- - -
Steve's POV
It's dark by the time I make it back to my new apartment, parking my motorcycle and climbing the stairs.
My neighbour, Kate, is standing in the hall, a basket of laundry under her arm.
"That's so sweet. That is so nice." She's talking into the phone, then looks up and sees me. "Hey. I gotta go, though. Okay, bye."
She hangs up the phone, turning to smile at me.
"My aunt, she's kind of an insomniac." She explains with a chuckle.
I eye her laundry, she's on her way down to the basement.
I think of Zoey, how she's moved onto a quiet life, without me.
Maybe it's time for me to move on as well.
"Hey, if you want- if you want, you're welcome to use my machine." I tell her, "Might be cheaper than the one in the basement."
"Oh, yeah?" She asks, "What's it cost?"
"A cup of coffee." I say, slightly hopefully, very awkwardly.
"Thank you, but I already have a load in downstairs, and you really don't want my scrubs in your machine." She says regrettably, a tinge of pink on her cheeks. "I've just finished orientation in the infectious diseases ward, so."
"Ah, well, I'll keep my distance." I joke.
"Well hopefully not too far." She says with a smile.
There were times when Zoey would say things like that, when she would blush at my words and make me blush at hers in turn.
I nod to Kate, turning to unlock my apartment.
"Oh, and I think you left your stereo on." She adds.
"Oh." My grin falters slightly, "Right, thank you."
She nods and goes down the stairs. I watch her go, before turning to my door, eyeing it suspiciously.
I look at the fire escape stairs, going onto the outdoor ladder and entering my apartment through the window.
I can here the stereo playing classical music, and I grab my shield for protection, looking to see Fury sitting on my couch in the dark.
"I don't remember giving you a key." I sigh, lowering my shield.
"You really think I'd need one?" Fury asks, goraning slighlty, as if in pain.
I narrow my eyes, turning on the light to look at him. I open my mouth to speak, but he holds up his hand to silence me.
He nods to the light switch, and I turn it off again as he types something on his phone.
I watch as he shows me the screen, the words EARS EVERYWHERE bright in front of me.
"I'm sorry to have do this, but I had no place else to crash." He says, typing again and showing me the screen.
SHIELD COMPROMISED
I remain silent as he types again, hesitating for a moment before showing me the screen.
THEY WENT AFTER ZOEY
My throat tightens and I struggle to swallow.
Zoey? But I just saw her a few hours ago.
"Is she alive?"
NOT CERTAIN.
I nod, trying not to think the worst.
"Who else knows that you're here?" I ask.
YOU AND ME
"Just, my friends." He says, getting up and walking over to me.
"Is that what we are?" I ask angrily.
"That's up to you." He tells me.
Gunfire suddenly erupts from outside the window, and Fury yells in pain as he is shot several times in the back, falling to the floor.
I glance out the window and see a figure on a roof nearby, but I first drag Fury into a different room.
I'm about to follow the shooter, but he reaches out and stops me, grabbing my hand as pulling me back.
"Dont trust anyone." He chokes out, before falling unconscious.
He lets go of my hand, leaving a USB in my palm.
Knocking suddenly comes from the door, and I can hear Kate on the other side.
"Captain Rogers." She calls, confusing me as she enters my apartment with a gun in her hands.
She sees me, still point ing the gun around my apartment.
"Captain, I'm Agent 13 of SHIELD's Special Service." She says.
"Kate?" I ask in disbelief.
"I'm assigned to protect you." She explains.
"On whose order?" I ask. She spots Fury lying on the ground, lowering her gun.
"His."
She goes to him, checking for vital signs before speaking into her radio.
"Foxtrot is down, he's unresponsive." She reports quickly, "I need EMTs."
"Do you have a twenty on the shooter?" A voice responds.
I look out the window, noticing the figure of whoever shot Fury.
"Tell them I'm in pursuit." I say, grabbing my shield and running through my window, into the building across the street.
I roll along the ground, looking up and seeing the shooter in the stairs above me.
I instantly run along after him, following him through the building.
I hold my shield in front of me, running through the offices on the level, breaking through each lino wall.
I jump and run along the wall, turning a corner to try and reach him.
He jumps through a window and onto a lower roof and I follow, throwing my shield his way.
I slow down as it soars towards him, but in one swift movement of his metal arm he catches it.
He turns and looks at me, his eyes smudged with dirt, his mouth covered by a mask. He throws back my shield, and I catch it into my stomach, stunned.
It's him.
The jet warehouse in Russia.
He turns and jumps off the building and I sprint to the edge of the roof, looking down at the street. He's nowhere to be seen, even though he'd jumped off the building seconds ago.
I groan in frustration, gritting my teeth and dropping my shield.
This guy shot Fury.
This guy works with the people who have tortured Zoey.
"Zoey." I whisper inaudiably, my face falling in remembrance. Is she alive?
~ ~ ~
Natasha's POV
I run into the hospital, making my way straight to the viewing room for the O.R. that Fury is in.
Steve is there, leaning forwards against the window sill, watching the surgery with a stern face.
