposed to kill, but he had to make the words stop. Before they shredded his brain apart with all this pain.

“Please, Bucky.” Raspy, wet with blood. “Stay with me. ‘Cause I’m with you—”

*

It took ten words to wake up the soldier. But it only took six to unravel him into pain and confusion and blackness, to turn him into nothing at all.

Chapter Text

Part 7: Allegiance

“I know,” Angie said, smiling wide and unashamed. “It’s a step up from the automat.”

Peggy stared, bewildered, at the array of silverware spread before her in their semiprivate booth at the Tavern on the Green. She hadn’t seen so much silver and brass since her last state dinner. “I’m not even sure what some of these are for.”

Angie waved one miniature fork at Peggy. “Oysters.” She dropped it and moved to a matching dainty spoon. “Coffee.” Then she seized a wooden mallet. “Lobster or crab.”

“I prefer food I don’t have to break into like a bank vault,” Peggy said.

Angie let out a loud laugh that turned several heads their way from the nearby tables. Not that she seemed to give a damn. Angie never did care one whit about the opinions of others—something Peggy both admired in her and feared.

“The automat wasn’t so terrible. It had you, after all,” Angie said, the faintest touch of pink gracing her cheeks. “But I don’t miss taking orders from a bunch of assholes in cheap suits.”

“And who do you take orders from nowadays?” Peggy asked.

“Just one asshole in a cheap director’s outfit.” Angie grinned again. “But at least he’s a smart asshole.”

“He must be, to have hired you.”

Angie hid her face behind her water glass as she took a lengthy sip. “Yeah, well.” She set her drink down and stared past Peggy. “It’s not the lead role or anything.”

“It seemed like a fairly significant part. From what little I saw.”

“It’s a job. And in a couple of months, I’ll have to look for a new one.” Angie shrugged. “Same song, second verse.”

Peggy glanced away. “Well, I wish you all the best.”

“Hey.” Angie nudged Peggy with her foot beneath the table. “Hey, no long faces allowed.”

Peggy stole a quick look at Angie before looking away again. It hurt to stare at her for too long; it seared like a summer sun. She’d always been so direct and unclouded and bright, where Peggy had to cloak herself in endless secrets and unsung victories. Angie deserved to keep on shining, unimpeded by Peggy’s shadow.

“Sorry.” Peggy twisted the napkin in her lap. “Just thinking about tomorrow, is all.”

“Uh-huh. You’re a terrible liar, Peg.”

“Only when it comes to lying to you.”

Angie laughed again, but softer this time. “Don’t I wish.”

They absorbed themselves in studying the menu for a while, and gave their orders to the waiter. Peggy kept noticing Angie watching her with this expectant twist to her lips, something between admiration and a dare, but Peggy didn’t know what to say. Anything she could say would be the wrong thing—too forward, too closed off, too sappy, too cold. She missed Angie. She didn’t want to miss Angie. She wanted to get back to Washington. She never wanted to leave.

Finally, after the waiter dropped off a second glass of champagne for Angie, Angie leaned back in her seat and regarded Peggy like she was a particularly amusing squirrel in Central Park. “All right, English. You gotta spill.”

Peggy lowered her gaze, deeply unsettled by Angie’s toying stare. “About what, exactly?”

“About your captain,” Angie said, stage-whispering. “C’mon. I saw the way you got all twitterpated about him yesterday. What’s going on there?”

“Nothing is going on,” Peggy insisted. “Captain Rogers is—” She bit down on whatever she’d been about to say. “Well. He’s the same man he was nine years ago, really. He hasn’t had time to become anyone else.”

“So you still love him every bit as much as you did that day he went into the ice.”

There was no judgment in Angie’s tone, no jealous lilt. But Peggy felt guilty all the same.

“I loved him without reservation nine years ago,” Peggy said. Well, almost no reservation, but that had always been between Steven and his Bucky, and they’d thought Barnes lost too. “But he’s stayed the same, and I . . . I haven’t.”

“You’ve grown,” Angie said. “It happens.”

But growth implied she was better now than she was before. As much as Peggy wanted to believe it, she wasn’t sure that was true.

“He’s an easy habit to fall into,” Peggy said. The words pained her, but it was the honest truth. She owed Angie at least something like honesty. “The only thing that kept me from loving him was outside circumstance. His presumed death. So I never quite learned how not to love him when he’s alive.”

