Steve Rogers

The flight to Siberia was a mostly silent one with Bucky and Steve each lost in their own thoughts. At one point Bucky cleared his throat and asked quietly, "What's gonna happen to your friends?"

Steve's eyes closed briefly as he recalled the many pages in the Accords regarding incarceration. "Whatever it is, I'll deal with it," he said with a little shake of his head.

"Even with Tony?" Bucky asked. The pieces hadn't all fit together for him yet, but he could tell something was off.

"Even with Tony," Steve said.

"I don't know if I'm worth all of this, Steve," Bucky added.

Steve's jaw clenched as he looked back to where Bucky was seated. "What you did all those years...it wasn't you. You didn't have a choice." And Steve was a little focused on choice right now.

"I know," Bucky said, barely audible. "But I still did it."

After that there wasn't much left to say.

( Steve and Bucky remember how to be Steve and Bucky for a minute. )

( But then everything goes to shit. Because of course it does. )

[OOC: And we're done! Follows this and the zillion other posts over the last week. A thousand thanks to imafuturist for listening to me whine about this movie for LITERAL YEARS NOW and for her NPC and PCing help. Especially during the fight scenes because they suck. NFI & NFB.]

So Steve's calls had gotten him almost nowhere, and his texts to the Avengers in Tony's universe had been left on read (thank you, Jan, that hadn't hurt his feelings at all), but he was out of time and that doctor already had a head-start to Siberia.

But Steve thought he could make up the time by not having to fly commercial, and there was a plane waiting for him at the airport. Whether the plane knew it was waiting for him was a matter of slight debate, but Steve was very firmly in the camp of "asking forgiveness and not permission" right now.

He still wasn't going to steal anything. He was just borrowing that airplane. And this Volkswagen Beetle.

...it was a good thing he knew how to drive stick still. He drove their amazing getaway vehicle, shut up, Sam, to the location that had been sent to him via text and breathed a little easier to see Sharon already waiting for them. Maybe today would go better than yesterday had.

( Three Morons in a Bug )

[OOC: Continues from here, canon stuck in blender and pulverized.]

It turned out that dragging along a sodden, unconscious super soldier with a metal arm after pulling down a helicopter and doing a rope climb the height of a stupidly tall government facility can really take it out of a fella.

So Steve had taken Bucky to the nearest unlocked warehouse, looked inside, seen no one, and called it good enough. The fact that it had an industrial vise was a major, unasked for, bonus. After dragging the vise to a better part of the room Steve clamped Bucky into it. He'd feel bad about it but the guy had literally tried to choke him to death while mid-helicopter crash so Steve was gonna call them even.

He slid to extremely dirty floor, closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths. Then he took his phone out of his pocket and checked to see if it worked after its dunking in the water. Tony'd made it, so he was pretty sure it would be fine...and there was Tony's last text, bright on the screen: Rooftop.

Steve stared it for a long time, finger hovering over the reply button. But Tony wasn't from this universe and this whole thing was shaping up to be a hell of a mess as it was. He left the message on read and pulled up Sam's name instead, texting: have bucky. bring food.

After a moment he added, Not dead and dropped a pin for his location. There. Couldn't ask for clearer communcation than that!

And if Tony was really worried, he could check the tracking chip in Steve's wedding ring! That choice would definitely not bite Steve in the ass.

( Bucky? )

[OOC: Continued from here! Adapted from MCU canon, void in Quebec.]

Steve wasn't in London any longer. He'd slipped out of bed, grabbed his suit and left Tony a note--the gist was "I have to do this, please don't hate me"--and then grabbed Sam (whose expression when he didn't see Tony spoke volumes that Steve was just...not dealing with right now) and hopped a flight to Vienna where he'd managed to both track down Sharon and avoid Natasha, so score one for his sneaking skills.

Sharon had given him the one informant tip that wasn't spotting Bucky at a Gold's Gym somewhere near Stuttgart or Paris or Helsinki--a market in Romania--but also warned him that she was about to brief her boss on the lead and so Steve had about ten minutes before the task force mobilized. And they'd been ordered to shoot on sight.

Steve's jaw had clenched to hear that. This was the reason he'd inserted himself into this damn mess: to stop them--whoever them ever was--from killing his best friend. And so here he was, shield up, cowl on, and Sam's voice in his ear as he poked through a darkened apartment in Bucharest. Bucky had a very basic set-up: he wondered for a moment if this was how he lived in Fandom too, with a cooktop, a refrigerator, and a mattress on the floor. And then he felt guilty for not knowing, for not being able to make enough headway to even be invited inside.

A notebook on the top of the fridge caught his attention, edges worn and tabs out to mark certain areas. He opened it and found a printed out picture of himself in the Captain America outfit. Rumlow's voice echoed in his head: He remembered you. He got all weepy about it.

( Hello, Bucky. )

( Oh no, the consequences of my actions. )

[OOC: Continued from here, an apologies in advance for the incoming spam. Canon beat like a pinata until all the good parts came out, then added to about 150 percent more talking.]

Peggy's funeral was on a beautiful morning, crisp air and a blue sky in October.

