oblivion. ▷ captain america. [1] •••DISCONTINUED•••

xviii ▷ fury returns.

E I G H T E E N

18. | fury returns.
back in business again

steve.

•

BANG. BANG.

My fists collide with the bag again.

Bang. Bang.

Another flashback fills me with anger. Cannons, guns. They all ring through my brain as another shell lands in front of me on the soil.

Bang. Bang.

I'm speaking to Genevieve over the radio, telling her that I have to crash the Hydra plane. It's the last time I'll ever speak to her again. It's because a few months later, she dies.

Bang. Bang.

I look up from the bag, glancing at the corner of the room. Just the mere memory of her causes my brain to conjure up her figure leaning against the wall. Her red lips are pursed at me, and her green eyes slyly scan me up and down in distaste. Her arms are crossed across her SSR uniform, and she seems to have discarded her jacket for a more relaxed appearance, as she would when we just did work around the London compound.

"That isn't healthy, you know," she states flatly. I avoid her gaze as she steps towards me, shaking her head at me slightly. "I mean, you don't even have the gloves on. You are so reckless for absolutely no apparent reason."

I bite my tongue, even though I have no words to say back.

"Are you even listening to me, Steve?" Gen spits at me, setting her hand on her hip. "Oh, right. The answer's no because I'm just a 'figment of your imagination.' Yeah, so technically you aren't listening to yourself. How sad. I mean, you are making me tell you this inside your head because I'm probably one of the only people you'll ever listen to. Sadly, I'm not, as you aren't giving me a lick of attention now."

Gen spins on her heel, now only a few inches away from me as I punch the bag over and over again.

"And you thought that the PTSD war memories were bad," she scoffs. "Now you have me to keep you up at night because you know that it's your fault I'm dead!"

The punching bag soars across the room, snapping from its chains as I give it another sharp blow. I pant heavily, glaring at Gen. She isn't there, though. It's because I got her out of my mind again. That's the fourth bag today, and it's all because of these flashbacks and memories of people and events from my old life. They won't ever go away, but that doesn't mean that I can't put up a fight.

As soon as I catch my breath, I brush my sweaty hair out of my face and carefully pick up another bag from the stack next to me. I don't even take notice of the blood seeping through the white bandages that wrap around my knuckles. She's right about that though; I'm hurting myself while taking out my anger.

I hang the bag on the rail on the ceiling, ready to punch this one off too. I take a deep breath, punching the new one repeatedly. Hit after hit, I throw punches at the bag, trying to distract my troubled mind.

"Trouble sleeping?"

I turn to face Nick Fury, who looks no different than the last time I saw him. He wears all black, making him look like a shadow in the dimly lit room. I can make out his black eyepatch in the darkness, one of his battle scars.

"Slept for seventy years, sir," I reply, throwing my knuckles sharply to the side of the bag. "I think I've had my fill."

"Then you should be out celebrating," Director Fury states over the sounds of the punching bag, "seeing the world."

I glare at him for a moment, giving him a look that should give him some idea of how I think about that dumb thought.

I start to walk away from the bag, unraveling the bandages from my hands.

"When I went under, the world was at war," I remind Fury. "I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost."

"We've made some mistakes along the way," Fury says. "Some very recently."

"You here with a mission, sir?"

"I am."

"Trying to get me back in the world?"

"Trying to save it."

Fury hands me a file, holding it out towards me. I hesitantly take it, flipping it open to reveal what the problem is. All I have to do is take a glimpse at the header and the photo to make my blood boil.

"Hydra's secret weapon," I remark about the Tesseract, sitting down on a bench to read the rest of what they have on that damn blue cube.

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you," Fury says.

He should've been fishing for someone else to keep her alive.

"He thought what we think — the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world solely needs." Fury glances down at me with a cold glint in his eye.

I hand him back the file, pushing all the papers back into it. "Who took it from you?" I ask him as he takes the file back.

"He's called Loki," Fury answers. "He's.....not from around here.

"There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in. The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

I scoff. "At this point, I doubt anything will surprise me."

"Ten bucks says you're wrong," Fury says as I walk away with my gym bag in hand. I lug up a punching bag on to my shoulder from the pile as Fury continues to blab. "There's a briefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment."

At my silence, Fury breaks a question that probably could've gone unanswered.

"Is there anything you know about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?" he asks.

I clench my jaw. "You should've left it in the ocean."

And with that I stomp out of the gym to head back to my apartment after leaving the broken bag at the front desk. Fury just stands in the middle of the gym as I leave, not moving as I leave. His eye was filled with worry, like he's truly desperate. Now that guilt he put in me is going to force me into making a decision about this Tesseract thing.

[•]

After deciding to take a quick shower to get the sweat and dirt off me, I pull off my sweaty white t-shirt and pants and hop into the steaming shower. Sure enough, there was a briefing packet on the kitchen counter once I got back, so I read over it to make up my mind about the mission Fury's persuading me to help on before I got in, giving me time to think about it now that I have some major details. I put my head underneath the shower head, allowing the water to soak my hair and drop down the tip of my nose as it falls to the drain.

I don't know what to think of the mission. I've barely been awake for two weeks, and I still have no idea what I'm doing in modern day, so you can see where that would be a drawback. Plus, I still am getting used to the whole all my friends are gone thing.

Maybe I should. It's not like I don't have the time. I could get out for a while and be in the world, like Fury was saying. It'd be good for me.

And so it's decided.

I'm going on the mission for that damn Tesseract.