Angie stared into the bubbles of her champagne. “Honey, I’m not sure you learned how to stop loving him dead, either.”

“No. I suppose not.” Peggy smiled sadly. “But it was a memory of him I loved, and not the real man. I forgot just how damnable and vexing his righteousness is.”

Angie laughed at that, but it wasn’t her real laugh. Just like her monologues, it was too practiced, in a way only Peggy could recognize.

“So what’s the situation now?” Angie asked, after too long of a pause.

Peggy pressed her lips into a thin line. “I’m not entirely sure.”

Angie raised her eyebrows

“He’s the greatest man I know. But that doesn’t make us right for each other. Not right at this moment, in any case.” Peggy leaned back against her chair. “I’m not sure I’m right for anyone just now.”

“What a load of crap, Pegs.” Angie shook her head. “You’re the greatest woman I know.”

“It doesn’t make me a good partner,” Peggy said.

“Yeah, well.” Angie’s brow furrowed. “We’ve all got room to improve.”

No stage makeup, no flawless diction, no rehearsed facial movements and poses. Just Angie, looking at her, hesitant and hopeful and sad. Peggy stretched her hand across the table and held it open to her. An olive branch, an apology, a new beginning, a goodbye.

Angie squeezed her fingers, fleeting, then returned her hands to her lap as the waiter approached with their entrees.

“I—excuse me. I need to visit the powder room first.” Peggy practically leapt out of her seat. She wasn’t sure what emotion was churning around in her chest just then, but it wasn’t anything she cared for anyone to see.

“Pegs?” Angie asked, but Peggy was already brushing past her toward the ladies’ room.

She stared at herself in the mirror: the faint lines at the corners of her eyes and along her forehead and nose that hadn’t been there when Steve Rogers saw her last. Her hair wasn’t much different, but everything else was—her shade of red lipstick, the lay of her blouse’s collar, the color that had faded from her gaze. Her face felt relaxed, but when she saw her expression in the mirror, it looked downright murderous. As if she’d gotten so used to scrunching it up that it became second nature to keep it that way.

Steve made her want to be a better person. Angie made her realize she never would be, and that it was all right. Aspiration or acceptance. She wasn’t sure she deserved either one.

Not now she didn’t. Not now that she’d let so much of Steve’s grand ideas curdle and rot under SHIELD’s roof. Not now that she’d done things even Angie couldn’t accept.

One more night, one more mission, and then she’d get back on the train. Say goodbye to Angie—for good, perhaps, this time—and tell Steve, unequivocally, that she’d been wrong to lead him on. She could be her own woman. It was the easiest and hardest thing she knew how to do.

“Hey, English. I thought I told you no long faces.”

Angie appeared in the mirror behind her, and their eyes met through the glass. And every last bit of resolve in Peggy shattered.

Angie curled her hand around Peggy’s head to cradle her as her other hand slid toward Peggy’s waist. Their lips met, practiced, gentle, but there was nothing routine in the taste of Angie—golden with champagne and crackling with an energy Peggy could only dream to capture for herself. Peggy laced her arms around Angie’s waist and pressed her closer, embracing that familiar heat, savoring that familiar taste after going parched for far too long. Angie’s mouth yielded to her and she drew deeper into the kiss, testing, savoring everything she’d missed—

The door to the powder room groaned open and they sprang back. Angie recovered first, though, and her hand at Peggy’s head moved around to brush against her cheek. “There you go, doll. All touched up.”

Peggy blinked a few times before recognizing what Angie was doing—pretending to fix her makeup. In the mirror, the stuffy old dowager barely tossed them a second glance as she bustled into one of the stalls.

As the stall door latched closed, Angie pressed her forehead to Peggy’s with a silent laugh. Even Peggy grinned, though she knew her lipstick and hair must look a fright. Again. She shook her head, still smiling, and pressed a kiss to Angie’s nose before pulling away.

“All right, you might have a point about being crafty,” Peggy said under her breath as she turned toward the mirror. “How’d you like to help me with tomorrow’s little scheme?”

*

The soldier was unraveling.

He was a jar full of gravel, rattling around, threatening to shatter. He was eight thousand shards of memory tearing his skin open. He was barely aware of the van around him, the guards, the prisoner, the blood drying in the crevices of his metal arm. He only saw it in flickers between the lifetime playing like a movie against his skull.

Please, Buck. I’ve got to try. I can’t let you go over there alone.

