Steve watched Natasha go and lingered around the coffee pot for several minutes after. He looked out one of the large windows facing the woods that bordered one side of the complex. Even without being able to hear it, he knew things were quiet outside. Unnervingly so. The base had been barely occupied before everything that happened with Thanos. Now that one-half of all life on earth had been wiped out with the literal snap of a finger, everything felt like a ghost town. Or, more aptly, a graveyard. A graveyard without any bodies, but filled to the brim with grief and loss.
He was no stranger to loss. Steve had outlived mostly everyone he'd ever known in his time. Bucky, due to his own extraordinary circumstances, had been the only one to make it into this day and age with Steve. He was the only one who really understood what it was like to be here, now. The only one who could truly relate. Beyond that, Bucky was Steve's best and oldest friend. Losing him had made things that just more difficult to handle.
But that wasn't all.
Steve had made new friends along the way. People that stood by him without flinching in some of the toughest of times. Sam Wilson, T'Challa, even Nick Fury, though they'd had their differences, would by missed by the Captain. Strong, resilient men and women the world over were gone without a trace. It was impossible to say if they were even dead. After all, what word did you use for someone who turned to dust right before your very eyes? Steve had seen many, many strange and terrifying things in his time, but what happened that day in Wakanda had been the worst, by far.
He released a heavy sigh and rubbed at the growth on his chin. He'd grown his beard out over the recent years to better disguise himself from the world authorities that were looking for him. Most of those world authorities were gone, now. Steve supposed that meant he didn't need the beard anymore. He wondered if Natasha had similar thoughts about her blonde hair. He wondered if she'd grow it out, back to those long, brilliant red locks. He wondered if she cared. Did the small things even matter anymore? The things that used to be normal now seemed strange and foreign in a world that had been so drastically changed by the snap. The "culling", the "incident", it had a lot of different names. None of them were good. They all served as chilling reminders of the tyrant who had come to their planet, killed half its inhabitants, and then left, all in a matter of minutes. Evil like that made some of the other things Steve had seen look like child's play.
Steve set his empty coffee cup back in the cupboard and left the room.
Rhodey would be connecting with what remained of the Council at 0800 hours. That gave Steve about forty-five minutes to prepare himself. He went back to his room, shaved, showered, and emerged a new man. The dark growth on his face was completely gone, leaving a smooth, chiseled jawline beneath. He pulled on a simple gray t-shirt and a pair of jeans. His suit, what was left of it, was hanging on the back of the bedroom door. It needed sent off for cleaning or repairs or a complete torching, but he didn't know if there was even anyone around to do that sort of thing. There was a good chance that there were more suits on backup in one of the equipment rooms, but Steve hadn't felt compelled to go searching. A new suit meant a new fight, and he wasn't feeling up to fighting just yet.
He left his room and took a right, heading to a flight of stairs that took him down to the main level of the building. Straight from there and then left, and Steve found himself before the large, open space that served as the building's main meeting room. It was surrounded by glass walls, suggesting transparency, with one panel serving as a door. Steve opened the lightweight door and stepped inside.
Rhodey was standing at the right side of the large, oval-shaped table inside. He had one arm across his chest, the other bent, so he could cup his hand over his mouth. He was staring at the many screens on the table's glass surface; thinking. The former Air Force pilot had been hard at work handling the political side of this mess... as much as he possibly could, anyway. He had no real title or jurisdiction, but most of those things had gone to the wayside in the last few days, anyway. What he did have was grit, resolve, and determination. Those were far heavier currencies, now, than they ever had been. Still, every man, even a man as good as James Rhodes, had their tipping point. There were walls that everyone ran into.
"Cap." Rhodey greeted Steve when he entered the room. He dropped his hand from his face and turned, placing one hip against the table. "Gotta say, I'm a little surprised to see you here."
Steve descended the couple steps to get down into the room. He approached the table and came to a stop at the bottom end of it, looking to see what Rhodey was seeing. Bad news, all around. The disappearance of so many people had a domino effect that rippled as far down the chain as it could possibly go. There was no, scientific way of explaining how Thanos had been able to accomplish what he accomplished. Even if there had been, did the world even have enough scientists left to figure it out?
"I want answers just as badly as everyone else," he told Rhodey.
"Yeah, well," Rhodey picked up a small, remote-like device from the table, "answers aren't always solutions." He aimed the remote toward a monitor wall behind the opposite side of the table and pressed a button. A few seats at that side of the table were soon filled with the projections of individuals.
