New Avenger (A Steve Rogers love story)

He's Alive?

Maria had brought a tool she said was made by Fitzsimmons, whoever that was. It saved our lives. She had cut a hole through the floor of the armored vehicle after it parked and we got out and away from the STRIKE team.

The door to the white van Maria stashed away slid open and Steve jumped out, helping Natasha down. Sam got out, and I followed close behind as we followed Maria to a barred door. She opened it and brought us into the dark building, clearly an abandoned dam.

As we went, I took over for Steve, holding Natasha close. "Let me know if this burns." She nodded as I slowly let a small amount of fire snake toward her shoulder. I was gentle, only doing a little bit as I didn't want to hurt her with a power I had only just recently gotten.

Maria led us down a dimly lit hallway as I slowly healed Natasha, when a man in a suit ran toward us. "GSW. She's lost at least a pint." Maria said, telling the man about Natasha.

"Maybe two." Sam added.

"Let me take her." The man said, moving to interject me. 

"They'll want to see him first." Maria insisted.

"'Him'?" I asked.

Steve, Natasha, Sam and I exchanged confused expressions.

Maria brought us to a plastic tarp curtain and moved it aside, showing us the room behind it. We were all shocked. Inside, Nick fury laid in a hospital bed, several machines connected to him. He looked as if he was taking a nap.

"About damn time." Fury said, looking at all of us.

The man from the hall walked into the room, two other people dressed in scrubs behind him pulling a metal table on wheels behind them. The two Scrubs -- one, a woman with violet scrubs, the other a man with dark blue -- set the table up and put several medical supplies on it, putting the table close to the foot of Fury's bed. Once they were done, they left the man from before to help Natasha with her shoulder wound.

"Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum, shattered collarbone, perforated liver, and one hell of a headache." Fury told us of his injuries from before.

"Don't forget your collapsed lung." The man working on Natasha added.

"Oh, let's not forget that. Otherwise, I'm good."

"They cut you open. Your heart stopped." Natasha said.

"Tetrodotoxin B. Slows the pulse to one beat a minute. Banner developed it for stress. Didn't work so great for him, but we found a use for it."

"Why all the secrecy? Why not just tell us?" I asked.

"Any attempt on the Director's life had to look successful." Maria answered immediately.

"Can't kill you if you're already dead. Besides, I wasn't sure who to trust."

***

"This man declined the Nobel Peace Prize. He said peace wasn't an achievement, it was a responsibility." Fury tossed the picture of Alexander Pierce onto the table in front of him as he now was sitting in another room. He told us that HYDRA was taking over, confirming our beliefs about Pierce. "See, it's stuff like this that gives me trust issues."

"We have to stop the launch." Natasha said. She had her jacket on again, a bandage wrapped over her shoulder. She didn't seem to be in pain anymore. Or she was just really good at pretending it didn't hurt.

"I don't think the Council's accepting my calls anymore." Fury opened up a briefcase that sat on the table. Inside were three computer chips.

"What's that?" Sam asked.

"Once the helicarriers reach 3,000 feet, they'll triangulate with Insight satellites, becoming fully weaponized." Maria explained. She turned a laptop toward us, the screen showing us the satellites and helicarriers.

"We need to breach those carriers and replace their targeting blades with our own." Fury instructed.

On the screen was a blueprint showing a helicarrier. It zoomed into the round glass bottom, showing us where the targeting blades were kept.

"One or two won't cut it. We need to link all three carriers for this to work, because if even one of those ships remains operational, a whole lot of people are going to die." Maria explained.

"We have to assume that everyone aboard those carriers is HYDRA. We have to get past them, insert these server blades.  And maybe, just maybe we can salvage what's left..."

"We're not salvaging anything. We're not just taking down the carriers, Nick. We're taking down SHIELD." Steve protested.

"SHIELD had nothing to do with this."

"You gave me this mission. This is how it ends. SHIELD's been compromised. You said so yourself. HYDRA grew right under your nose and nobody noticed."

"Why do you think we're meeting in this cave? I noticed."

"How many paid the price before you did?"

Fury's eye left Steve and rested on the table. "Look, I didn't know about Barnes."

"Even if you had, would you have told me? Or would you have compartmentalized that, too? SHIELD, HYDRA, it all goes." Steve shook his head.

"He's right." Maria agreed, looking at Fury. He looked at her, surprised, and she nodded. Fury looked at Natasha and she leaned back in her chair. Then he looked up at Sam.

"Don't look at me. I do what he does, just slower." Sam shrugged.

Fury looked at me last and I shook my head. "I'm doing whatever Steve says."

Steve looked at me and gave me a warm smile that said "thank you", and I looked away, blushing like a damn school girl.

Ever since the kiss in the mall, I felt something strange in my chest. Something warm. It was something I hadn't felt in such a long time. I welcomed the feeling, but kept it at bay, not sure he felt the same. But I did feel closer to him, and he seemed to feel the same.

Fury looked back at Steve. "Well..." He sighed as he leaned back in his chair, defeated. "Looks like you're giving the orders now, Captain."