The target—Steve—He was in so many of those glimpses. Blood trickling from his nose as he swung another punch. Curled under bedsheets, eyes hooded, his mouth an open invitation. And then dressed in red, white, and blue, pulling the soldier from his restraints, reminding him of his name his rank his serial number his reason for clinging to life.

He remembered. Bucky remembered. But trying to hang on to those memories was like trying to hold a whisper in his hands. There was nothing to grab on to. The harder he tried to seize onto the thoughts, the quicker they darted from him.

Soldier

Soldier

The soldier stared at the man speaking—one of the guards. Yes. He was here, in the front cab of the van, carrying out his mission—he needed to focus. The mission was nearly complete, and once it had ended, then he could sink back into the blissful quiet of forgetting once more.

But he didn’t want to forget.

“Soldier.” The guard jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow. “We’re here.”

The van had stopped. He’d barely felt it—he’d been buried under the avalanche of memories, of wanting, of guilt. Somewhere in the wreckage was the glimmer of a plan. If he could wrap his hand around it, pull it free, then he could—

What? What did he want? He gritted his teeth. It was so hard to concentrate. In one ear his handler’s orders played on a loop, and in the other, the memories nagged, insisted, begged him to act.

He stumbled out of the van onto the tarmac. An airstrip. A small cargo plane stalled on the runway, its engines already humming. Subdue the target. Escort to the airstrip. Extract to home base.

The easy course. The one he’d been made to follow.

The soldier tightened his grip on his rifle and waited. Waited for some sign. Waited for this shapeless want to pull him the right way.

They opened up the back of the van and dragged the limp form from the back. Heavy restraints fastened his hands in front of him. And that sight—Steve slumped, eyes closed, face bloodied and bruised from the soldier’s fist, bashing into him again and again—

He knew what he had to do.

Five guards. Two more stepping off the plane to oversee the extraction. He had maybe three seconds to catch them off-guard before they’d turn on him. He looked at the three guards dragging Steve across the tarmac and smiled to himself.

“Give me that.”

The soldier wrenched Steve out of their grasp. Dragged him another foot or two. Then, metal arm clamped around Steve’s bicep, hoisted him into the air and swung him at the three guards.

Steve grunted as he landed on top of the guards, pinning them to the tarmac. The two other closest guards stared at him in disbelief. Three. Two. One.

Raised their rifles.

The soldier grabbed hold of the open rear door of the van and tore it from its hinges with a squeal of metal. Clenching it in his left hand, holding it in front of him like a shield, he blind fired around it with his right. Behind him, the three guards tried to shove Steve off of themselves. He lowered the door. One of the two he’d fired on was down, but the other was charging toward him, gun leveled with one hand while he reached for his radio with the other.

The soldier threw the door at him, knocking him down, then climbed on top of the door to pin him in place. Fired point blank into his face. Shuddered as hot blood sprayed onto him. He’d felt it before—really shouldn’t be a surprise—but there was something more urgent in his actions now. Before, he’d watched them like a grainy film projection. Now he was actually inhabiting it.

Not finished. He needed to focus. Complete the new mission.

Behind him, the three were struggling toward their feet, while Steve lay on the tarmac, blinking and dazed. The soldier reached behind his back and slid one of his serrated knives free. He lobbed it hard enough to embed it in the forehead of the first guard, then, as he moved in to pull it loose, he kicked the second square in the jaw. The second guard staggered back and fell, sprawling across the runway. The soldier clamped his boot on the man’s chest and drove the knife into the side of his throat.

“Jesus Christ, Buck—”

The soldier glared at Steve, still sprawled on the tarmac, trying to struggle to his feet. “Why are you still here?”

The third guard approached, and the soldier dispatched him with another flick of his knife. Into his chest, tear down, pull out.

Then the two guards from the plane were upon them, spraying suppressing fire at them both.

The soldier thrust his metal arm in front of his face to deflect the bullets, then ducked and rolled into the cover of the van. When Steve didn’t follow, he reached out, seized him by the ankle, and pulled Steve into cover with him. Then the soldier crouched, his back to the van, and reloaded a fresh clip of ammunition into his gun.

“So are you helping me or not?” Steve’s speech was still sluggish from the sleeping gas. “I’m not exactly getting a clear signal from you.”

“I made a mistake,” the soldier said.

