Man Out of Time - A Captain America / Avengers Fanfiction

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

"I'm telling you," Steve said. "I know what I saw!"

"The camera doesn't back up your version of the story," Nick Fury said. "Natasha said it looked like a man, only stronger, and that is what the video camera saw."

"It wasn't obvious until after the thing shot at me, Sir," Steve said. "That was when I cut its head off with my shield."

"But we don't have that on camera," Nick Fury said.

"The camera malfunctioned after that," Steve said.

"Which leaves us with your word," Nick Fury said. "A soldier who suffered a concussive impact to the brain and, by his own admission, was having trouble focusing. Against Natasha's. Whose version of incidents both times you accused her of being less than forthcoming were backed up by a video camera."

"I know what I saw," Steve said, throwing his arms up in exasperation. It wasn't often he back-talked a superior. But there were all kinds of things going on here that he didn't understand, but knew in his gut weren't right.

"Son," Nick Fury said, placing a hand on his shoulder. "How many times did you get tossed around by enemy fire that night? Two? Three?"

"Four," Steve said. "I was within range of three explosions, plus this." He pointed to the still green-and-yellow bruise on one side of his head that still made him feel like he was floating out of his body. The result of having his head slammed against the wall by that … thing. If not for his helmet, he'd be dead. Not even his enhanced physique enough to survive getting your skull smashed open like a watermelon.

"Listen," Nick Fury said. "I know Natasha's reaction times were off for a while after her accident. I'm not downplaying your concerns. We all noticed she wasn't right. But she's been cleared by every doctor this base has, and her reaction times have been fine for the last couple of months. Isn't it time you put it to rest?"

Shapeshifters…

"I know what I saw!" Steve said. "If you dig up those old mission reports from that French village I told you about, you'll see I'm not the only person who's ever swore they crossed paths with a human who turned out to be a bug."

"I already did," Nick Fury said. "Something you said when you were delirious at your pretty little girlfriends house the other night triggered a memory. One of the veterans who served under me in the Vietnam War served under you in the European theatre. Gabriel Jones. Career military. Said he'd heard some crazy shit during the Second World War. Stuff that could never be proved. I put in a requisition for the case file of every mission you covered in France and no such file came up. Atrocities … yes. But no reports of villagers reporting something that looked like a bug disguised as something else."

Not surprising. The brass had buried the witness reports of traumatized French villagers telling stories about brain-sucking, shape-shifting aliens. Some big shot politician in Washington had accused the 101st Airborne of falsifying evidence to cover up their own atrocities. Collateral damage. French villagers who'd fought on the side of the Germans, but whose family members who hadn't been there swore they would never have betrayed their own countrymen. By the time the brass had finished investigating both sides of the story, Steve had moved on to win dozens of other victories and the brass buried the entire incident. Letting sleeping dogs lay.

"What about that village where we nearly cornered Herr Kleiser, Sir?" Steve asked. The brass hadn't buried that report. He hoped.

Nick stepped over to the table he liked to use instead of a desk, one of those metal folding numbers you could find in any office or cafeteria in America. He pulled an old case file out of the stack and plunked it down in front of him, the thick brownish cover a stark contrast to all the newer, thinner manila files piled upon his desk.