𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙇𝙀𝙉 𝘽𝙇𝙐𝙀 𝙏𝙍𝙐𝘾𝙆 𝙍𝙊𝙇𝙇𝙀𝘿 𝘼𝘾𝙍𝙊𝙎𝙎 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙀 𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙀𝙎 𝙄𝙉𝙏𝙊 New Jersey.
Steve in the driver's seat, Natasha in the passengers, and Aurora in the back.
She had her head pressed against the glass, looking at the landscape. Everything was screaming at her inside her head. The voices and memories from her past life to now, all of it shouting at once.
A lot of flashes of her husband came into her mind, flashes of his handsome smile and laughter playing through Aurora's ears like she just heard them.
In the summer of nineteen thirty, just a year of moving to Brooklyn and settling into school. Aurora Gallagher, Steve Rogers, and James Barnes were the most horrid during their education. Only just the three of them became the most known class clowns and troublemakers at school, always joking but had perfect scores on everything.
But this time of night when the air began to cool down, the trio sat on the roof of an apartment building. Just looking up at the stars twinkling in the sky, snacks and pillows surrounded them all.
"Do you guys still think we'll be best friends in the future?" The little voice of Steve asking the others.
Aurora sat up, resting her elbows on the pebbles. She eyed the skinny boy, shocked at how he could ask a question.
"Of course we're still going to be best friends in the future! We have to live up and annoy everyone when we get to high school, no one else can." Bucky cheered.
The girl nodded, "I love being your friend! You guys were there when no one else wanted to be my friends, and I love you like my siblings that I don't have."
Steve nodded, taking another sip of his soda. "Good, just checking," he laid back down on his blanket.
"I love you guys, no one can ever break us apart," Aurora smiled at her two boys.
Steve watched Aurora in the backseat, she hadn't said a word since the mall and he could tell that something wasn't right.
Natasha studied his movements toward Aurora, concerned as to why he suddenly trusted her when she was there that night of Nick Fury's death.
"I guess the two of you did a lot back together," Natasha turned and smirked.
Steve turned his head away from the road, "Rory and I? Please no, she's nothing but family to me. We went through a lot of things together but that's it, strictly best friends." Nat nodded, looking back to make sure that Aurora did not just hear what she said.
"When did Captain America learn how to steal a car?"
"Nazi Germany. And we're borrowing, take your feet off the dash."
Nat slowly took her feet off the dash, "alright I have a question for you, which you do not have to answer. But I feel like if you don't answer it though," she started.
"What?" Steve scowled
"Was that your first kiss since nineteen forty-five?"
"No, it was not my first kiss since nineteen forty-five," Aurora dropped her mouth open when Steve said that, laughing as a memory passes through.
He looked in the mirror, "what, are you laughing? Why is that so funny?"
"I just remembered that time you tried to kiss a girl then before you could even get to her lips, you vomited all over her shoes." Aurora chuckled. She and Bucky talked about it the entire night and the next day after seeing something like that.
Natasha grinned, "that's so gross."
"Thanks for that, Rory. That was so kind of you to bring that up," Steve groaned.
Aurora smiled, flashing her teeth, "you're welcome!"
"Believe it or not, it's kind of hard to find someone with shared life experience." Aurora suddenly looked down at her hands, playing with her nails and thinking about her husband.
She looked through all the times that they've worked together and the only thing they talked about was about the mission in front of them. HYDRA kept them separated at all costs, trying to keep them from snapping each other out of it like the last time. Taking all that love and throwing out as they created powerful superhumans to terrorize the world.
Aurora looked down at her hand where a diamond ring used to sit, feeling the coldness of having it on her finger. She didn't have a home anymore, she thought it was with HYDRA all these years.
Aurora was lost.
But with Steve now beside her, she was home.
𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙏𝙍𝙄𝙊 𝙍𝙀𝘼𝘾𝙃𝙀𝘿 𝘼𝙉 old military base by nightfall, approaching a closed gate. Natasha held up here phone, "file came from these coordinates."
Steve huffed, "so did I."
With his shield, Steve unlocked the gates and all of them walked on to the abandoned base. Aurora walked next to her friend, eyes absorbing everything in front of her.
"This camp is where I was recruited," said Steve.
"Change much?" Natasha added.
"A little."
Aurora knew that Steve wasn't beside her anymore, she turned on her heels to look at him stopped in his tracks and staring out on the open field. She furrowed her brows curiously, he must have gotten a vision like she did not too long ago.
She waited, "Steve?"
His head snapped out of his vision and faced the woman, surprised that she even waited for him. "Coming," he walked up right next to her again.
"This is a dead-end. Zero heat signatures, zero waves, not even radio," Steve and Aurora looked up at Natasha, putting away her device. "Whoever wrote the file must have used a router to throw people off."
Steve turned his head in another direction, "what is it? Aurora and Natasha turned to the man.