Steve didn't see any of it. He was locked in on putting one foot in front of the other and not breaking down in front of a cathedral full of strangers: thousands of people crammed in to pay their respects for all of the aspects that the vibrant, complicated, world-changing woman Margaret Carter had been.

Steve and the rest of the pallbearers (he was shouldering her up front, on her left. It felt correct.), made their way down the center aisle, and he was doing okay right up until he saw the photo they'd chosen to feature on the altar: Peggy from probably 1945 or so, leaping out of his memory and into sepia tones, staring back at him fiercely.

Chin up, now, Steve, a voice that sounded like hers chided in his head. Fifty feet to go. Twenty. Time to put the casket onto the catafalque, step away, let her go.

His mouth wobbled when his hand brushed against the Union Jack covering the casket as he made his way back to his seat, sliding in between Sam and Tony. His Tony. The other one was somewhere else in the press of mourners and hopefully far enough off that no one was going to notice that there were two Tony Starks at the funeral.

Steve let out a slow breath and blinked his reddened eyes. Thank God he didn't have to speak.

( Where everything is sad and awful. )

[OOC: Continuing from here.]

Another day, another exotic location. This time Steve was racing through a crowded market in Lagos, Nigeria, on the heels of Brock Rumlow and his goons who'd decided breaking into the Institute for Infectious Diseases and stealing biological weapons made for a fun Thursday. Steve knelt down to find helmets and gear on the ground and warned Sam, Natasha, and Wanda--they'd kept the team small out of deference to how things had gone in Macau with a bigger group--that the folks they were chasing were ditching their gear. "I got four," Sam said from the air. "They're splitting up."

"I got the two on the left," Natasha said.

"It's a shell game now," Steve said. "One of them has the payload."

Something clanked against his shield and he glanced down to see a bomb attached to it. Without thought, he threw it high and away from the crowd and it exploded just as something heavy and metal punched him straight through a fruit stand. And Steve had already been shot at and blown from a third story window today. Well. Sam wasn't wrong in saying Rumlow kind of hated them.

"There you are, you son of a bitch," Rumlow rasped, standing above him as Steve shook his head to clear it. "I've been waiting for it."

Over the comms, Sam was saying that his mercenaries didn't have the weapon. Steve half listened as Rumlow tried his best to punch Steve to death. "Payload secure," came Natasha'a reassuring voice. "Thanks, Sam."

Steve tuned out the patter about Sam's drone as Rumlow pinned him to a building and extended a knife from one of his gauntlets. "This is for dropping a building on my face," Rumlow growled, in too close.

Steve grabbed Rumlow's arm and pulled the gauntlet off but of course it wouldn't be that easy. Rumlow had another knife. Kicking Rumlow in the face and sending him flying into a clear area of the market felt more cathartic than it should've. Steve stalked towards him as Rumlow pulled the mask off, revealing, well, a face of someone who'd been squashed by the Triskelion collapsing. Steve refused to feel guilty about it. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Join HYDRA, get squashed by a collapsing building.

"I think I look pretty good, all things considered," Rumlow snarked.

"Who's your buyer?" Steve demanded.

Rumlow wasn't going to make it that easy. "You know, he knew you," he said instead, meeting Steve's eyes. "Your pal, your buddy, your Bucky."

Steve's grip on Rumlow's jacket tightened. "What did you say?"

"He remembered you," Brock said, eyes going soft and sincere. "I was there. He got all weepy about it. 'Til they put his brain back in a blender."

Steve couldn't move, just stood there, listening, heart beating loudly in his ears.

"He wanted you to know something," Brock said. "He said to me, 'Please tell Rogers…when you gotta go, you gotta go.'" His eyes turned tight and mean. "And you're coming with me."

Rumlow pressed the button attached to the suicide vest Steve hadn't even noticed because he'd been so caught up in Rumlow's words. The vest exploded and Steve flinched back, already knowing it was too late to do anything to protect himself.

The heat of the blast hit him squarely in the face, but the explosion was contained by a very familiar, very welcome, red mist. Steve glanced behind him to see Wanda with her hands outstretched and her face screwed up in concentration and no little pain as she lifted Rumlow--very definitely not surviving this--up and away from the marketplace.

The explosion, when she couldn't contain it any longer, ripped open the entire side of the office building in front of them.

"Oh, my--" Steve's voice trailed off as he tried to wrap his mind around the devastation. "Sam." He swallowed hard. "We need--" he blinked hard. "--we need fire and rescue on the south side of the building."

He looked over at Wanda, who had her hand clapped over her mouth in horror. "We gotta get up there."

[OOC: And here we go. Hold onto your butts.]

They'd lasted two days in Sam's condo before he'd--nicely, but firmly--told them to be grown-ass superheroes and go back to their giant superhero tower and also to take Nick Fury the hell out of his attic, what is wrong with all of you.

It worked out well, since they'd just gotten notification from Thor that he'd needed a pick up from Korea, of all places, because he'd retrieved the scepter, the Maximoff twins, and Dr. Cho, a world-renowned genetist who'd been ever so slightly...Ulton-napped...while the Avengers had gone to ground. Thor was mighty, and he was also not flying coach with all of these people.