Of the original twelve-person council elected by the U.N. to oversee S.H.I.E.L.D., four of its members remained. "Successors", AKA replacements, had been instituted for the other eight, but they said very little. The majority of the talking, unfortunately, was done by General Thaddeus Ross. He had never been a supporter of the Avengers Initiative or any of its candidates. Somehow, he seemed to blame them for every bad thing that happened on God's green earth. Now was no exception.
Billions had vanished after the snap, but that wasn't all. Every plane without a pilot, every car without a driver; every train with no conductor had crashed and led to the death of hundreds, maybe even thousands, more. Without properly manned hospitals, people were dying there, too. It wasn't just half of humanity gone. It was more than that. There were messes to clean up and fires to put out all over the planet, and Thaddeus Ross, the man who would've formerly had them do nothing, was now asking why they weren't doing more.
"Sir," Rhodey said, disciplined as always, "our best idea was trying to find Thanos and undo what he did. But he stepped into an intergalactic portal that took him to God knows where, and we don't have the resources to expand our search."
Steve had remained quiet for the most part. He wasn't even quite sure if the others knew he was there, as he'd been standing off to the side a bit; observing from a distance. But now, he took a breath and stepped into the ring. "With all due respect, General," he said in a way that, somehow, didn't seem to suggest any respect at all, "maybe you should be focusing your resources on rescue efforts. People are stranded. They need food; water. We need to focus on who we have left. We need to pay attention to earth before we start putting our eyes up to the skies."
"And just what have you been doing, Captain Rogers?" The General growled. "You and your band of heroes haven't made so much as one appearance since this nightmare started."
"We're doing what we can, when we can, Sir." Rhodey filled in.
Steve smelled an argument on the horizon. Either that or a cataclysmic lecturing quickly approaching. Thankfully, it never came. What did happen was the opening of the door behind them, and Natasha leaning her upper half into the room.
"Guys," she barely glanced at the council members at the table, "there's something you need to see."
"What?" General Ross said. "What something? What do you have going on there? You had better be practicing absolute transparency with this council, Colonel Rhodes."
"Right. Absolutely, Sir. We'll keep you informed." He made all the right promises, but he made them as he pressed a button to end the call with the Council. It was all done without hesitation. Steve admired Rhodey's ability to kick the bee's nest all while remaining perfectly calm. He dropped the remote onto the table and turned away from it, walking with Steve up the steps and toward the door, where Natasha was waiting.
"What's going on?" Steve asked her. He read her face. It was smooth, but he knew it well enough to see the concern in her eyes. That, of course, concerned him. He didn't know how much more bad news he could take.
"It's the device," she told him. "It stopped working."
Steve's heart plummeted into his stomach.
He followed Natasha, too worried to feel guilty about his quick pace and how Rhodey's mechanically-assisted legs might not be able to keep up with him. They headed back down the hallway and up the stairs to the second floor. A catwalk took them across the open expanse that overlooked the main entry area of the first level. At the other end of the walk were some research and development rooms, one of which Bruce had made into his own, personal lab to upkeep and monitor the device.
Natasha opened the door to the lab. Bruce was already inside. He was standing just outside the glass enclosure that held the device and the backup power supply that Bruce had rigged to attach to it. They were a row of blue diodes that were illuminated, suggesting they were still delivering power to the device. The device, something that, for all intents and purposes, resembled an old two-way pager straight out of the 90's-- information supplied by Natasha-- was no longer on. The small screen that had previously displayed a bi-split panel of red and blue with a yellow, star-like symbol in the middle was now dark. Steve came to stand next to Bruce in front of the enclosure. Natasha stood next to Steve.
"When did it go out?" He asked.
"Just a minute ago," Bruce explained. "I've checked everything, and the power supply is still running, but..." he sighed and scratched his eyebrow with his thumb. "I don't know. It just... quit."
Steve made a frustrated sound. They'd had no idea what the thing was doing, but the fact that it had stopped was incredibly disheartening. He leaned forward on the table in front of him and stared into the enclosure that rested upon it. His own, hardened reflection stared back at him. He could see Bruce beside him, looking perplexed, and Natasha on the other side, looking wounded and confused, like she was questioning why the universe would do such a thing to them now, of all times.
Then, he saw something else.
Movement in the background caused Steve to whirl around quickly. His actions surprised the others and had them following suit. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Natasha take a defensive position. Standing in front of them was an individual previously not there. A woman, short, with shoulder length blonde hair and a slightly ragged look on her face stood staring at them all like they were the ones who had just invaded her lab. She made eye contact with Steve and said one thing.
"Where is Fury?"