"Army regulations forbid storing ammunition within five hundred feet from the barracks, this building is in the wrong place." The two women walked side by side as they walked upon a building. Steve broke the lock with his shield, pulling back the doors and the trio walked down the steps into an open office.
"This is SHIELD," Natasha stated as the lights fluttered on.
"Maybe where it started," Steve breathed out, Aurora turned back to look at her surroundings.
They stepped into another room, columns of dusty books sit on shelves as they looked on a wall, pictures of faces Aurora didn't know but only one.
"There's Stark's father," Natasha pointed out.
"Howard," Steve said.
"Who's the girl?" Aurora asked, looking at the woman in the frame next to his. Steve didn't say anything, turning and walking away.
Natasha and she followed the solider to a shelf, "if you're already working in a secret office, why do you need to hide the elevator?" Steve pushed the shelf open to find another hallway. Natasha's phone activated the code to the elevator, descending the trio down into another area.
When the doors opened, they looked out into a room of darkness. Aurora's breath hiked up, she didn't like the dark. All of them walked in and their only way out was now closed, lights flickered on as they fully entered the room.
"Steve, I don't like this," Aurora looked around, every nerve in her body was shaking. He turned to look at his friend trying to comfort her any way that he can, keeping her by his side.
"This can't be the data point, this technology is ancient," Natasha called out, pointed at a disk that fit the drive nicely. Old computers booted back to life, their lights turning back on and rotating like everything was normal. The camera in the middle of the room lifted and the computer began to talk.
INITIATE SYSTEM?
The redhead stepped in front of the keys, "y-e-s, that spells yes." She smirks, "shall we play a game?"
She turned around to see Steve and Aurora confused at the reference she was talking about, "it's from this movie-"
"I know, I've seen it."
The computer turned on and green specks, creating a face. "Rogers, Steven. Born 1919."
The camera faced Natasha, "Romanoff, Natalia Alianova. Born 1984."
"Rogue, born 1918."
Aurora furrowed her brows, why did this computer know when she was born?
"This is some sort of recording," Natasha stated.
The computer interrupted, "I am not a recording, fraulein. I may not be the man I was when the Captain to me prisoner in 1945."
Aurora's eyes widened as she realizes, the machine was the man that developed the serum that made her powers.
Zola created the thing that made her burn the brightest, a literal shining star dedicated to serving HYDRA and killing any of her enemies.
"Operation Paperclip, after World War two SHIELD recruited scientist with strategic value," Natasha pointed out.
Zola continued, "thought I could help with the cause, I also helped my own."
"HYDRA died with the Red Skull," Steve added.
"Cut off one head, two more shall grow," Aurora lifted her head as she and the computer spoke in unison. Steve and Natasha turned their heads at her, eyeing her as she folded up her arms unphased.
The computer zipped through old archives, telling the story of the evergrowing virus that was HYDRA. Feeding lies to everyone, creating mass destruction with just a blink of an eye. The trio watched as Zola went on, Aurora looked in horror as the clips continued. New articles showed up of great fires, buildings burned down to the ground as men, women, and children were burnt to nothing but their skeletons. A faint clip of a woman was shown, two striped lines going upside her body and a black mask only the bottom of her face, showing just her eyes.
Soon, it changed into a clip of a man with a silver arm and a singular red star on his shoulder.
"Moya lyubov'," Aurora gasped at the screen. My love.
Natasha turned at the familiar language, how could someone be able to love in an organization filled terrible people? People who terrorized for fun, killing thousands but not millions. The two partners tasked with destruction.
Steve looked at Aurora, her face saddened as her eyes flickered through clips. She couldn't take more of this, her mind was screaming at her as all the voices she killed came down on her, she started to breathe abnormally as her throat felt like closing. She closed her eyes, filling the anger that HYDRA bestowed on to her. Aurora clenched up her fist, careful not to let them glow.
The solider was angry as well, punching the computer with his fist to finally make it shut up. Zola moved to another screen, making all their bodies turn.
"What's on this drive?" Steve demanded.
"Project Insight requires insight so I wrote an algorithm."
Natasha stepped in front, "What kind of algorithm? What does it do?"
"The answer to your question is fascinating, unfortunately, you shall be too dead to hear it." Zola quickly says as the door behind them closes. Steve threw his shield and Aurora threw a shard at it, the shield bounces back into the Captain's grasp and the shard dematerialized.
"We got a bogey," Natasha help up her phone. "Short ranged ballistic, thirty seconds top."
Steve furrowed his brows, "who fired it?"
"SHIELD."
He ran to snatch up a crate off of the floor, the two woman duck underneath him with the shield protecting them as the room soon with up in flames. Aurora gritted her teeth as she held her hands over the three of them, trying to redirect the fire around them.
It didn't hold long before the building crumbled on top of them.