The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 39

They still needed to find and stop Ultron. That was the priority.

But why hadn't they told him! Especially Natasha. She should've known how important—how devastating—learning something like this would be to him. She knew how important Bucky was to him, how responsible he felt for him. She should have realized... Steve sighed.

She did. She did know him, just as he knew Natasha. He knew better than to doubt her. She weighed and measured and analyzed everything. As soon as she'd figured out what had happened between Bucky and her sister, she would have been calculating how best to handle the information.

After everything that had happened in DC, when he'd been recovering from his injuries, she'd visited him. During that visit, she had shared everything—or at least, he'd thought it had been everything—she'd known about the Winter Soldier. About Bucky. From the rumours and stories she'd heard over the years to actually going up against him during her training.

Natasha was incredibly intelligent, and she was incredibly calculating. There was no denying that fact. She had been trained to be. But more than that, Steve had come to realize in the time that he'd known her that she was also incredibly protective of those she cared about. And when she let herself care, she cared deeply. If there was something she hadn't told him, she would've had good reason.

Even through his heartache and resentment, he could recognize as much. He saw it in her, in how conflicted and pained and remorseful she'd been when he'd asked her why. She must have thought she was sparing him. He'd been hurting enough just from hearing what she'd told him that day in the hospital, and that wasn't even factoring in everything that had happened in the days leading up to that painful visit.

No. Irrational as he felt in that moment, he could understand her logic. Bucky had been all but lost after the Helicarriers fell and, as far as the redhead had known then, her sister had been long dead. He could understand why she'd made that call.

Nadine, though...that he couldn't understand.

They'd made such promising steps. He'd been starting to trust her, and he'd been sure they'd been well on their way to earning her trust. She'd opened up to him!

How could she not have told him!

A small, rational part of him was trying to insist that, not only was he wilfully ignoring facts laid plainly before him, but that there was more, that there was something else he was missing. But the feeling that there was something more he was on the verge of piecing together, another aspect just waiting for to be deciphered, was not something he could focus on. Not that he could have even if he'd wanted to. He was very much not equipped emotionally just now to be overly rational about this. Understanding Natasha's reasoning had pushed his control and his compassion to the limit for the time being. He didn't have the capacity in the face of his outrage and sorrow for his best friend. So he pushed the thought that there had to be more to what he'd learned violently away. Part of him was even afraid to think on it, shying away from the sense that the blonde assassin's past with Bucky was far more complicated than it was already shaping up to be. He already had far too much to come to terms with just now. And all of it was thanks to Ultron.

Though, the bitter, angry part of him actually wanted to thank the A.I....

He shoved that thought away in disgust, the sudden impulse surprisingly doing a great deal to clear his head.

Though part of him was relieved, however odd a feeling as it seemed, that he now knew the truth, he could imagine no more horrible way to find out. It would have been enough for the robot simply to allude to what Nadine had done, just as he had before he'd begun sharing the documentation and that gut-wrenching visual evidence. That would've been more than enough. By involving Bucky? Ultron would have assured Steve's determination to pull the whole story from Nadine. He hadn't had to share the surveillance feed like that. It had been overkill. Overly dramatic. Well, Ultron was that. Twisted and without a conscience as he was, Ultron did enjoy his theatrics; he got that from Tony, apparently. And he seemed to enjoy toying with them. That's what this was. Even more than this was about throwing them off balance even as he knew the Avengers were coming for him, Ultron was taunting them. Demonstrating his power. His reach. He could get to any of them. He could torment them.

And he didn't even need the Maximoff Twins to do it. They were just his back up.

After Johannesburg, part of him had been ready to all but tear the Twins apart—especially the girl—after what she'd done to his team. But now?

It was nothing compared to what he felt for Ultron in that moment.

Well? Tony had been obliquely asking if Steve even had a dark side. He was certainly straying dangerously close to it. He certainly felt angry and vindictive enough, just now. And not just toward Ultron. He cursed silently under his breath.

He knew he shouldn't be thinking like that. But dammit, he just couldn't help it. Not with that awful video and her words rattling around in his brain.

His fists clenched tighter where they lay propped against his forehead. Forcing in a long, deep breath to try and get his head back on, he began to straighten, though his elbows remained braced against his knees. After another moment, he forced his fists to loosen. His fingers ached at the motion.

He had to get his head past this, even if only for the duration of the mission. The mission was far too critical to let even a revelation of this magnitude throw him off track. Far too much was at stake. Forcing in another deep breath he leaned back, purposefully avoiding looking over to where he knew Natasha sat with her adoptive sister. He needed to get his focus back on the mission, and looking to the blonde assassin would only derail that effort.

After another few minutes of wrestling with his chaotic thoughts, he managed to get them back under some semblance of control, forcing himself to push them aside. He couldn't afford to dwell on them just now. Not when he knew perfectly well they could get him or his teammates killed if he did. But that didn't stop the pang in his chest or the ache in his gut at doing so. Ultron's revelation about Bucky had cut him too deeply for that.

Dare he even think it, but what he knew now? It was quite possibly affecting him worse than when he'd believed Bucky had been killed all those years ago. No, it was definitely taking a worse toll than Bucky's 'death' had. Believing Bucky dead had been so...final. There had been nothing more he could've done once he fell. It had meant, as much as his thoughts had turned to Bucky those days, they hadn't truly distracted him from his mission. More than that, there had been some sort of purpose behind his next moves, allowing him to use his pain and his grief and his guilt. If anything, it had leant him focus.

Now? There was no such focus. Sure, there was still the fight against Ultron, and he supposed he could harness some of his resultant aggression against the robot; the A.I. had provided the impetus for his rattled state of mind, after all. But it wasn't the same. Not with the crushing sense of helplessness to help Bucky weighing on him. Not knowing that his best friend was still out there. Not feeling the overwhelming need to somehow help his oldest friend weighing on him. Though rationally he knew it wasn't his fault, that he'd been a casualty of war and circumstances beyond his control, Steve couldn't help the guilt surging up amid his righteous anger.

If he'd only been able to reach a little farther...

His fists clenched again as he stood abruptly.

It was too late, now. What was done was done. All he could do now was move forward. And forward pointed him back to the mission at hand.

They needed to stop Ultron from getting his hands on the Cradle. Steve fought to narrow his focus to that single, critical objective. Whatever came next he would face, be it the personal fallout over what his friend had been put through or in their fight to stop Ultron. But for now, Seoul was first up, and he needed to strategize. And to strategize, he needed to focus.

It was a focus—and distraction, if he was being honest—that was sorely needed, weighing the options for how to approach their mission allowing him to further distance himself from what he had learned. Even so, it was a struggle to keep himself objective in his planning. And even then, he had to cede that it probably wasn't his most rational of plans.

But it was the best he could come up with just now. It would have to be enough.

Up in the cockpit, Barton called out softly that they were on approach. Letting out a long, heavy exhale, Steve looked to the cockpit, finally managing to snap the final lock into place on his chaotic thoughts.

As satisfied as he could be that he was back under control, he strode forward to confer with Barton about the course of action he'd settled on.

They had a job to do.

A/N: Thanks for reading!

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