He leaned around the van’s edge and fired off a few hasty rounds. One struck the guard in the knee, toppling him but not taking him out. The soldier ducked back into cover with a swear.

Steve tugged against his restraints to no avail. “Yeah, well, that makes both of us.”

The words scraped against the soldier. They hurt, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. A question for later. He peeked around the van and took a few more shots, felling the second of the remaining guards. He motioned for Steve to wait, then stalked out from behind the van and dispatched the remaining guard.

And then there was silence, thick and clammy, squeezing around him like a fist. The images came rushing back to fill the void the violence had left. Familiar street corners, the cheers of a stadium crowd, and Steve—the man in the restraints, yet not—pulling him in for an embrace.

The soldier dropped to his knees as the gun slipped from his hands.

And then the boot connected with his jaw, and everything went black.

*

Sam skidded to a stop next to Barnes as Barnes crumpled over to one side, his cheek already bruising with the imprint of Sam’s boot. With the flick of a pneumatic switch, Sam’s wings folded up on his back. He pulled his sidearm from its holster and surveyed the tarmac. Barnes. Lots of dead guards—they looked military, but their uniforms didn’t match any army Sam recognized. Private security? In any case, they were all dead or dying.

Captain Rogers wasn’t among them.

“Cap!” Sam shouted.

“Wilson?”

Sam sprinted toward the van, its side riddled with bullet holes, and rounded around the back. Captain Rogers was curled up on his side, his wrists clamped together in front of him with some kind of massive restraint.

“C’mon, Cap. We’ve got to go. I can carry you far enough to get away from here, then we’ll get SHIELD to pick us up.”

“Wait.” Steve struggled to his feet. “What about Bucky?”

“Real funny. C’mon, let’s go!” Sam clicked the switch to unfold the wings and wrapped his arms around Steve’s torso. Good god, the man was made of bricks. “Run with me until I get lift—”

“We can’t just leave him here—”

“No time! Come on!”

The pack finished warming up and lifted them upward, though it struggled with Cap’s weight. Another issue to talk to Stark about. Once they were safely away from the brainwashed assassin, that was. Steve struggled against him as he carried them up and over the fence line of the private airstrip and into the forests of northern Virginia.

“Almost . . . there . . .”

Sam’s grip was weakening. One of the wings seized up, pneumatic lifters straining under the weight.

“Shit—”

Sam pulled them into as clean a landing as he could manage with a busted wing. They plowed into the front lawn of a prim columned mansion, dirt and grass spraying everywhere as they skidded to a stop against a cherubic fountain. With a groan, Sam rolled onto his back and stared up at the darkening sky.

“You don’t make anything easy, do you, Cap?”

“He helped me,” Steve said. “He was helping me escape.”

Sam pushed up onto his knees, the cool dirt stinging against freshly opened wounds. “After he locked you up in the first place.”

“He doesn’t . . . he’s not fully in control.”

“Yeah. You keep thinking that.” Sam shook his head. “I spent most of last night interrogating his friend. Got a face full of some paralytic agent as thanks. Decided tracking you might be the better option, after the scene you made at SHIELD.”

Steve exhaled loudly. “SHIELD deserved it.”

“Never said they didn’t.”

Distant shouts arose from the front entrance of the mansion. Sam glanced up to spot a woman in heels and pearls charging toward them.

“Time to go. There’s a pay phone at the gas station down the street—”

Steve sprinted past him, but then slowed to give Sam a chance to catch up.

“I don’t suppose we could maybe not tell Chief Carter about this,” Steve said as they jogged.

“Sorry, Cap. I think it’s a little late for that.”

*

Peggy always loved the way the morning sun looked as it grazed against Angie’s face. It turned her eyelashes to gold and her skin to cream as she basked in eternal summer. And this morning was no different. It felt so right, in fact, to wake up beside her that Peggy didn’t even remember that she didn’t belong here until she was already trailing her palm along Angie’s thigh.

“I’m sorry,” Peggy whispered, nudging Angie’s cheek with her nose. “I’m sorry for pushing you away. For not asking you to stay. For letting a ghost lurk around us.”

Angie sighed, contented, and slung her arm around Peggy’s waist. “Now you’re gettin’ the idea.”

“I won’t ask you to come back to Washington,” Peggy said. “But perhaps, once my current operations are settled, I can transfer to the New York office . . .”