So that's how Steve found himself in Tony's lab--invited, even, and he felt like that meant they'd made some kind of progress--with Bruce, Tony, and Tony as they poked around and talked science and about potentially retrieving JARVIS from where he'd hidden himself as they waited for Thor to arrive with Clint in the Quinjet.

[OOC: For those guys.]

Well, the plus side was that the Avengers had gotten to Sokovia, actually found Strucker this time, retrieved Loki's staff, and downloaded all of the nasty little experiments Strucker had been up to.

The minus side was that Clint had gotten shot, no one had slept in at least two days, there were two new mutants at-large who had every reason to be annoyed by the Avengers, and Thor was insisting on "revels."

Steve opened the back of the Quinjet after Tony landed it and smiled tiredly to see Maria and his Tony waiting for them. "Lab's all set up, boss," Maria told Tony, getting out of the way as Clint moved past her--along with Natasaha--on the way to the medical unit.

Tony, spinning around in the pilot chair, pointed at Steve. "Uh, actually, he's the boss," he said. "I just pay for everything, and design everything," his hand waved in the air, "--make everyone look cooler."

Steve held in a sigh and shot his Tony a speaking look before turning his attention to Maria. "What's the word on Strucker?" he asked, trotting out of the Quinjet and leaving Tony time to settle down.

"NATO's got him," Maria said.

"What about the two mutants?" he asked.

"NATO does not have them. Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Twins. Orphaned at ten when a shell collapsed their apartment building," Maria said, poking at her tablet. "Sokovia's had a rough history. It's nowhere special but it's on the way to everywhere special."

"What are their abilities like?" Steve asked as they headed to the elevator.

"He's got increased metabolism and improved thermal homeostasis. Her thing is neural electric interfacing, telekinesis, mental manipulation."

There was a long pause as Steve gave her a confused look.

"He's fast and she's weird," she rephrased.

"Well, they're going to show up again," Steve said, pushing the button to call the elevator that would take him to a very, very hot, very long shower.

"Agreed. File says they volunteered for Strucker's experiments. It's nuts," Maria said.

"Right," Steve said dryly, stepping into the elevator with Tony. "What kind of monster would let a German scientist experiment on them to protect their country?"

"We're not at war, Captain," Maria said.

"They are," Steve said as the doors closed, leaving Maria in the hall.

[OOC: For that guy!]

Steve glanced up at the building. "You guys clear on the plan?" he asked Tony, Clint, Sam, and Maria. Natasha had already peeled off to play her role.

The plan was "walk through the front door, shame the SHIELD employees into joining them, and stop the Helicarriers, hopefully with no one getting killed by the Winter Soldier, or killing the Winter Soldier." It...was straight-forward, at least?

He loosened his shield in its holder. "Any questions?"

[OOC: For the two Avengers what couldn't be budgeted for in the actual movie, and SP of great justice!]

"Hydra doesn't like leaks," Sitwell babbled from the backseat for not the first time in their drive to the Triskelion. Sam rolled his eyes from his spot in the driver's seat and snapped, "Why don't you stick a cork in it?"

Natasha poked Sitwell in the stomach to shut him up. "Insight's launching in sixteen hours, we're cutting it a little bit close here," she added.

"I know. We'll use him to bypass the DNA scans and access the Helicarriers directly," Steve said.

"What?! Are you crazy? That is a terrible, terrible idea," Sitwell said just before something landed on the roof with a foreboding thud. Two seconds later, Sitwell was dragged out the window by a metal arm and flung into traffic, and everything went into slow motion from there. There were bullets flying, and tires screeching, and a terrifying man in a mask who didn't stop after he'd been launched from their car, just slowed himself down with his metal arm and came stalking back with another, larger weapon.

Steve forced himself not to think about who Tony said this was in his timeline and instead focused on not becoming quite dead, as the Winter Soldier was terrifyingly efficient. Steve found himself first flying off the bridge and through a transit bus and then fighting hand to hand against an assassin who was as fast, strong, and deadly as he was. Steve hadn't fought flat-out in a long, long time. They grappled shield-to-knife until Steve lost his shield--and nearly his head as the Winter Soldier threw it at his neck--and Steve finally got his hands on the Winter Soldier's mask and gave it a good hard yank as the Soldier spun over his head.

And the world seemed to stop and go absolutely quiet except for the blood pounding in his ears as he got a look at his best friend for the first time in seventy years--two years--a lifetime. "Bucky?"

"Who the hell is Bucky?" the man replied, reaching for one of the guns on his hip to shoot Steve just as Sam came flying in and knocked him flat. Bucky flung another bomb at Steve and ran off as sirens came screaming down the street and Rumlow and his goons poured out of a SWAT van and surrounded Sam, Steve, and a heavily bleeding Natasha.

Steve had gone numb. "Get on your knees!" the agents barked at them, pressing a gun to Steve's head. "Not here," Rumlow hissed, glancing up at the news helicopters above them. Steve, Sam, and Natasha were bundled into the van and driven away.

Steve couldn't bring himself to care at the moment. He couldn't think. He could barely breathe.