I hesitate before speaking; the last time we said anythin to each other he accidentally mentioned Zoey. I know he doesn't like to talk about it anymore.
I shake my head slightly. Fury was shot. Of course he's preoccupied.
"Is he gonna make it?" I ask, fearing the worst.
I don't know." Steve admits quietly.
"Tell me about the shooter." I turn to him expectantly.
"He's fast and strong." He tells me in a strained voice, "He had a metal arm."
Metal arm? He can't mean-
No.
"Nat, he's the one who was there when Zoey was kidnapped." He sighs, "She's connected in all this."
I knew that shadow looked familiar.
The door opens again, and Maria walks into the room.
"Ballistics?" I ask, turning back to the view of the operating room.
"Three slugs." She reports, coming to stand beside me, "No rifling and completely untraceable."
There's somebody I know who would use untraceable slugs, especially if they were-
"Soviet made?" I ask Maria.
"Yeah." She looks at me, confused about how I know this information.
I swallow my dry throat. Who we're dealing with, they're not easy to kill.
The three of us stand side by side, watching as the condition of the man we all know and trust deteriorates. People gather behind us, watching their colleague.
"He's dropping." A doctor says.
"Crash cart coming in." A nurse responds.
"Nurse, help me with the gauzes, please. BP is dropping." People are shouting in there, "Defibrillator!"
Fury starts to flatline, and I find it hard to breathe.
"Charge to one hundred."
"Don't do this to me, Nick." I whisper quietly, watching in terror.
"Stand back!" A doctor says as they get the defibrillator in place, "Three, two, one. Clear!"
Fury's body jumps with the shock, everyone waiting.
"Pulse?" A doctor asks.
"No pulse." Another replies.
"Okay." The first one responds, "Charge to two hundred, please. Stand back! Three, two, one. Clear!"
Fury is given another shock, but nothing seems to change.
"Pulse?"
"Negative."
"Don't do this to me, Nick." I repeat, "Don't do this to me."
He's help me get to where I am. He helped me escape from the horrors that I came from.
The doctors continue trying, but eventually give up. Steve turns away as they look at the clock.
"Time of death, 1:03 A.M."
~ ~ ~
Fury's body is laid out and covered on a table in a different room, and Steve leans against the wall beside the door, watching me.
I stand over Fury, looking down at his face. He looks like he's only sleeping.
Maria enters the room, but I don't even look up from his face.
"We need to take him." She tells us.
Steve pushes off the wall, coming to stand behind me, putting his hand on my shoulder.
"Natasha." He says gently.
I reach out, touching Fury's head slightly.
He's not gone. He can't be gone.
I take my hand away from Fury's head, then turn and walk out.
"Natasha!" I can hear Steve running after me down the hall in the hospital. I slow down, and when he reaches me I turn around sharply.
"Why was Fury in your apartment?" I ask immediately. I'm going to find the one that killed Fury and-
"I don't know." Steve's words make make me furious, but Rumlow interrupts us before I can speak.
"Captain, they want you back at SHIELD." He says to Steve, who doesn't look away from me.
"Yeah, give me a second." He says dismissively.
"They want you now." Rumlow insists, and Steve looks at him.
"Okay." He says slowly. Rumlow walks away, and Steve looks back at me.
"You're a terrible liar." I tell him, before turning around.
"Hey." He grabs my hand, and I look at him.
"They went after Zoey." He says, obviously frantic. "I- I don't know if she's alive, and Fury was the only one who could tell me."
Zoey.
She's in danger, too?
"SHIELD's been compromised." He tells me.
"What are you going to do?" I ask him quietly.
"I don't know." He admits, "But I'll work it out. Zoey-"
"I'll find out." I nod, turning and walking away from him.
~ ~ ~
Steve's POV
I walk down the hall, seeing Kate, Agent 13, Sharon, talking to a very well dressed man.
They see me coming and he shooes her away, the two of us walking past each other.
"Captain Rogers." She nods, looking at the ground.
"Neighbour." I reply coldly, looking at the man instead.
He holds out his hands and I take it, shaking it firmly.
"Ah, Captain." He says, "I'm Alexander Pierce."
"Sir, it's an honor." I nod.
"The honor is mine, Captain." He grins, "My father served in the 101st."
"That's a bit of an injury." I notice a massive scar on the side of his neck, "How'd you get it."
"Let's just say," He says slowly, "I fell."
"Off a tall place?" I ask, "It's a pretty big scar."
"Off a tall place." He confirms, "Come on in."
He leads me into his spacious office, and I place my shield by the door. I notice a group of photos cluttered on a table.
I pick up one, seeing a young Fury and Pierce together.
"That photo was taken five years after Nick and I met. When I was at State Department in Bogota." He walksover, glancing at the photo. "ELN rebels took the embassy, and security got me out, but the rebels took hostages."
"Nick was deputy chief for the SHIELD station there. And he comes to me with a plan. He wants to storm the building through the sewers. I said, "No, we'll negotiate." Turned out the ELN didn't negotiate, so they put out a kill order." He continues, as we take a seat. "They stormed the basement, and what did they find? They find it empty. Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil. He saved the lives of a dozen political officers, including my daughter."