Angie quieted her with a soft kiss, and Peggy smiled into her mouth. Her fingers slipped under the lace edging of Angie’s slip and curled around the soft curve of her hip. She’d missed this. Missed it more than she could ever admit. More than mere routine, loving Angie had been her lifeblood, and without it she’d been stunted. A ghost herself.

“You don’t have to move,” Angie murmured. “I think this is a good arrangement for us. You can do your work down there in DC, and then when you come to see me, no work allowed.”

“But maybe, in time . . .”

They were cut off by the shrill ring of Angie’s phone.

Angie issued a few choice swears and extricated herself from Peggy’s arms. “This is Angie,” she chirped, then tilted her head as she listened. “Oh, no, I’m terribly sorry, Pegs is very busy, couldn’t possibly come to the phone—”

“Oh, bloody—give me that.” Peggy crawled across the mattress toward Angie’s side and yanked the receiver from her hands. “This is Carter.”

“Heya, Chief. When you never answered your phone at the safehouse all goddamned night, I had a feelin’ we could find you here.” She could practically hear her secretary’s smug grin across the phone line.

Bollocks. What time was it? They had to be at Union Square by nine, and it was twenty blocks south of them. She scrounged around on Angie’s nightstand until she unearthed her watch—eight-thirty. “Dammit. I’m so sorry—I’ve got an op to run.”

“Chief, now, hang on a minute—”

But Peggy was already tugging on her stockings and scanning the floor for the skirt and blouse she’d discarded. The blouse had, improbably, wound up draped across a lampshade. “I’m sorry. I’ll phone you as soon as we’re finished.”

“It’s Wilson and Rogers—”

Peggy clenched her jaw as panic surged through her. “Are they alive?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then it can wait!” She slammed down the receiver. “All right, Angie, if you’re coming with me, then now’s the time.”

Angie reached behind her back, trying to catch the zipper for her mint-green dress. As soon as Peggy finished slipping the buttons of her blouse into place, she feathered her fingers against the nape of Angie’s neck to pinch the fabric together, then zipped her up.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, doll.”

*

Natasha surveyed the crowd on Union Square with a faint sneer on her lips. She’d been trying to pass off this obnoxious asset to some junior agent or another for months, but Lukin insisted she handled him better than anyone else could. In other words, no one else was willing to put up with his shit.

Andersen had been a pain in her ass since the day she recruited him. Before, really—even obtaining the blackmail photographs of him with one of his many secretaries had been tedious. At least she hadn’t had to seduce him herself. She was much better with intimidation.

That Dot was calling her off the Captain America op at such a critical juncture, though—that didn’t sit right with her. On the one hand, Dot had been way too calm about the SHIELD agent’s compromise. (Not, of course, that Natasha wanted to tell her the whole story there.) But on the other, if she didn’t think it was cause for concern, then why pull her from the op at all?

Maybe Dot did know her suspicion was raised, and wanted to let Natasha cool her heels for a bit. Fine. She’d play along as long as she had to. But as soon as Andersen passed along his reports, it was back to Washington and figuring out just what long game Dot was playing.

Unfortunately, that would require Andersen to actually show up on time.

Natasha had been watching the crowd for ten minutes, and hadn’t spotted anyone loitering yet—at least, no one except the ashy blonde seated on the bench where she and Andersen usually met. Irritating, but she could be dealt with. No signs of men in suits lingering too long around the bench, no one watching the crowd where they shouldn’t. She steeled herself and headed for the bench to wait.

The blonde flipped the page on her paperback as Natasha settled onto the opposite side. Too engrossed to look up—a good sign. The key to good surveillance work was to always look like you were occupied with something else, so Natasha pulled a folded copy of the Times out of her purse and pretended to work on the crossword while she scanned the horizon for signs of Andersen, or else trouble.

“Ohh, I love the crossword!” the blonde woman suddenly cooed, and pressed her book into the folds of her mint green dress.

Natasha’s shoulders tensed. With her jaw clenched, she turned a strained smile toward her, still watching out of the corners of her eyes.

“Did you ever figure out what five down was?”

“Nope.” Natasha turned back to the paper and tried to look like she was concentrating. At the far entrance to the Square, near the archways, she spotted two men moving quickly their way. But they weren’t close enough for her to worry yet. Something to keep an eye on—

“Oh, I think I’ve got it,” the blonde said.

More movement, coming from behind now. Natasha bounded to her feet, newspaper tumbling from her lap. Men and women alike were emerging from the crowd, closing around the bench. Blyad. She spotted a sole opening in the wall closing around her—

“It’s ‘decoy,’” the blonde said.

—And then Chief Carter, the brunette from West Berlin, appeared in the gap.

“Hello, Natalie.”

Natasha swung a right hook at her jaw, but Carter swiveled to the side, dodging it. She swept her leg toward Natasha’s, and Natasha jumped to avoid it, but couldn’t dodge the follow-up strike from Carter. She went sprawling as Carter’s fist connected with her cheek. Stars spun in her eyes as she scrambled to her feet. Tried to spot a direction with an opening. But she was too slow—Carter caught her in a headlock and swung her forward as one of the plainclothes men seized Natasha by the ankles.

“You’ve been very busy, haven’t you, Natalie?” Carter asked, as they slapped cuffs onto Natasha’s wrists. “I can’t wait to hear all about it.”

*

The soldier reached the gates around dawn. He’d been bleeding the first mile or so, but the blood crusted on the tear in his pants; the wound must have closed up beneath it. It was . . . a side effect. Something that had been done to him. But as he tried to grasp at the details, they crumbled into ash.

He climbed the gates with no difficulty, but the endless hills studded with white granite offered no clue as to which way he should head. He ground his teeth together. He had to see it. He needed to see it for himself. He didn’t want to believe.

A signpost pointed toward the special memorials, and with a pain like a thorn in his side, he saw that one of them was labeled STEVEN ROGERS (CAPTAIN AMERICA).

They’d made a space for them in a shaded grove, beneath an old tree, its trunk twisting to one side like an archway. Steve’s was massive, of course. A pillar of granite topped with an eagle that clutched an old centurion’s shield. At its right, though—that’s what drew the soldier’s attention. The standard Arlington headstone, pressed up against Rogers’s ornate column. JAMES B BARNES. SGT, US ARMY. WORLD WAR II.

The soldier sank to the ground, leaned against the trunk of the old tree, and let the memories roll over him like waves.

*

Dottie Underwood was walking too fast for her secretary to keep up, but she’d be good goddamned if she was going to slow down for anyone.

“Comrade, this is most urgent—we cannot afford to lose both the asset and his target—”

“Well, how long has it been since the team last checked in?” Dottie asked, her heels pinging against the metal flooring of the research wing. With a flick of her wrist, the double doors to the main laboratory swung open.

“We received an update that the target had been apprehended at 1930 Washington time, but never got confirmation that he’d been placed on the transport plane.”

Dottie checked her watch. “Hmm. A pity.”

“A pity? Comrade, this is a disaster. The entire operation hinges on this!”

“The only person it’s a disaster for is Agent Penknife, if the asset is to blame.” Dottie pouted prettily. “But I’ll take that up with him myself. As soon as possible.”

“Yes, comrade. But if the operation has been a failure—”

“Well, of course it would be nice to have both the asset and Captain Rogers for ourselves. But I think the damage there has been done, whether they recover them or not. I mean, you saw the report. That scene Rogers made?” She giggled, feeling giddy all over again just thinking about it.

The secretary mustered a faint smile. “You are a masterful manipulator, comrade.”

“Yes, I know. And codebreaker, too!” She batted her eyes.

The secretary laughed, anxious. “Well, Mister Stark’s code wasn’t terribly difficult—”

Dottie raised her eyebrows. “Oh, come on, let me have my victories.”

“Of course, comrade—I did not mean to imply—”

Dottie quieted her with a roll of her eyes. “In any case . . . we have what we need.”

Doctor Zemfirov approached with his clipboard, nodding in deference to Dottie before he spoke. “I have the latest results, comrade. We are looking very promising.”

“Promising?” Dottie asked. “Or completed?”

Zemfirov shrank back. “Erm—we are very, very close, I assure you—”

“I don’t need assurances, Doctor.” Dottie bared her teeth in something like a smile. “I just need results.”

“Yes, comrade. It will be ready very soon.”

Dottie folded her arms and peered through the observatory window, where the candidates lay strapped into their gurneys, writhing and screaming as the serum worked its way through their veins. A beautiful sight. She could practically see its blue light glowing within them.

It would be a pity, she conceded, to lose the asset. She’d hate to think Penknife’s conditioning protocol was flawed. But one soldier compelled to serve was an asset. An entire army of willing agents, though?

That was invaluable.