"So you gave him a promotion." I say, looking up from the photo.
"I've never had any cause to regret it." He tells me.
I don't reply, getting up to put the picture frame back where I found it.
I notice another photo behind it, one of faces that I have seen before.
It's Pierce and Fury, and I recognise the woman with them as Zoey's mother, an almost spitting image of her daughter.
"You knew Lillian Redbird?" I ask, turning around with the picture in my hands.
"I knew her all her life, actually." He says, "She was kind and feisty and completely beautiful."
I furrow my brow slightly at the way he's talking about her.
"Did you know Tom, too?" I ask, "I know that he worked with Nick and Lillian."
"Yeah, I knew him." He says, and I can register a hint of bitterness in his voice.
I put down the photo, and he speaks as my back is turned.
"I hear you were quite close to their daughter." He says, "Zoey, her name is?"
"Yes." My back tenses, and my face hardens.
"She was compromised six months back, correct?" He asks.
"Yes, she was." I nod, turning around and gazing around the room.
"Rumours went around that she got herself out of there." He asks, "SHIELD failed to find her."
"We did." I look up at him cautiously, "Then she retired."
"Come on, Captain." He says slowly, "Everyone knows you never really retire from SHIELD."
"What are you saying?" I ask him, my jaw clenching.
"Captain, why was Nick in your apartment last night?" He ignores my question, changing the subject.
"I don't know." I lie.
"You know it was bugged?"
"I did, because Nick told me." I say firmly.
"Did he tell you he was the one who bugged it?"
I don't reply. No, he didn't tell me.
"I want you to see something." Pierce says, bringing up a screen, showing footage of Batroc being interrogated.
"Is that live?" I look at the screen.
"Yeah, they picked him up last night in a not-so-safe house in Algiers." Pierce replies.
"Are you saying he's a suspect?" I look at him in confusion, "Assassination isn't Batroc's line."
"No, it's more complicated than that." He shakes his head, "Batroc was hired anonymously to attack the Lemurian Star and he was contacted by e-mail and paid by wire transfer. And then the money was run through seventeen fictitious accounts, the last one going to a holding company that was registered to a Jacob Veech."
"Am I supposed to know who that is?"
"Not likely. Veech died six years ago." Pierce hands me a file, and I look through it. "His last address was 14-35 Elmhurst Drive. When I first met Nick, his mother lived at 14-37."
"Are you saying Fury hired the pirates?" I ask in disbelief, "Why?"
"Well the prevailing theory was that the hijacking was a cover for the acquisition and sale of classified intelligence." He tells me, "The sale went sour and that led to Nick's death."
"If you really knew Nick Fury you know that's not true." I say slowly.
"Why do you think we're talking?" He asks, and I look away.
"See, I took a seat on the Council not because I wanted to but because Nick asked me to, because we were both realists." He stands up and walks over to the window, "We knew that despite all the diplomacy and the handshaking and the rhetoric, that to build a really better world sometimes means having to tear the old one down. And that makes enemies."
I put the file on the table, standing in the middle of the room.
"Those people that call you dirty because you got the guts to stick your hands in the mud and try to build something better. And the idea that those people could be happy today, makes me really, really angry." He hesitates for a moment, "Captain, you were the last one to see Nick alive. I don't think that's an accident, and I don't think you do either. So I'm gonna ask again, why was he there?"
"He told me not to trust anyone." I say slowly, and he turns and looks at me.
"I wonder if that included him." He points out
"I'm sorry. Those were his last words." I say simply, "Excuse me."
I walk to the door, picking up my shield and putting it on my friend.
"Captain." I stop and look at him.
"Somebody murdered my friend and I'm gonna find out why." Pierce tells me, "Anyone gets in my way, they're gonna regret it. Anyone."
"Understood." I nod, before walking out of the door. I make my way down the hall and head into the elevator.
"Operations control." I tell the computer.
"Confirmed."
The doors are just about to close, when Rumlow steps in with two STRIKE agents.
"Forensics." He says his floor.
"Confirmed."
"Cap." He nods to me.
"Rumlow." I reply simply as the elevator begins going down.
"Evidence response found some fibers on the roof they want us to see." He says, "You want me to get the tac-team ready?"
"No, lets wait and see what it is first." I shake my head.
"Right." He nods.
I notice one of the agents out of the corner of my eye touch his gun slightly.
The elevator stops, more SHIELD and STRIKE agents entering. I make room for them, ending up in the middle of them all.
"Sorry about what happened with Fury." Rumlow tells me "Messed up what happened to him."
"Thank you." I reply.
The elevator stops again, more agents filling up the small space until it is full.
When the doors shut and we start going down, a tense silence passes over us all.
I look around at them all for a moment before speaking.
"Before we get started, does anyone want to get out?"
- - -
HERE WE GO
I'M SO PUMPED FOR THIS STORY AND AFTER SEEING AGE OF ULTRON I'M JUST GETTING MORE AND MORE INTO IT
MAYBE I'LL EVEN DO A THIRD BOOK WHO KNOWS WHERE THIS WILL GO BUT I HOPE YOU ARE ALL ENJOYING IT
NAINAI